Preface

Recent national and international surveys of adult literacy skills have raised questions about workforce readiness for international competitiveness. This report provides information on the design and evaluation of workplace literacy programs to improve workforce readiness, and an overview of concepts about the nature, uses and abuses of standardized tests in program evaluation and accountability. This is not a "how to do it" guidebook. Rather, it discusses concepts and issues and provides bibliographic resources for those readers who want to learn more about how to design, develop, and evaluate literacy programs in the workplace and other contexts.

Workplace literacy or basic skills programs are programs offered at a given workplace and generally are aimed at preparing employees for performing job-linked literacy and numeracy tasks, such as filling our requisition forms in a clerical position or preparing to learn statistical process control. However, much of the discussion is applicable to other types of programs for workforce education and lifelong learning, family literacy, academic literacy and other aspects of basic skills education (reading, writing, mathematics, English as a Second Language-ESL).

Materials in Chapters 1 and 2 were prepared with support from the Work in America Institute and the U. S. Department of Education, Division of Adult Education and Literacy. Chapter 3 was prepared under a contract with THE CENTER/CCSD #54, an adult education organization near Chicago, Illinois. The preparation of Chapter 4 was supported by a contract from the U. S. Department of Education, Division of Adult Education and Literacy, while Chapter 5 was prepared, in part, under a contract with the National Institute for Literacy (NIFL) to the San Diego Community College District.

Integration of these various papers into the present report was supported in part by a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to the Applied Behavioral & Cognitive Sciences, Inc. The opinions, viewpoints, and positions stated in this report are those of the author and they do not necessarily reflect the policies or positions of any of the organizations named herein.