I present a theoretical basis for the use of critical literacy as an important instructional and ideological approach in the field of special education. Virtually no reading comprehension intervention studies predominantly involving students with learning or other high incidence disabilities use principles or elements of critical literacy. I explicate the theoretical compatibility of, as well as the tensions within, critical approaches to literacy instruction for students with disabilities so as to argue for fundamental changes of the ways in which literacy is defined in special education scholarship and in practice. Through this explication I reveal the dearth of scholarship that combines critical literacy and instruction for students with disabilities and thus the profound need for new possibilities.