David A. Kilpatrick - Reading Development and Difficulties: Bridging the Gap Between Research and Practice

Reading is foundational, now more than ever. Learning to read opens the door to exciting new worlds, both real and imaginary, and provides the necessary skills to advance ones knowledge and skills in the literate arts, math, social studies, science, and other domains in primary and secondary school and continued educational and training opportunities as an adult. Literacy, particularly reading skills, also provides access to and facilitates meaningful and sustained engagement with critical societal systems and infrastructures such as health care, education for individuals and their dependents, and broader civic engagement (Kutner, Greenberg, Jin, & Paulsen, 2006; OECD, 2016; US Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2013). In our technology-infused environments, reading enables a critical means of staying in touch with friends and family via texting and social media, access to virtually unlimited content on the Internet, and the ability to accomplish simple everyday tasks such as navigating through space via GPS-enabled maps. Reading and access to print-related media is a necessity in todays society.

Despite the critical importance of reading as a vehicle for learning in literate societies, too many children and adults do not possess basic reading skills necessary to function fully in todays society (e.g., NCES, 2018; OECD, 2016). The corresponding challenge is particularly salient for individuals from historically underrepresented and underserved groups (e.g., NCES, 2018). Such individuals may lack adequate oral language skills in English or their home language at school entry (Fernald, Marchman, & Weisleder, 2013; Garcia, 2015; Hart & Risley, 2003), experience higher rates of poverty, and have reduced access to high quality, evidence-based reading instruction in primary or secondary grades. Addressing the needs of individuals with learning disabilities as well as those who display similar difficulties, who are found across the full range of social and ethnic strata, necessitates incorporating system-wide approaches such as universal screening for oral language and reading difficulties. For example, screening tools are needed that are sensitive to the needs of an increasingly diverse student population with varying degrees of oral and reading proficiency in their home language and the language of instruction, and for those who speak non-standard dialects (Gilbert, Compton, & Fuchs, 2012; Jenkins, Hudson, & Johnson, 2007; Washington & Craig, 2004; Washington & Lee James, 2019). The value of access to evidence-based early intervention services of appropriate intensity and duration is paramount, especially for English learners, language minority students, and dialect speakers (Hall, Steinle, & Vaughn, 2019; Washington, Branum-Martin, Lee-James, & Sun, 2019).