Remedial Programs in Relation to Basic Programs of Reading

Abstract

basic reading program, indeed the entire school program, may be impaired. Likewise any kind of provision for remedial reading--the establishment of a reading clinic, part-time service by the principal in working with individual pupils, the assumption of responsibility for remediation by the regular classroom teacher-has its effect on the developmental program of reading. For this reason remedial measures need to be chosen with due consideration to the entire curriculum and the ultimate good of all the pupils. This article, through an analysis of the characteristics of eighty-three pupils who were refe red to the reading department either by principals or by the Psychological Clinic' of the Detroit public schools, attempts to throw some light on a few aspects of the problem of emedial procedure in large city school systems. This analyis, which was made in the autumn of 1943, was concerned entirely with pupils in the middle grades. The pupils represented forty-one elementary schools, approximately a fifth of those in the city. Sixty-nine of the subjects were boys, and fourteen were girls. Such a large proportion of boys is not unusual in surveys of remedialreading cases. The aid of three experienced teachers was enlisted in determining the types of pupils who were experiencing failure. One of these teachers spent