research on reading remediation

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

First Online: 29 September 2022

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Katherine K. Frankel 2

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In this chapter I argue that the enactment of policies intended to support children’s and youth’s reading over the past six decades has perpetuated a remediation orientation in which educational structures remain largely unchanged and not adequately responsive to the students whom they serve. In each section, I provide an overview of the general policy context and research trends at the time, but with a particular focus on their implications for adolescent readers and the secondary reading programs designed to support them. I argue that a remediation orientation has become increasingly prevalent in secondary contexts, with consequences for adolescents’ literacy learning that have not been fully accounted for in existing policy and research. I conclude by amplifying previous concerns and calls for future policies and related funding initiatives that support a re-mediation orientation to supporting all literacy learners in school. A re-mediation orientation takes seriously the need to (a) understand readers holistically and in light of their strengths as well as challenges in literacy, (b) embrace the complexity of reading, and (c) attend to how readers experience literacy instruction as crucial information to consider as part of policy evaluations.

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Katherine K. Frankel

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Frankel, K.K. (2022). Remedial Reading Programs: Identification, Instruction, and Impacts of a Separate System for Learning. In: Gabriel, R. (eds) How Education Policy Shapes Literacy Instruction. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08510-9_3