Chapter 14: It Could Be Otherwise: Reading Specialist and Social Justice in Reading Education

In this chapter, I want to argue for a different position for reading specialists in the lives of students learning to read and write. Rather than diagnosing and remediating personal struggles, bringing either the student or teacher back into frames of acceptable competence of learning or teaching, reading specialists could be a catalyst for overcoming the injustice of reading education in the United States. Despite a century of reading research and billions of dollars invested annually in reading education, students from low income families (Carnoy & Rothstein, 2013)—confounded by race (Vigor, 2011), immigrant status (Swartz & Stiefel, 2011) and segregated location (Burdkick-Will et al., 2011)—continue to “struggle” with school literacy. Although some schools have made modest improvements (Rowan, 2011), the overall income achievement gap has increased by 40% since the Reagan Administration (Reardon, 2011). This is a social justice issue!