What are effective ways to present the need for adult basic skills in your community?

Program managers and others,

This is a new topic: what have you learned or can you, and we, learn about presenting the need for local adult basic skills (basic literacy, ABE, ASE, transition to college and ESL/SOL) in the local press, on television and in social media? What is effective? 

Here's a link to a recent nprEd online article by Melissa Block and Marisa Penaloza -- https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/04/26/602797769/casting-aside-shame-and-stigma-adults-tackle-struggles-with-literacy -- that starts with a number, 35 million adults who lack basic skills (presumably based on an interpretation of the 2012 OECD PIAAC data, which usually is described as 36 million adults in the U.S. ), and then describes the life of one adult learner in Maine to illustrate it.

Do you think this is an effective approach to reach the intended audience? Who is the intended audience in this case? If it's a local audience, is it the general public in Bangor Maine, the general public in Maine? Is this intended for a national audience?

Here's a description from the article, backed up by a table of data, "One in six adults under 65 in the U.S. have low literacy — reading skills that are below those of 4th graders. Most of the 35 million affected were born in the United States." Is one of the points that low literacy is not primarily due to immigrants? Is that intended to dispel a myth? If so, is it effective?

Here's another description from the article, also backed up by a table of data, "White, U.S.-born Americans make up the largest share — one third — of this population." Is the point that low literacy is not primarily a "non-white" problem?  Is that intended to dispel a myth? If so, is it effective?

What is your take on this article? Is it effective in raising awareness about the problem of low adult literacy in the U.S.? In case you weren't aware, for several decades national and international studies (NALS 1992 and  NAAL 1985, 1992, and 2003) demonstrated that our country has a surprisingly high percentage of adults with low literacy, and the recent PIAAC study (OECD PIAAC 2012) puts us near the bottom of our peer, well-to-do OECD countries in which this assessment was administered to a random sample of the population. We did poorly, incidentally, in numeracy and in "problem solving in a technology rich environment". Is the general public in your community aware of this? If not, what could you do to change that? Could that lead to a greater commitment to programs like yours in your community or in your state?

What have you found effective to reach the general public and policy makers in your community to raise awareness of the need for adult basic skills education?

David J. Rosen, Moderator

LINCS CoP Program Management group