The National Institute for Literacy promotes national literacy in all its forms—from reading, writing, and speaking proficient English to on-the-job problem solving. The institute conducts research and makes existing scholarly research accessible for the non-specialist.

The institute's website is extremely simple to navigate, and breaks its content down into four sections: adult, adolescence (high school and middle school), childhood, and birth to early childhood.

Let's start in the adolescence section. Focal points for this age include fluency, vocabulary, and text comprehension. So, now you know the major national issues for literacy in roughly grade 7-12. What can you do about it? Try giving the tips for teaching literacy in any classroom (even non-language arts settings) a glance. If you have time on your hands, the most in-depth information available is in What Content-Area Teachers Should Know About Adolescent Literacy. This .pdf file describes decoding, morphology, fluency, vocabulary, text comprehension, reading assessment, writing, motivation, and diverse learners. Each section includes typical age-bracket difficulties and suggestions for addressing the topic at hand in any subject area's classroom.

Childhood covers grades K-3. A .pdf file, Put Reading First: The Research Building Blocks for Teaching Children to Read, covers each area in greater depth. The lessons could easily be applied to teaching any subject, since reading and vocabulary content are applicable to all fields.

Maybe you have a student that you unfortunately cannot invest more time in specifically, and his or her parents are concerned with his or her reading level? Maybe you aren't really sure how to best address students with learning disabilities? If either scenario hits home, try the site's literacy directory. Select the demographic of concern (adult, children, learning disabilities, etc.), enter your zip code and acceptable driving distance, check a learning need, and—voila—you now have a listing of nearby literacy programs.

According to the official site, “The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) is the primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education.”

If you're looking for information on educational trends or teaching strategy analyses, try the NCES Publications and Products Search, or browse publications from the last 90 days to review the latest. If you’re not sure where to begin, try the subject index. Examples of titles available include "Teacher Strategies to Help Fourth-Graders Having Difficulty in Reading: An International Perspective" and "High School Dropout and Completion Rates in the United States: 2007." Statistical projections are also available.

Another option is to look through the surveys and programs section to find your area of interest, and then browse a given project’s products. Of particular interest is the elementary/secondary section, which includes information on national statistics, school to work transitions, high school activities, safety, library use, family involvement in childhood education, rural education, and more.

Quick rundowns, "Fast Facts," of certain topics are also available. These include average reading scale scores, SAT scores, teacher trends, English as a second language, and students with disabilities.

The website also provides a number of relevant tools. Teach high school? Point your students toward the College Navigator to help them begin their college search.

Finally, the Kids' Zone also offers a graph making tool and a fun quiz feature. The quiz includes civics and history options for fourth, eighth, and twelfth grade students. Students can select five through 20 question versions. When they’re done, they can click on the "National Performance Results" icon by each question’s answer to see how their knowledge of the question compared to students around the country.