Students with Reading Difficulties
The federal government provides guidelines for the instruction of students with learning disabilities in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The law provides procedures for diagnosing, planning programs for, and monitoring progress of students with disabilities. Under the law, a student with a diagnosed disability must have an Individualized Education Program, which may require reading instruction and assessments to be adapted to address the student’s specific learning needs.
Diagnostic Testing
The 2004 reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) allows states to use part of their special education funds to provide coordinated intervention services for students at risk of reading failure. The Response to Intervention (RtI) framework, which includes components for screening, progress monitoring, and tiered intervention, has emerged as states’ primary approach to identify students with disabilities and provide assistance calibrated to each student’s level of reading difficulty.70 Although implementation of the framework varies significantly, all states implement some form of RtI for students with reading disabilities.71
Instruction for Children with Reading Difficulties
The reading skills children develop—especially those needed by young children such as oral language development, decoding, and word recognition—build upon one another. Therefore, relative to their peers, students who struggle to develop requisite reading skills are at a disadvantage as they progress through school and enter post-secondary education or the workforce. Interventions targeted toward struggling readers vary depending on students’ level of need and reading proficiency. Some interventions make use of instructional technology to provide supplemental instruction and practice, whereas other more rigorous interventions pull students out of their classrooms for small group or individual instruction with a reading specialist or coach.72