What's New for May 2009

Basic Reading Skills and the Literacy of the America's Least Literate Adults: Results from the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) Supplemental Studies (May 6, 2009)
The 2003 NAAL assessed the English literacy skills of a nationally representative sample of 18,500 U.S. adults (age 16 and older) residing in private households. NAAL is the first national assessment of adult literacy since the 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS). The NAAL project comprised four assessment components: the core literacy tasks, the main literacy assessment, the Fluency Addition to NAAL (FAN), and the Adult Literacy Supplemental Assessment (ALSA). Results from the main literacy assessment are reported as averages and as the percentage of adults in each of four literacy levels: Below Basic, Basic, Intermediate, and Proficient. This report focuses on results from the FAN and the ALSA.

Crime, Violence, Discipline, and Safety in U.S. Public Schools, Findings from the School Survey on Crime and Safety: 2007-08 (May 5, 2009)
This First Look report uses data from the 2007-08 School Survey on Crime and Safety (SSOCS) to examine a range of issues dealing with school crime and safety, such as the frequency of school crime and violence, disciplinary actions, and school practices related to the prevention and reduction of crime. SSOCS is the primary source of school-level data on crime and safety for NCES. Since 1999, it has been administered four times to the principals of nationally representative samples of public primary, middle, high, and combined schools.