Scholastic's Read 180 Instructional Program

Scholastic's Read 180 instructional program was developed in order to assist struggling readers. According to the program's homepage, the program was created in response to the Carnegie Corporation and Alliance for Excellent Education report which stated that "approximately 8 million young people between fourth and twelfth grade struggle to read at grade level." Further, nearly seventy percent of older readers require "some form of remediation.

Further more, according to a National Assessment of Educational Progress Report, thirty-seven percent of fourth graders are reading below basic levels and that the general reading problem affects students in "almost every social, cultural, and ethnic group." This lack of reading skills leads to "serious disadvantages in social settings, as civil participants, and in the working world." Thus, the 180 Read program was created as reading intervention program that aims to "directly address individual needs through adaptive and instructional software, high-interest literature, and direct instruction in reading skills." However, the question is whether Read 180 is able to effectively accomplish these above stated goals for the population of low level reading students with special needs? According to the Scholastic website promoting Read 180, the answer is yes, Read 180 does benefit low-level reading students with special needs.

Specifically, according to the site, over six million special needs students are currently enrolled in special education programs in the United States. However, forty percent, or 2.4 million of these students are enrolled in special education programs for the sole reason that they have not learned to read. According to Scholastic, "Read 180 is proven effective in accelerating reading achievement for all students- including those in Special Education." Read 180 takes an approach to special needs students that focus on providing multi-functional support.

These support systems include universal access provisions, multi-model approaches, individualized software and reports, pre-teaching methods in order to improve understanding, instructional routines that promote active participation of special education students, and an instructional model that sets a routine and repetitive structure for learning. The question thus becomes whether this approach actually works for students with special needs? Although Scholastic argues that there is data that.