That Sucking Sound: The Adult Literacy Crisis

Here's an excerpt from a news release that moved on the wires today:

New National Study Highlights Crisis in American Workforce Readiness

WASHINGTON, June 26 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A study from a blue ribbon panel calling for sweeping changes in adult literacy and basic education programs "deserves urgent attention from Congress and the new administration," said David C. Harvey, president and CEO of ProLiteracy, the nation's largest adult literacy organization."With 30 million adults in immediate need of literacy and adult basic education, the U.S. is at risk of becoming a second-rate economy."

The report, Reach Higher, America: Overcoming Crisis in the U.S. Workforce, is the result of two years of study by the National Commission on Adult Literacy, an independent panel of leaders from labor, business, government, education, literacy, and philanthropy. The report recommends new legislation to provide reading, writing, math, and English language instruction to people who are unemployed, low-skilled workers, immigrants, and high school dropouts. It recommends that Congress commit $20 billion by the year 2020.

As this study points out, low literacy is an epidemic that extends beyond K-12 classrooms. When are more businesses going to see that basic education is a back-pocket issue, not just a social cause?

ACTION ITEMS:

1. Take a look at your own business. Do your employees have the literacy skills they need to be truly productive?
2. Ask yourself or your boss what could be done to improve literacy among the workforce -- and into their families, if necessary.
3. Find out what major employers in your area are doing to provide remedial literacy training to employees in need.
4. Take a look at what's being taught in your local schools and think about what you could do to help them prepare kids better while they're in school for the lives they'll lead after graduation.

Comments

[Steve Peha]

Our problems with adult literacy give us a view into the historic difficulties we've had with juvenile literacy. It would obviously be easier to educate people before they become adults. But this would take a commitment to literacy that we have yet to muster. Of the many proposals out there, only Universal Pre-school seems broad enough and early enough to change the tide of less than literate kids becoming less than literate adults.