Purpose
To identify children at risk for reading disabilities before they begin formal reading instruction and to provide these children with an intervention that will allow them to remediate their phonological processing deficits; to prevent learning/reading disabilities.

We have been in the process of developing early detection programs and creating appropriate interventions for children at risk for reading difficulties for the past nineteen years. The result of this work has been the Identification and Intervention Program IIP. The purpose of the IIP is simply to identify children who are at risk of becoming reading disabled, also referred to as dyslexic, as soon as it is scientifically possible and then to provide these children with an appropriate remediation that will enable them to become competent readers. At the present time the IIP is being used in several school systems in Southeast Kansas. Our work has been published in the most prestigious scientific journals concerning dyslexia and reading disabilities, has generated request for information concerning the IIP across the nation and internationally, and has been supported by the National Academy of Education. Although we are in a small rural area, the technologies that we are developing can be used anywhere. We are proud of our work and believe that we are helping many children remove the barriers that are preventing them from becoming good readers.

Problem
It has been estimated that approximately 15 to 20% of our nation's children have reading difficulties. These children have the ability to learn to read, but have a specific skill deficit that prevents them from accomplishing this important task. It has been known for several years that the specific skill deficit reading disabled children possess is a deficiency in phonological processing. The IIP was designed to identify and remediate this deficit before it handicaps the at-risk child's ability to learn to read.

Impact
Our program is geared toward the child who finds it very difficult, or who is unable to learn to read even though he or she possesses the intellectual ability to do so. These children are at risk for dropping out of school, parental abuse, poor self-esteem and may eventually find their way into the welfare and criminal justice systems. The future of a child with reading difficulties seems to be fairly bleak in our service-oriented society that requires that each of its members know how to read and to read fairly well. It is estimated that 15-20% of our nation's children suffer reading failure and this percentage is on the increase. Given this large number of students, it is quite likely that a vast human resource is being excluded from deriving the most benefit from our educational system due to reading problems. The vast majority of children with learning disabilities have reading disabilities as their major deficiency. In fact, many children who are considered learning disabled because of other obstacles also have reading difficulties. In addition, as a member of our ever increasingly complex society, a society in which employment requires literacy, a student who does not graduate from high school, and who has poor reading skills is likely to be doomed to extremely poor economic realities. The eventual cost to society for what might be a preventable difficulty is high. It is imperative that we begin using scientifically generated programs to remediate educational problems. We currently assess beginning first graders and provide them with the intervention designed to eliminate the barriers that are preventing them from becoming good readers. We are also working with second and third graders and hope to develop strategies to buttress kindergarten children's skills. The impact of this identification and remediation of phonological processing deficits of children at risk for reading disabilities is far reaching. It may be possible to prevent thousands of children from ever experiencing learning and reading disabilities. Although the prevention of learning and reading disabilities is important in its own right, several social problems mentioned above may also be prevented in the process.

Background
The IIP has been successful in improving the phonological processing skills of children who we know have learning/reading disabilities. Second-, third- and fourth-grade learning disabled children who have used this training program made significant improvements in their phonological processing abilities. We have also developed a battery of tasks that can be used to identify young children at risk for reading disabilities before they begin learning to read. We have had unprecedented and remarkable accuracy in our identification. We have developed a training procedure that has been effective in remediating the deficient phonological processing skills of these children and has significantly improved their reading skills. Our studies have been published or are in press at the most prestigious journals in the area of learning disabilities and have generated interest internationally and will continue to produce results that are of significance to the learning/reading disabilities area.

Definitions
Learning Disability
Most children classified as learning disabled have reading problems as their source of learning disability. Even though children who have other forms of disability as their major learning disability, they most likely will also have some form of reading disability. The vast majority of learning disabled children have reading disabilities.

Phonological Processing
This term describes a cluster of skills all referring to an individual's ability to understand that words contain sounds or phonemes and to be able to use these sounds as linguistic building blocks. Most important for reading is the individual's ability to segment or decode the printed word into its respective sounds, blend those sounds together to form the word so that the individual recognizes the word. Phonological processing ability can be witnessed in most children beginning to learn to read. The beginning reader typically has his or her finger on the printed word (dog) as he or she first segments the word into its sounds (da-o-ga) and then blends them to form the word (dog). As the child continues to practice these skills become strengthened so that for many children the process is nearly automatic.