Cradle to Career educational success is about family literacy! Children's literacy levels are directly linked to the educational levels of their parents, especially the mother.

Functional illiteracy is defined as the inability of an individual to read and write in everyday life situations, which means they cannot read the labels on medication, follow a bus schedule, or help children with homework.

Literacy Action serves 600-700 students per year! The majority of students enter the program at a fifth-grade reading level. 90% of our students are at or below the poverty level and all are low-income.  More than 50% are women, half of whom are single heads of households and 40% are the primary caregiver to a school-aged child.

The single greatest indicator of a child's success in school is the literacy level of his or her parents. Children raised in low literate homes enter kindergarten two years behind peers from homes where the adults read. These children also have nearly an 85% greater chance of dropping out of high school.  Educating adults who are raising school-aged children is the most successful way to break the cycle of illiteracy and poverty.

Literacy Action uses the Orton-Gillingham (O-G) phonics based approach to reading that is used at state-of-the-art institutions such as the Schenck School. The O-G approach is used across the curriculum and helps students at all levels.

Most students gain 1.5 to 2 reading levels after nine consecutive months at Literacy Action Inc (LAI). Since there is a wide range of educational levels and needs among our students, there is no standard time it take to complete the program.On average, students at Literacy Action enter our program at a fifth grade reading level. Research says that it takes between 40 and 100 classroom/contact hours to advance one grade level. Students generally take two classes per semester.

Illiteracy costs Georgia $2.6 billion annually in lost wages and reduced productivity and it costs American businesses more than $60 billion each year in lost productivity and health and safety issues. The cost of low health literacy to the U.S. economy is between $106 billion and $238 billion per year. The health care industry estimates $73 billion per year of unnecessary health care expenses attributed to poor literacy.

Cities, regions, and the nation as a whole cannot attract new business and remain global competitiors without a literate, skilled workforce. Adults with less than a high school dipolma earn 28% less than high school graduates, 42% less than those with an Associate degree and 56% less than those with a Bachelor's degree. 43% of people with the lowest literacy skills live in poverty; 17% recieve food stamps, and 70% have no job or only a part time job.

Literacy Action is one of the few programs that successfully help adult learners who are at zero to sixth grade reading levels and who do not have adequate skills to enroll in GED programs. We offer four levels of reading and math instruction as well as computer classes, work-skills classes, and health literacy. In addition, we incorporate in all our programs financial literacy and other critically important life skills and work skills.

Functional illiteracy is the hub around which nearly all social ills revolve – from crime, incarceration and recidivism, to hardcore poverty, to low standardized test scores and high drop-out rates, to accidents and deaths caused by the inability to read medication labels, to low worker productivity, and drains on the tax base and local economies. 

• More than 800,000 adults in metro Atlanta are functionally illiterate.
• 93 million American adults have limited reading, writing, and math skills.  
• 43% of all non-readers live in poverty.
• 85% of all juvenile offenders have reading problems.
• The greatest indicator of a child’s success is the educational level of his or her mother.
• High school dropouts are likely to stay on public assistance longer than those with a degree, and they are more likely to become involved in crime.
• 75% of unemployed adults have reading or writing difficulties. 
• Adults with less than a high school diploma are 58% more likely to be unemployed than high school graduates, and 221% more likely to be unemployed than those with a Bachelor’s degree.
• The cost of educating an adult for one year at Literacy Action is less than $2,000. 
• In 2001, the average annual operating expenditure per inmate in U.S. state prisons was $22,650, and the average annual expenditure per pupil in U.S. public elementary and secondary schools was $7,734.