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The following offices provide literacy services.
The National Institute for Literacy (NIFL) is an independent federal institute, jointly administered by the secretaries of Education, Labor, and Health and Human Services. The NIFL serves as a hub for adult literacy activities nationwide. An important part of its mission is to strengthen the system for adult literacy so that every adult has access to appropriate services of the highest quality. The goal of all NIFL activities is to help adult learners gain the knowledge and skills necessary to fulfill their roles as parents, workers, and citizens. NIFL supports a toll-free hotline that provides literacy program referrals and other related information nationwide: 800-228-8813; 800-552-9097 TDD.
Since 1946 the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) schools system has been operating elementary and secondary schools on U.S. military bases for the children of military and civilian personnel assigned overseas. DoDEA provides education opportunities comparable to those offered in the better school systems in the United States. This segment of U.S. public education consists of approximately 200 elementary, middle, junior high and high schools, and a community college. The schools are located in 19 countries around the world, with an enrollment of approximately 90,000 students. DoDEA strives to help students reach their full potential as competent, independent readers and thinkers who enjoy reading as a lifelong pursuit, and who function as literate, contributing citizens in their communities.
The Office of Compensatory Education Programs administers the Even Start Family Literacy Program. Even Start provides federal financial assistance for family-centered education projects to help parents learn the literacy and parenting skills they need to become full partners in the education of their young children and to help those children reach their full potential as learners.
The Office of Compensatory Education administers the largest federal elementary and secondary education program, Title I (Part A), of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Title I is designed to help disadvantaged students. Title I provides financial assistance through state education agencies to local education agencies to meet the education needs of children who are failing or most at risk of failing to meet state standards in schools with high concentrations of children from low-income families.
The U.S. Department of Education, through its Office of Vocational and Adult Education, administers the Adult Education Act, Public Law 100-297, as amended by the National Literacy Act of 1991. The Adult Education Act is the Department's major program that supports and promotes services for educationally disadvantaged adults. The Division maintains cooperative and consultative relations with federal, state, and local agencies that provide basic skills services. It maintains a clearinghouse that offers national information resources on issues and trends in adult education and literacy, publishes a quarterly newsletter, the A.L.L. Points Bulletin, and reports on promising practices in adult education.
The Planning and Evaluation Service in the Office of the Under Secretary coordinates READ*WRITE*NOW!, an intergenerational program to improve the reading and writing skills of children from birth through grade 6. READ*WRITE*NOW! materials may be obtained free of charge through the Department's toll free number: 1-800-USA-LEARN.
The country needs a scientifically literate general public to reach sound decisions on many of the major issues that will shape our future and to ensure an adequate pool of people from which to recruit the scientists and technicians that will be required. For this reason the U.S. Department of Energy participates in a variety of programs that foster education goals nationwide and promotes literacy in science and technology.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is responsible for a broad range of programs related to the health and welfare of the United States. Specifically, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) is responsible for federal programs that promote self-sufficiency for disadvantaged Americans. By providing income support, social services, and comprehensive development services to help them become independent, ACF improves the well-being of low-income families, neglected and abused children and youth, American Indians, refugees, and people with developmental disabilities and mental retardation. The promotion of literacy is a key element in ACF programs, as it provides opportunities for people to assume greater responsibility and achieve independence and dignity.
The mission of the Federal Bureau of Prisons is to maintain secure, safe, and humane correctional institutions for persons placed in federal custody; to develop and operate correctional programs that seek a balanced application of the concepts of punishment, deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation; and to provide, primarily through the National Institute of Corrections, assistance to state and local agencies. In correctional programs in all its facilities, the bureau encourages the use of community volunteers as vital to the welfare of both inmates and staff. The bureau realizes the need to provide a wide range of self-improvement opportunities in order to reduce inmate idleness and offer important security benefits.
The U.S. Information Agency is an independent foreign affairs agency within the executive branch of the U.S. government. The agency promotes mutual understanding between peoples of the United States and of other nations by conducting and supporting educational and cultural activities -- for example, libraries, book translations, and English teaching -- designed to better acquaint foreign audiences with American literature, history, political processes, traditions, and values.
The U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS) is a permanent, independent agency of the federal government charged with advising both Congress and the President on the policies and plans of national and international library and information services. For the commission's mandate to remain relevant, a high rate of public literacy is essential.
The U.S. Postal Service, with 753,000 employees in some 40,000 post offices across the country, handles 580 million pieces of mail each work day, or 181 billion pieces per year, making it the largest and most productive postal service in the world. Literacy is a requirement, equally for the general public and for Postal Service employees, if this constantly expanding system is to continue to function effectively. Since 1990 the Postal Service has been promoting adult literacy as well as the Wee Deliver Program, which is used to enhance literacy skills in about 24,000 elementary schools through the creation of an in-school postal service.
WHCLIST is a library advocacy group that monitors and promotes enactment into law of recommendations from the 1991 White House Conference on Library and Information Sciences on the role of libraries in promoting literacy, productivity, and democracy.
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