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Tarrant County United Way
is especially focusing on adult literacy.
The ability to read, write, speak, compute and solve
problems in English is essential for successful people,
businesses and communities.
Compared with 14 percent
nationwide, 20 percent of Tarrant County’s adults—about
238,000—cannot read English well enough to follow a bus
schedule or read a simple story to their children.
Locally, an additional 27.8 percent lack the skills to
earn a meaningful wage. Literacy is a problem for people
who speak English as a second language, and those who
drop out of high school or graduate with limited skills.
Low literacy
is an underlying cause of other critical problems.
Nationally, 43 percent of low literacy adults live in poverty.
Adults who lack basic literacy skills also tend to be less
healthy than others, partly because they may read medicine
labels incorrectly and therefore take medicine incorrectly.
Children whose parents have low literacy skills tend to do
poorly in school. It all adds up to struggling families and
communities that lack the skilled workforce needed to increase
productivity and attract new industries.
There has been little coordination among local literacy service
providers in the past, and many programs have insufficient
funding and training. All of the current programs combined
serve fewer than four percent of the people in Tarrant County
who need them.
After a year of study and
discussion
by almost 200 volunteers from all sectors of the
community, a task force organized by United Way has
published recommendations for addressing Tarrant
County’s adult literacy crisis. The task force also has
announced the formation of a new Tarrant Literacy
Coalition. United Way will provide staff support until
the coalition becomes a stand-alone nonprofit
organization.
The Tarrant Literacy Coalition will
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Encourage partnerships to
provide more effective and economical services to more
people
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Collect information on
Tarrant County’s literacy progress
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Evaluate literacy programs
and recognize those of exceptional quality
Literacy Task Force Recommendations
When United Way learned that some people were not
qualifying for local job training programs because their
reading and math skills were not up to the eighth grade
level, it joined forces with the Community Learning
Center in Fort Worth to offer an intensive, six-week
literacy program. The free program is designed mainly to
help participants qualify for Community
Learning
Center job training programs that often lead to
profitable jobs in the aerospace industry.
In the program's first 11 months, 50 unemployed or
underemployed people learned to read and compute in
English at or above the eighth grade level. As a result,
46 of them had completed or were taking an aerospace
training program, and 26 had obtained jobs in the
aerospace field or elsewhere.
Participants learn to better understand what they are
reading and improve other literacy skills.
They work at their own pace on their individual areas of concern. Funds
are available to take care of problems that make it hard
for people to attend literacy classes. For example, when
one participant’s unemployment benefits ran out and the
high cost of gas stretched his budget to the breaking
point,
United Way provided gas money.
Adult Literacy 2007 Community Assessment Update
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