Potentials : a program for improving the reading of adolescents with learning disabilities

Our society requires literacy for a successful lifestyle. Students who fail to become literate often lack decoding skills. Much attention is given to this deficiency in early school experiences, and rightly so; a student who receives a good foundation in this area in the early grades requires decreasing attention to decoding as the years pass. However, secondary students who remain behind their peers in reading often receive instruction in comprehension strategies rather than in decoding skills. Apparently, educators assume that these students have reached the limits of their ability. They view the student's reading level at this point as the probable ceiling of achievement that will continue into adulthood.
The Audio-Visual-Tactile program (Potentials) makes no such assumption. Anecdotal evidence gathered for the past three decades has demonstrated repeatedly that students with learning disabilities in high school with skills even as low as preprimer, can achieve much higher levels of reading through individual instruction in Potentials. However, this evidence has not been tested empirically. I designed this study to determine if Potentials instruction can improve reading achievement in adolescents with a learning disability when compared with a high-interest, low vocabulary reading program.