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Arizona is celebrating Adult Literacy Week this week. Here in Pima County, we provide programs in literacy and basic skills instruction, English language classes and high school equivalency instruction to more than 12,000 people a year. There are 1,500 people waiting to get into our programs.

In the past year, more than 500 refugee families from 24 countries settled in Tucson, most of them with no English language skills, and many with no literacy skills in their native language. Most have been or will soon be in our programs, desperate for the basic skills that will aid their survival and the survival of their families.

Thousands of dropouts find their way into our programs every year. About 40 percent (4,800) of the people in our classrooms are young people between the ages of 16 and 24. This should not come as a surprise in a state that has one of the nation's highest dropout rates.

Arizona also has one of the highest incarceration rates in the nation. About half of all inmates have less than a high school education. Adult basic education programs are the last opportunity for many trying to get back on track, and their efforts ultimately benefit us all.

Most of our students are parents of school-age children trying to make sure their children do better than they have. It is often an uphill battle for them, or a battle started too late. Thousands of parents attend classes after working long days at low-wage jobs. Their courage and their determination are quintessential American values. Yet our educational policies repeatedly fail to address the fact that leaving parents behind far too often translates to leaving children behind, too.

One of the questions we asked ourselves last September as we tried to make sense of Hurricane Katrina was how many of the people stuck in the Superdome had high school educations. Our guess is less than half, perhaps far less. The truth is, in every American city there is a significant core of poor, educationally disadvantaged people who literally and figuratively have no place to go.

How significant a core? According to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy, there are 30 million adults in the U.S. challenged by simple literacy tasks. There are as many as 11 million people who cannot read, write or speak English. Yet it seems every day now we read and hear about the growing economic threat of India and China to America and about their respective commitments to education as the sure path to economic dominance. Just 10 percent of their populations with bachelor's degrees would equal the entire population of the U.S., and they are on their way.

America's economic pre-eminence is not a birth-right. In this century, the race to retain that pre-eminence, a fundamental national security issue, will go to the educated. As we celebrate Adult Literacy Week, here is our message from our seat near the window: America can't afford to lose a soul in this race, and there are many more souls than most might think at risk of being lost.