From the perspective of the field of adult literacy, the year 1999 is best seen not as the penultimate year of the millennium but as the year bookended by the reauthorization of the National Literacy Act in late 1998 and the National Literacy Summit of early 2000. Both of those events represent a huge milestone, and 1999 may be regarded as the time when people in the field were preoccupied by reacting to the former and preparing for the latter. The new Adult Education and Family Literacy Act, which was technically Title II of the Workforce Investment Act, mandated controversial new student performance measures for all federally funded programs and required all states to rewrite their adult education plans. The performance measures focused on job readiness rather than more holistic concerns, a fact that continues to outrage many people in the field. Given this context, the National Literacy Summit, planned for years as a means to develop a consensus about how best to move the field forward, also came to be regarded as an opportunity for adult educators to respond to Washington and tell the politicians and bureaucrats how to get it right. It remains to be seen if the powers that be will heed the manifesto. There were also a number of relatively routine but nevertheless significant developments in 1999, and that is where this overview begins. Federal funding for adult literacy-related programs is covered first, then developments in policy, then research activities, and, finally, events such as the National Literacy Summit and the Summit on Twenty-First Century Skills for Twenty-First Century Jobs hosted by Vice President Al Gore. (Contains 1 note.) [Chapter 1 in: Annual Review of Adult Learning and Literacy. Volume 2; copublished with Jossey-Bass, Inc.; see ED457341.]