Over the past 50 years, our schools have failed to teach a large portion (one-third) of students to read at a basic level by the end of fourth grade. After presenting evidence of this reading education problem and overviewing historical attempts to address it, I argue that serious, one-to-one tutoring initiatives offer the best chance for…

This article asserts that a carefully administered informal reading inventory (IRI) provides important information on low-achieving readers that is "not" provided by an end-of-grade standardized reading test. Using case studies of students' IRI performance, we address the concept of instructional level and the necessity of teaching low…

Recent media reports suggest that teachers and teacher educators are using the three-cueing system model to justify an overemphasis on context to help students read unfamiliar words. In this conceptual article, the authors argue that although these critiques are exaggerated, the current climate provides an opportunity for teacher educators to…

The authors examined the dimensions of reading engagement for rural ninth-grade students who participated in a supplemental literacy intervention for students who struggled with school-based reading. Using a comparative case study approach, researchers investigated the ways in which engagement was characterized and undermined within the context of…

Studies that specifically test the effectiveness of instructional procedures for improving the writing of young African American males who experience difficulty learning to write are almost nonexistent. Although writing intervention studies include these children, researchers rarely disaggregate their data to determine whether the writing…