This report expands upon a policy resolution passed unanimously at the 53rd Annual Conference of Mayors in 1985. The first part of the report, a policy statement, points out the magnitude of the adult illiteracy problem and of some of the issues involved, and briefly indicates how various segments of society can contribute to a solution. The…

A study examined the affiliations between adult basic education programs and business, industry, and unions in the 50 States and the District of Columbia. Of the 47 state directors of adult education who returned the mail questionnaire, 31 reported formal affiliations and 5 reported informal affiliations with businesses and/or unions in their…

Many adult poor readers do not organize what they read in a way that best facilitates good comprehension. To help students overcome this problem, the Adult Day and Evening School in Oakland, California, organized a reading laboratory for their mostly low-income, educationally disadvantaged students with a diverse range of needs. Instruction in the…

This guidebook is intended to aid adult basic education teachers in the selection of audiovisual resources designed to teach living skills to low-functioning adults. The first section describes effective use of audiovisuals, preparation of a lesson incorporating audiovisuals, and lesson plan uses of media. Two audiovisual evaluation forms are…

An overview is provided of Hispanic enrollment and staffing patterns in U.S. community colleges. After an initial discussion of changes taking place in postsecondary education, information on the low participation rates of Hispanics in higher education is presented; e.g., in 1978 Hispanics made up 6% of the population of the mainland United…

Noting that the formal education system in Pakistan has failed to make an impact on the nation's literacy rate, this paper reviews efforts since 1955 to improve education and adult literacy education and discusses reasons why these programs have not met most of their goals. The first portion of the paper presents an evaluation of the impact of…

Profiles are provided for the outstanding adult basic education (ABE) program in each of 10 regions. Each profile provides a brief background; discusses the program's focus(es); describes program activities, operation, and components; presents some figures on the population served; and provides the name, address, and telephone number of a contact…

The elements of the Adult Basic Education (ABE) program at Kishwaukee College are reviewed. ABE program elements include General Educational Development (GED) program and testing; basic skills courses; English as a second language (ESL); in-plant classes; specialty courses in communicative linguistics and English grammar under ESL; adult…

Adults enrolled in local adult basic education programs at six sites in Louisiana were used to compare the credibility of Adult Performance Level (APL) competency-based instructional programs (experimental group) with traditional adult education instructional activities (control group). Focus was on determining the correlation between grade level…

This selected annotated bibliography contains eighty-three entries (includes books, reports, guides, papers, and articles) relevant to teaching adult vocational education learners. The citations are organized alphabetically by author and each one includes some or all of the following: source, title, sponsoring agency, publisher, city, state, date,…

The report describes the Bergen Community College Adult Learning Center, a part of the college's community service program which has served approximately 15,000 individuals since 1970. Section one discusses the history and development of the Center, section two examines the legal basis of the Center's operation, and section three presents its…

This book contains more than 200 one-page exercises designed to give adults practice in basic reading and handwriting skills. The exercises are arranged according to the areas with which they deal: visual discrimination; letter recognition; manuscript practice and sequence; script practice; numeral writing; initial consonants; final consonants;…

This description of the difficulties of school library and community information services in a developing country includes forceful images of a rural indigenous people with little self-known history, and widely separated by a wild and rough terrain and diverging cultures--all of which conspire as obstacles to the spread of library and school…

This report focuses on the short term basic and occupational skills training needs of rural and urban poor women in developing countries who have had no schooling or those who have entered and/or have completed primary schooling. It is organized into three parts. Part 1 deals with the rationale for training women in occupational skills and…

This guide for teachers contains two articles and four sample lessons on teaching English as a second language (ESL). The first article presents an overview of planning an ESL curriculum which includes coping skills, emphasizing the necessity of teaching language as it is used in everyday life, not just the classroom variety found in textbooks.…