Preface: Special Issue on Multidisciplinary Approaches to AI and Education for Reading and Writing

For the past decade, a majority of students in the United States have failed to meet grade level standards for reading and writing.Reports from the National Center for Education Statistics in 2004 through 2013 document that only a small percentage of middle school and high school students meet national standards of proficiency in reading and writing (Persky et al. 2003; Salahu-Din et al. 2008; National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) 2012; Glymph 2010; 2013; Glymph and Burg 2013).To achieve proficiency, students must master multiple kinds of verbal and reasoning skills, and this mastery takes years to develop.Much of this development happens in the years from middle school through college, where reading and writing instruction are secondary to disciplinary instruction.This includes reading and writing in STEM subjects, which receives less attention that more formal STEM skills, but is an important aspect of science education (Norris and Phillips 2003;Yore et al. 2004).Intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) for STEM subjects are being supplemented with