[AAACE-NLA] Check out The National Academies | Science in the Headlines | Few Advances in

[Dmartin336@aol.com]

_The  National Academies | Science in the Headlines | Few Advances in Adult 
Literacy  Made in Last Decade_ 
(http://www.nationalacademies.org/headlines/20051223.html)  

 
____________________________________
Few Advances in Adult Literacy Made in Last Decade
By Lisa Pickoff-White
December 23 - Adult literacy dropped  or was unchanged across every level of 
education between 1992 and 2003. About 11  million adults in the U.S. are not 
literate and 30 million adults have below  basic English skills, according to 
a study sponsored by the National Center for  Education Statistics.  
The National Assessment of Adult Literacy measured three types of literacy:  
prose, the ability to read and understand information presented in sentences 
and  paragraphs; document, understanding and using other printed material such 
as bus  schedules and prescription labels; and quantitative, using and 
understanding  numeric information presented in texts or documents, such as 
interpreting  information in a graph. Gains were made by black adults on every type of 
task  tested and by adults overall in basic-level computational tasks. 
However,  Hispanics declined on all levels. The study represents a population of 222  
million adults age 16 and older and is based on a sample of 19,000 adults 
tested  in their homes, college housing, or prisons. 
In response to a request from the National Center for Education Statistics  
for assistance in setting performance standards for the National Assessment of  
Adult Literacy, the National Research Council report Measuring Literacy:  
Performance Levels for Adults recommended that the results be reported using  
five levels – nonliterate in English, below basic, basic, intermediate, and  
advanced. The report also discusses the committee’s recommendations for future  
literacy assessments. 
    *   _Measuring Literacy: Performance Levels for Adults  2005_ 
(http://books.nap.edu/catalog/11267.html) 
Other Resources:  
    *   _National Assessment  of Adult Literacy _ (http://nces.ed.gov/naal/) 

 
____________________________________
Office of News and  Public Information
news.national-academies.org   
Science in the  Headlines
national-academies.org/headlines   Copyright © 2006. National Academy of  
Sciences. All rights reserved. 500 Fifth St. N.W., Washington, D.C.  20001. 

Donna  Martinez
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.literacytent.org/pipermail/aaace-nla/attachments/20060106/e4a2bcee/attachment.htm