Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity

Reach Higher, America Report from National Commission on Adult Literacy Released; Former Director UNCCPWO Marion Crain Served as Commissioner

Reach Higher, America: Overcoming Crisis in the U.S. Workforce focuses on the adult education and skills crisis facing American workers, proposes a fundamentally new approach to adult basic education and workforce skills preparation in America, and lays out the fiscal and social benefits that would result from substantially increased public expenditures for programs and services. It examines the literacy and job-training needs of the low-skilled population, including workers, the unemployed, immigrants with limited or no English, parents and caregivers, incarcerated adults, high-school dropouts, and high school graduates not adequately prepared for college.

Among other things, the Commission recommends transforming the current adult education and literacy system, which reaches about 3 million adults annually, into an adult education and workforce skills system with the capacity to enroll 20 million adults by the year 2020 and a mission of readying adults for postsecondary education and job training. The report offers a "domestic Marshall plan" for meeting workforce education needs -- including recommendations for federal and state government, business and labor, philanthropy, and the general public. A clear message of the report is that unless the nation gives much higher priority to the basic educational needs of the workforce -- adults beyond the reach of the schools -- America's standard of living, its status as a leading world power, and its very social fabric will be further eroded.

Marion Crain, former director of the UNC Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity and noted legal scholar on employment law, labor issues and the role of work in the U.S., served as commissioner for the National Commission on Adult Literacy and helped develop Reach Higher, America. The Commission was formed in June 2006 as an independent panel of labor and business leaders, government officials and educators, tasked with examining current adult education and literacy services in America and providing recommendations for changes to meet the needs of the 21st Century workforce. The report was released at a public event in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, June 26, 2008.

Visit the National Commission on Adult Literacy web page for a copy of the report and related materials.