The Reading-Disabled Child: Constructed at the Intersection of Race, Class, and Reading Pedagogy; 1975 - 2004

• In Event: AERA Research in Progress Roundtable Session Three
  In Invited Roundtable: Research-in-Progress RT072 (Friday)

Abstract

This dissertation critically historicizes the federal category of Specific Learning Disability (SLD) from its codification in the 1975 Education for All Handicapped Children Act through the 2004 reauthorization of IDEA. Rather than a stable diagnosis, SLD is examined as a construct shaped by shifting legal definitions, assessments, and instructional ideologies that encoded racial, linguistic, and class assumptions about reading. The dissertation argues that the “reading-disabled child” has deflected attention from systemic failures in literacy instruction, locating disability within individuals rather than inequitable structures. Using historical and policy analysis of congressional archives, agency guidance, and demonstration projects, the study situates SLD within broader systems of stratification and calls for models of literacy as a civil right.

Author

• Deborah Lynam, Rutgers University - Camden