Education, Literacy, and Culture

Government Accountability Office

Congress has adopted a range of tools to help students and families pay for postsecondary education, including grants, loans, and tax preferences. Many title IV financial aid programs have a long history, while most of the tax preferences do not. The addition of tax preferences to the title IV grant and loan programs has increased the number of options and given students and families new choices about how to combine saving, borrowing, and current income to meet the costs of postsecondary education. Postsecondary tax preferences are widely thought to present challenges of complexity to students and families. As we have shown, tax filers appear to have some difficulty in making fully effective use of some postsecondary tax preferences now in the tax code. ...

From: www.gao.gov/new.items/d05684.pdf

August 19, 2005
Jennifer Ginn
The Winchester Sun, Kentucky

If you're going to reach the children, you've got to start with the parents.

That was the conclusion reached by many Thursday during a discussion between the Winchester-Clark County Chamber of Commerce and leaders of the Clark County Public Educational System. ...

Debbie Jones, family literacy coordinator with the Winchester/Clark County Literacy Council, said parents don't understand educational jargon and don't know how to work the system. Getting them to accept responsibility for their child's education is vital to helping their children succeed in school, she added. ...

Full Story: www.winchestersun.com/articles/2005/08/20/local_news/news01.txt
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August 12, 2005
Pia Lopez
The Sacramento Bee, California

Mandy Carrillo, student member of the Sacramento City Unified School District board, has a point. The way staff and board members speak and write is not understandable to a majority of people. She'd like to see somebody be in charge of &lqt;translating&lqt; district documents for the public and/or providing a glossary of terms to people.

Better yet, why not simply speak and write in language that people understand from the get-go?

The use of bureaucratese, new fad terms and acronyms is a way of shutting out all but insiders. If district staff and school board members truly are interested in what they call &lqt;public engagement&lqt; (a fad term that seems to mean finding ways to involve people in issues affecting Sacramento schools), they need to speak and write simply and clearly. ...

Carrillo really is on to something. When board and staff don't speak and write clearly, it hampers their ability to connect with the public. It also shows fuzzy thinking. Board and staff don't need glossaries and &lqt;translated&lqt; documents. They need clear thinking about the audience they're trying to reach and a working knowledge of plain English before they present information to the public.

From: www.sacbee.com/content/opinion/story/13398732p-14240082c.html
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July 05, 2005
News release
National Commission on Writing

Despite the high value that state employers put on writing skills, a significant number of their employees do not meet states' expectations. Providing writing training costs taxpayers nearly a quarter of a billion dollars annually, according to an estimate based on a survey released here today by the National Commission on Writing.

The report, Writing: A Powerful Message from State Government (.pdf/535K), concludes that writing is considered an even more important job requirement for the states' nearly 2.7 million employees than it is for the private-sector employees studied in the Commission's previous survey of leading U.S. businesses. State agencies were more likely to consider writing skills in hiring and promotion, and to require writing samples from applicants. The report was issued today by the National Commission on Writing for America's Families, Schools, and Colleges, based on a National Governors Association survey of state human resources directors. Forty-nine of 50 state human resources offices responded to the survey.

&lqt;Clear communication is an essential government function in a democratic society,&lqt; said Bob Kerrey, president of New School University in New York, former governor and senator from Nebraska, and chair of the Commission. &lqt;Because writing is how agencies communicate with each other and their constituents, all of us have a stake in the clarity and accuracy of government writing,&lqt; he said.

The report follows a similar analysis of writing in corporate America released last year by the Commission, which found that while advanced technology in the workplace is requiring employees to write more than ever, many college graduates don't have the writing skills they need. Writing: A Ticket to Work ... Or a Ticket Out (September 2004) surveyed members of the Business Roundtable, an association of chief executive officers from U.S. corporations. ...

Full Story: www.writingcommission.org/pr/message-from-state.html
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