Poetry Quarterly
POETRY NEWS: January 2006

America's Most Literate Cities 2005, a ranking of the 69 largest US cities, reports that Washington DC is the third most literate, behind Seattle and Minneapolis. Now in its third year, the survey examines newspaper circulation, number of bookstores, library resources, periodical publishing, educational attainment, and internet resources for cities with populations above 250,000. The two cities rated lowest are El Paso and Stockton, CA. The other cities in the top 10 are: Atlanta, San Francisco, Denver, Boston, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and St. Paul. The full report can be found at: http://www.ccsu.edu/AMLC/.  This is certainly excellent news. According to the latest available figures from the Department of Education, however, a whopping 37% of District residents rank in the very lowest level of functional literacy (which means they cannot fill out a job application, read to a child, or decipher a dosage of medicine). These two seemingly conflicting facts clearly show how bifurcated our city is. As Elisabeth Liptak, Executive Director of the Washington Literacy Council says, "It is a tale of two cities." For information on how to support the fine work of the Washington Literacy Council (currently serving 180 adult students), or to learn how you can volunteer as a tutor, see http://www.washingtonliteracycouncil.org/.

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