New minimum high school graduation standards were mandated for 1978-79 graduates, by Florida's Educational Accountability Act of 1976. Requirements included mastery of basic skills, completion of minimum course credits, and satisfactory performance on functional literacy tests. The literacy test was the primary criterion for graduation. On its…

Economic literacy and economic efficacy are addressed by examining basic goals and assumptions of economic education and by suggesting areas that need systematic attention and investigation. To clarify goals, an operational definition of economic literacy must be developed and used in a criterion-referenced testing instrument. A definition of…

While a college degree is an important economic and social resource for graduating-age students, more and more students are entering colleges and universities without the basic skills necessary to achieve academic success, and a growing number are low-literate or limited English speaking. Community colleges have an important role in ensuring…

This paper looks at computer technology's current and potential role in developing literacy in hearing impaired (HI) adults. First, the paper considers findings of adult literacy research including the national impact of illiteracy, functional literacy, communication and thinking skills, the whole language approach, the process approach to…

This document is a report of a symposium whose participants are involved with the Home-School Study of Language and Literacy Development, a project engaged in a longitudinal study of 80 low-income families with preschool-aged children in Boston (Massachusetts). The project was designed to identify possible success factors for children from…

This paper describes a model for a literacy program proposed for the Rural Education Project at Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville. The program would target unemployed adults, at-risk youth and others in a seven-county target area whose lack of reading skills hampers their search for employment. The model calls for cooperative…

Findings of an investigation of ten public school adult basic education (ABE) programs in New York State indicate important implications for ABE programs which foster self-directed learning. Because of the significant relationship between the fostering and student preference for self-directed learning, adult educators should plan ABE programs to…

The U.S. work force is unready for the new jobs, unready for the new realities, unready for the new challenges of the 1990s. Across the board, jobs are demanding better reading, writing, and reasoning skills and more math and science. Statistics define the scope of the problem: 25 percent of young people drop out of high school; 70 percent of all…

The National Adult Literacy Initiative calls for a collaborative effort among the public, private, voluntary, and military sectors to address more effectively illiteracy through adult education. One of the first points in the initiative calls for continued educational services funded by the federal government and administered by the states. Other…