Preventive and Remedial Interventions for Children with Severe Reading Disabilities.

This article reports on a program of research which is designed to generate new knowledge about the relative effectiveness of different approaches to the prevention and remediation of reading disabilities in children. We have focused on children withreading disabilities because this is by far the mostcommon kind oflearning disability affecting children's progress in school (Moats, 1995). Wehave further focused our research on children whose primary problem in learning to read (or who are at risk for this problem) involves difficulties acquiring accurate and fluent word reading skills. We focused on this problem not only because it is the most common form of reading disability among children and adults (Morrison, 1991; Perfetti, 1985; Siegel, 1993), but also because we are able to accurately predict which children will develop this problem in early elementary school (Torgesen, Burgess, & Rashotte, 1996).