Failure to Learn to Read: Formulating a Policy Problem

THE AUTHOR argues that, over the past two decades, failure to learn to read has been reconceptualized as a problem of disability rather than socioeconomic disadvantage. The high rate at which low-achieving readers are referred to special education classes and the concomitant decline in numbers of eligible students served in compensatory reading programs evidence a shift in how reading problems are perceived at the school level. This changing definition of failure to learn to read is also reflected in a decrease in the number of professional papers on the disadvantaged, and an increase in papers on the topic of disability. As a result of the interaction between the interests of the professional media, the federal government's concern for ensuring equity, and judicial and legislative requirements, disadvantaged students are merely eligible for compensatory education, whereas the learning-disabled are entitled to special education. Funding formulas often provide school boards with fiscal incentives to choose one type of service over another. It is argued that these broader policy decisions have combined to shape a particular configuration of services for low-achieving readers at the school level. Thus, the prevailing definitions of reading failure are embedded in policies that have emerged from a larger social and political context, a context that reading researchers need to be more aware of if low-achieving children are to benefit more fully from advances in professional knowledge.