learned early in my job as a reading specialist at
a school in south-central Pennsylvania that reading
fluency was far more important than I had first
thought during my training. The school is an independent
school for students in grades K–12 who have
been diagnosed with learning disabilities. In the fall
of 2004, at the start of this study, 55% of our students
were in the Lower Division, grades 1–7, and 45% were
in the Upper Division, grades 8–12. Our students
came from an eight-county area. They had diagnoses
of reading disabilities (52.5%), nonverbal learning
disabilities (21.25%), Asperger’s Syndrome (18.75%),
Attention Deficit Disorders (2.5%), and mixed diagnoses
(5%).