ABSTRACT
This chapter represents a modest attempt to begin answering the question of what people can learn from national data to better inform literacy policy. It begins with a focus on three common approaches to assessing literacy in the national population and then briefly considers the National Adult Literacy Survey and the National Assessment of Adult Literacy. The chapter considers the types of census data collected on language and language diversity as well as some of the ideological underpinnings that frame the survey. The United States, especially in the Southwest, southern Florida, and the eastern and western metropolitan seaboard, is a multilingual nation. Denying the multilingual nature of the United States, while making the assumption that non-English language diversity in the United States is an abnormality that must be remedied, fails to allow for the development of reality-based work-force and educational policies as alternatives to the restrictionist and repressive ones that currently exist.
