| |
CCSU President Jack Miller’s
national survey—“America’s Most Literate Cities 2006”—was announced in the
national newspaper USA Today. The study measures a key component in
America’s social health by ranking the culture and resources for reading in
America’s 70 largest cities. “America’s Most Literate Cities 2006”
identified the top 10 cites in this order: Seattle; Minneapolis; Atlanta and
Washington, DC, tied for third place; St. Paul; Pittsburgh; Cincinnati;
Denver; San Francisco; and Portland, Ore. They emerged at the top of the
national study, which develops a statistical profile of cities with
populations of 250,000 or more. This is AMLC’s fourth year, and it is
available online at: http://www.ccsu.edu/AMLC06.
Miller also explored the possibility of a correlation
between the rankings for literacy and political affiliation. This year,
after gathering voting data from the 2004 presidential election, Miller
discovered significant correlations between political affiliation and the
AMLC’s overall ranking and rankings in the subcategories. Cities that voted
heavily for U.S. Sen. John Kerry generally ranked higher in the AMLC
(overall and in five of the six categories) than those cities that voted
heavily for President George W. Bush. The differences were very significant
in the overall category: the cities voting for Kerry ranked on average at
No. 27 in the survey; the Bush cities ranked on average at No. 51. And the
top 10 most literate cities all favored Kerry by sizable margins.
The survey has attracted significant national media
attention, with reports in papers from across the country, in Internet blogs,
and in news broadcasts on TV and radio.
|
