In 2000, approximately 877 million adults worldwide were illiterate and 113 million children did not attend school. More than two-thirds of those individuals lived in East and South Asia, and two-thirds were females. Functional illiteracy remains high in developed and developing nations alike. The reasons include weak training in how to teach…

Interviews with representatives from nine states (Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Iowa, Ohio [Canton City Schools only], Oregon, Rhode Island, and West Virginia) and two nations (Australia and the United Kingdom) provided a context for the development of a certificate of basic or foundational skills as an indicator of an adult's…

This document contains an evaluation handbook for adult literacy programs and feedback from/regarding the evaluation instruments developed during the project titled Adult Literacy and Evaluation Research Team (also known as Project ALERT), a two-phase project initiated by the Detroit Literacy Coalition (DLC) for the purpose of developing and…

This final report documents the development of a workplace literacy program for 100 employees of the Geriatric Authority of Holyoke, Massachusetts (GAH), a major nonprofit nursing home and rehabilitation facility. It describes how GAH employees received instruction in English as a Second Language, adult basic education, and General Educational…

A 3-day institute on English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) instruction, designed for adult literacy teachers, is reported. The institute, held at Northampton Community College (Bethlehem, Pennsylvania) in July 1993, offered seminars in acquired immune deficiency syndrome/human immunovirus (AIDS/HIV) and the ESL student, sheltered English instruction,…

A statewide evaluation indicated Pennsylvania's family literacy programs were meeting goals and providing family-centered, integrated educational services for eligible families. Findings indicated that family literacy programs recruited eligible and "most in need" families; enrolled families had young children; parents had limited formal…

The quarterly theme-based publication "Focus on Basics" was launched in January 1997 as part of a multipronged effort by the National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy to connect research and practice in the field of adult basic education (ABE). The effectiveness of "Focus on Basics" as a means of professional…

An analysis was conducted of the results of a formative evaluation of the LiteracyLink "Workplace Essential Skills" (WES) learning system conducted in the fall of 1998. (The WES learning system is a multimedia learning system integrating text, sound, graphics, animation, video, and images in a computer system and includes a videotape series, a…

An adult workplace program of literacy and basic skills is described and evaluated both for its effectiveness in the year 1992-93 and as a model for similar program efforts elsewhere. The evaluation addresses three specific program objectives: (1) establishment of a governance structure to assess actual workplace literacy requirements at the…

Projects funded during the first year of operation of the National Workplace Literacy Program were examined. Activities included a review of research literature, analyses of data from 29 of the 37 first-year projects, and site visits to 6 projects. The research literature suggested the following elements of successful workplace literacy programs:…

The Western Suffolk (New York) Board of Cooperative Educational Services undertook a 3-year workplace basic education project that was designed to help workers develop four types of skills: traditional basic skills; other Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS)-type competencies such as problem solving, team work, and computer…

The final evaluation of an English-as-a-Second-Language and mathematics basic skills program, provided by a college, for limited-English-proficient workers in a manufacturing company, is presented. The program was originally designed to teach job-related skills, but was amended by managers to build worker self-esteem and worker participation in…

The College of Lake County in Grayslake, Illinois, formed an educational and business partnership with four area businesses to design and implement workplace literacy programs targeted to the needs of each business. The project's four objectives were as follows: develop a model of cooperation between a community college and the business community…

This report describes a project originally intended to identify demographic patterns among adults with low literacy skills in each Canadian province. The project was carried out between March 2000 and June 2001 under the auspices of Movement for Canadian Literacy (MCL). The project was based on the assumption that demographic information about…

The growing number of youth enrolling in adult literacy education is a little-documented trend across the nation that is having a major impact on programs in some areas but appears to be unnoticed by educational policymakers and researchers. A central question is whether youth enrollments provide an opportunity for adult literacy education to…