Our guiding principles
Our belief is that all youth deserve the opportunities that improved levels of literacy functioning can afford them. Effective treatment of literacy learning problems in our schools will lead to improved individual and family outcomes, greater productivity of disabled readers later in life, and will reduce the adverse psychiatric and general health outcomes associated with illiteracy. If students with disabilities are to be taught the reading skills they need, research is needed to define the underlying causes of their reading failures and to clearly identify the best instructional approaches and combinations of approaches for their effective remediation.
For over 25 years, the LDRP has used rigorous research standards to advance our knowledge of what constitutes successful literacy programming for struggling readers in both elementary and secondary schools, and for beginning readers at significant risk for reading acquisition failure. Drawing from two decades of research involving more than 3000 students, we have identified many of the components that define effective literacy instruction. In addition, the students who are participating in our current intervention programs have achieved the best results we have ever seen in our laboratory classrooms.