Dear Colleagues —

On behalf of our Acting Assistant Secretary Johan Uvin, we are pleased to release the report, Making Skills Everyone's Business: A Call to Transform Adult Learning in the United States, which highlights the extent of our nation's skills gap and offers suggestions for how to establish convenient, effective, high-quality learning opportunities for low-skilled youth and adults. Specifically, Making Skills Everyone's Business offers seven strategies that hold great promise for improving the conditions that create and perpetuate poor literacy, numeracy, and problem solving. These strategies do not partition the responsibilities of the public and private sectors; nor do they compartmentalize actions at the federal, state, regional, tribal, or local levels. These strategies are based on the principle of shared responsibility and acknowledge that America's skills challenge is too large to address by any stakeholder group independently.

The data and strategies outlined in Making Skills Everyone's Business also might be of interest to the communities with which you work. Please share this report with your grantees and networks.

Best —
Sharon Lee Miller
Director, Division of Academic and Technical Education