According to National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (2000), approximately ten million children in the United States have difficulties learning to read. Of that population, from ten to fifteen percent will eventually drop out of high school and only two percent will complete a four-year college program. Further, surveys of teens with criminal records and/ or substance abuse indicate that about half of these students are struggling readers (Lyon, 1998). Nationally, an estimated 80% of Learning Disabled (LD) students have difficulty reading (Foorman, Fletcher, & Frances, 1997). Studies have shown that students with even a mild reading impairment do not read for fun (Sousa, 2004). For these students, “reading requires so much effort that they have little energy left for understanding what they have just read” (NICHD, 2000, Introduction) This pattern of resistance to reading activities can be observed in most special education students.

In April 2000, the National Reading Panel (NRP) released "Teaching Children to Read." The panel determined that effective reading instruction includes teaching children to: break apart and manipulate the sounds in words (phonemic awareness), recognize that sounds are represented by letters of the alphabet which can then be blended together to form words (phonics), practice what they've learned by reading aloud with guidance and feedback (guided oral reading), apply reading comprehension strategies to guide and improve reading comprehension. While their study was not conclusive, they indicated several practices and needs that will impact future studies of technology and literacy. The report repeatedly emphasizes the importance of Phonics in early-stage reading development, but stresses that instruction need not be in isolation from other reading activities. Further, that the practice of Repeated Readings, and Rehearsed Oral Readings were found to have strong impact on developing fluency and comprehension in both emergent and struggling readers. This study noted that there were multiple possibilities to explore the impact of various reading formats, including technology (Schacter, 2003). Directly related to technology in the classroom, the NRP found that many students benefited from the addition of multi-media instruction to conventional instruction, and that the rapidly developing capabilities of computer technology may hold promise and needed further exploration. (NICHD, 2000). This report supports incorporation of both technology and activities that support and reinforce Repeated Readings, Rehearsed Readings, Phoneme and Vocabulary practice.

According to Dr. Barbara Foorman (2004), of the National Research Center on Learning Disabilities, directly teaching decoding and phonological analysis skills is necessary for emergent level readers; however these are not sufficient for successful reading. Students that have basically mastered phonic decoding students need to rapidly increase decoding fluency. Further the practice of Repeated Readings, and Rehearsed Oral Readings were found to have strong impact on developing fluency and comprehension in both emergent and struggling readers. “Students who undertake oral reading guided by teachers, peers or parents showed significant, positive gains in word recognition, fluency and comprehension across a range of grade levels” (NICHD, 2000). Comprehension processes may also need to be directly modeled. Immersion in literacy, and increased engagement also were demonstrated to have a strong impact on a wide variety of readers. Many of these studies made use of alternate reading sources, such as newspaper articles and Internet chat (Foorman, 2004).

One major factor that has been demonstrated to impact reading growth is the amount of time a student spends in reading related activities. Sheer reading volume, how much a child will read in and out of school has a major impact on reading rate, fluency, and academic growth. Studies have shown that people with even just a mild reading impairment do not read for fun (Cunningham & Stanovich, 1998a; Cunningham & Stanovich, 1998b). Special education students can differ dramatically in time spent in reading activity when compared to their regular education counterparts. For this population, time spent in reading activities typically decreases in the middle and high school grades (Cunningham and Stanovich, 1998a). When examining voluntary reading it has been found that there can be a range of from “less than 8000 words read” per year by struggling readers to “over two million words” per year by normally progressing readers (Anderson, Wilson, & Fielding,1988). According to G. Linehardt (1998), teachers need to actively target activities that increase “engaged” or “time on task” activities.

Many studies cite "failure cycles" that reinforce reading failure in middle and secondary struggling reader populations. The inability to rapidly or fluently decode individual words permanently handicaps many readers. If the LD student is struggling to merely decode text, comprehension and construction of meaning are also likely to suffer (Price, Wise, Watson, Patterson, & Frackowiak, 1994; Samuels, Schermer, & Reinking, 1992). Furthermore, without fluency and comprehension, there is no joy in reading and little motivation to read (Sousa, 1998). This contributes to avoidance behaviors.

Anderson, Wilson, and Fielding found that the amount of time spent in reading activities was the best predictor of growth in reading comprehension (1988). Evidence was provided by Leinhardt (1985) who found that the amount of time actually spent in direct reading behaviors predicted the subsequent reading performance of learning disabled students, and that the experimental addition of an extra five minutes of reading per day was associated with an additional gain in grade level equivalent. The problem is that many high school LD students are resistant to many reading activities, hence the “failure cycle” (Sousa, 2004).