Remedial Reading Programs: Identification, Instruction, and Impacts of a Separate System for Learning

Literacy Intervention in Secondary Schools Exploring Educators’ Beliefs and Practices about Supporting Adolescents’ Literacy Learning

“…It marks a shift from approaches described in the literature and in policy discussions about literacy intervention, where particular programs or methods are framed as “silver bullets” consisting of isolated and decontextualized instruction outside of students’ disciplinary classrooms. False narratives such as these “medical models” are rooted in a long history of orienting to intervention as remediation (Frankel, 2022). Moreover, this remedial orientation reflects an autonomous, skills-focused view of literacy informed by White, middle-class, and English-dominant norms for literacy (Willis, 2019).…”

“…This distinction in how the concept of intervention has been understood and operationalized in disparate ways is consequential to our definition of literacy intervention. We use the term intervention strategically in this article to speak back to historical and ongoing deficit-focused perspectives about adolescents and their literacies that have been perpetuated over time by autonomous, skills-focused approaches to intervention as remediation (Frankel, 2022). Such deficit-focused perspectives are tied to broader historical trends in reading research and policy, particularly as they relate to special education legislation for students with learning disabilities, which contribute to ongoing racial inequities by systematically foregrounding White, middle-class, and English-dominant norms for literacy that are rooted in White supremacist ideologies (Willis, 2019).…”