Introduction

Professional educators and the public at large have long known that reading is an enabling skill that traverses academic disciplines and translates into meaningful personal, social, and economic outcomes for individuals. It is common knowledge that reading is the fulcrum of academics, the pivotal ability that stabilizes and leverages children’s opportunities to learn and to become reflective, independent learners. Despite society’s long recognition of the importance of successful reading, only recently have we begun to understand the profound and enduring consequences of not learning to read and the new-found evidence of the critical and abbreviated period in which we have to alter reading trajectories (California Department of Education, 1995; Juel, 1988; Lyon & Chhabra, 1996).