Literacy: Spanning the US
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Rhonda Crowder & Hough Reads Battle Widespread Illiteracy:
Cleveland Champions
Cleveland.com:
11.29.2019 by Sharon Broussard
As youngsters listened to Cleveland City Council
Member Basheer Jones read a children’s story at the Hough Public Library two
summers ago, a mother of three tapped Rhonda Crowder on the shoulder and pulled
her aside.
“Sister, I can’t read,” the embarrassed woman
whispered.
“That helped me understand the magnitude of the
problem” said Crowder, who is the volunteer coordinator of Hough Reads, a
family literacy program.
Crowder helped the woman find an adult literacy
program. In the process, she discovered that she had volunteered to serve on
the front lines of a major battle in Hough. Experts believe that Hough has one
of Cleveland’s highest illiteracy rates.
According to a 2000 study, about 95% of Hough
residents over 16 could read so poorly that they could barely figure out a map
or calculate fees. The figure was 97% in Kinsman, reported Case Western Reserve
University’s Center for Urban Poverty and Community Development.
Crowder has lived in Hough for most of her life, so
the problem is right in her own back yard. That helped cement her dedication to
Hough Reads. READ
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Gunning
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punctuation marks: 10 words: 181
3+ syllable words: 24
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Literacy Coalition of Colorado
Employers
Council Blog: 12.03.2019 by Curtis Graves, Esq., SPHR, SHRM-SCP
What would you do if you couldn’t read? What would
you do if people could not understand what you were saying?
In Colorado, an estimated 42,000 adults who grew up
speaking English read at a kindergarten through third-grade level. At the same
time, nearly 17 percent of Colorado households speak a language other than
English. For these Coloradans, the statistics paint a bleak picture:
Low literacy costs $73 million per year in terms of
direct health care costs. A recent study by Pfizer put the cost much higher.
Ninety percent of welfare recipients are high
school dropouts
Penal institution records show that inmates have a
16 percent chance of returning to prison if they receive literacy help, as
opposed to 70 percent for those who receive no help. This equates to taxpayer
costs of $25,000 per year per inmate and nearly double that amount for juvenile
offenders.
Illiteracy and crime are closely related. The
Department of Justice states, “The link between academic failure and delinquency,
violence, and crime is welded to reading failure.”
Fortunately, Colorado adult learners have a
resource to help them defy these statistics. For more than 20 years, the Literacy Coalition of Colorado (LCC) has
supported learners who wish to learn English or to improve their reading
skills. READ
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Gunning
Fog Index: 12.17
punctuation marks: 13 words: 209
3+ syllable words: 30
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One Of The Greatest Gifts Of All
WVTF:
12.03.2019 by Robbie Harris
On this "Giving Tuesday," this is a story
about something that’s up there with the greatest gifts of all. It never wears out, or gets put in the back
of closet and will always be there when you need it.
It’s a gift most people take for granted, but
somewhere along the line, somebody taught you how to read, handing you a key to
the wider world. But more than 40 million adults in this country don’t have
that key. Freddie Price used to be one of them. “You know, a lot of people have
different kinds of struggles and everybody has a different, way of handling it.
A lot of people keep it inside. And that's what I did.”
Price is a supply clerk for the town of
Christiansburg, an assistant to the manager, and in order to advance in his
career, he had to pass a difficult written test given by an agency called the
Virginia Institute of Procurement, one he’d taken and failed 4 times
before. He was getting ready to take it
a fifth time, but if he failed this one, he could lose his job, a job he is
good at. Price has worked for the town for 15 years and not many people knew he
had what they call, ‘low literacy levels.’
“I kept it inside and had this macho attitude that
I could do it and you just gotta let it down sometimes. And trust that people
will help you who care about you.”
So, Price decided to ask for help. “It was a
difficult decision because pride takes over,” says Price. “But I had something
in me. I knew I could do it and it just took this organization, and you know,
it just wasn't one person. It was everybody in it.”
That organization is the Literacy Volunteers of the New River Valley.
It gets no government funding and depends entirely on donations. Not every
community or state in this country offers this kind of help for free. LISTEN 03:37
Gunning
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Upshur Literacy Volunteers Seeking Tutors
Intermountain:
12.04.2019 by Amanda Hayes
Want to be a literacy tutor? Maybe math is more your
thing? What about teaching computer classes? Literacy Volunteers of Upshur County
has a need for all those at this time.
There are four students awaiting a tutor and one of
them needs help in math. The other three are literacy students.
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“We are trying to help our community better
themselves,” she said.
People need to be able to read at a certain level
to pass the driving test and most of the students cannot drive. A student in
his 70s let his driver’s license lapse due to cataracts, but now that his
vision is better he can’t pass the test and came to Literacy Volunteers for
help.
“It’s really difficult for him because he has about
a first-grade reading level,” she said. “We are trying to help advocate for him
because he has a clean driving record. It’s something we don’t think about
until we are faced with it.” READ
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Gunning
Fog Index: 8.083
punctuation marks: 12 words: 160
3+ syllable words: 11
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