Teaching students with moderate and severe intellectual disability who are early readers or nonreaders to engage with grade-level text is challenging. For this reason, purposeful thought must be given to promoting text accessibility and teaching text comprehension. Whenever possible, text should be used as it is originally written without…

The theme for the 62nd annual conference of the Association of Literacy Educators and Researchers was Educating for a Just Society. Connie Briggs, previous Program Chair, reminded us that, "Education has always been the foundation of a democratic nation. It is important that our students understand the principles upon which our nation was…

This paper analyzes the influence of three different learning paradigms for learning literacy--formalist, cognitive-processing, and literacy practices--on the implementation of the Common Core State Standards. It argues that the Common Core State Standards are based largely on a formalist paradigm as evident in the emphasis on teaching text…