ADOLESCENT LITERACY AND OLDER STUDENTS WITH LEARNING DISABILITIES A Report from the National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilities*

The National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilities (NJCLD) recognizes the importance of addressing critical issues related to adolescent literacy and advocates for effective reading and writing instruction for struggling middle and high school students, especially those with learning disabilities (LD).1 First, it describes the adolescent literacy problem (grades 4 to12), its consequences, and factors that contribute to it. Later sections address guiding principles for assessment, instruction, and professional development, concluding with recommendations for short-term and future consideration. Literacy is a complex set of skills that comprise the interrelated processes of reading and writing required within varied socio-cultural contexts. Reading requires decoding, accurate and fluent word recognition, and comprehension at the word, phrase, sentence, and text levels. Writing requires automatic letter formation and/or keyboarding, accurate and fluent spelling, sentence construction, and the ability to compose a variety of different text structures with coherence and cohesion. 1 Learning disabilities is a general term that refers to a heterogeneous group of disorders manifested by significant difficulties in the acquisition and use of listening, speaking, reading, writing, reasoning, o