Listen, call in, and discuss all things reading!

Join author, father, former special education director, school psychologist, university professor, and applied researcher Dr. Joe Lockavitch every Friday to discover the keys to reading success!

Parents, educators, and anyone struggling with learning and/or improving their overall reading skills, this is the show for you.

Join Dr. Lockavitch and his guest as he discusses current topics in the education field and shares his knowledge and experiences from over thirty years in the education industry! Dr. Lockavitch helps listeners navigate the waters of the education system as they try to help themselves and/or their loved ones truly master the ability to read and  finally succeed.

Be sure to call in! 

Did you know?

8 Million students in grades 4-12 cannot comprehend grade level reading material.

3 Thousand students drop out of school each day.

40 Percent of African-American and Latino students will not graduate on time or with a regular high school diploma.

25 Times the likelihood that non-readers and high school students testing below the twentieth percentile will drop out of school.

Reading failure in our schools is a major issue. There are over 24 million functional illiterates in our society and growing. Every 26 seconds another student drops out of school. Students who can't read are slipping through the cracks right before our eyes. Every day these students are being labeled and put into "special" programs. The gap between failing and succeeding students continues to grow daily. Often, failing students begin acting out in class. Many are prescribed behavior modifying drugs and assigned life long labels such as: ADD, Dyslexic, Learning Disabled or Autistic.

Based on his experiences as a former college professor, school psychologist, special education director, applied researcher, classroom teacher, and author Dr. Joe Lockavitch is eager to discuss the current state of reading with his listeners. Dr. Joe has been in the trenches with non-readers, their families, and their teachers for over thirty years. Also, Dr. Joe has spent over 30 years researching and developing new reading approaches targeting non-readers of all ages. His fast-acting, highly-structured approaches are being used daily with thousands of students of all ages and classification across the nation.

The Reading Show with Dr. Joe is a "must hear" for parents, teachers, administrators and anyone else seeking the real and often surprising truth about the state of teaching reading. This program gives hope and answers to those seeking both the treatment and prevention of this incredibly curable condition.

About Dr. Joe

Dr. Joe Lockavitch has seen it all. Throughout his career, he has given reading demonstrations in places that have ranged from the heart of the Mississippi Delta, inner city schools in Detroit and Chicago, maximum-security prisons in South Carolina, and after school programs in Los Angeles, California. He will only do a demonstration under one condition and make only one claim, "I'll only work with your worst students. If you don't see immediate improvement in their reading ability within 30 minutes, I'll walk out the door"

He hasn't walked out yet...

Now, thanks to The Reading Show with Dr. Joe, you can find out why Dr. Joe hasn't walked yet, and even better, ask him yourself!

Dr. Joe Lockavitch, a former classroom teacher, school psychologist, university professor, special education director and applied researcher, is the author and developer of: The Failure Free Reading Program, Don't Close the Book on Your Not-Yet Readers, Joseph's Readers Talking Software for Non Readers, Verbal Master-An Accelerated Vocabulary Program, and The Test of Lateral Awareness and Directionality.

Dr. Joe is also the author of numerous published research articles. His most recent can be found in the Australian Journal of Learning Disabilities, the Journal of Learning Disabilities, Special Services in the Schools, The Journal of At-Risk Issues and The Florida Reading Quarterly.

A noted speaker who is listed in Outstanding Teachers in Exceptional Education, Who's Who in American Education and Who's Who in the South and Southwest, Dr. Joe has spent the past thirty years training ten of thousands of teachers, parents and administrators across the nation on how to meet the unique needs of students with .

Featured on the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and frequently mentioned on national radio shows such as: Tom Joyner, Dr. Laura, Mike Gallegher and Michael Medvid, Dr. Lockavitch holds a Doctorate of Education from Boston University and a Master of Science in Special Education from Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven, Connecticut.

He is currently the President of Failure Free Reading - an educational publishing and software development firm housed outside of Charlotte, North Carolina. Failure Free Reading has been used by thousands of teachers to serve hundreds of thousand of students in schools across the nation.

In addition, Failure Free Reading in one of the nation's most approved Supplemental Educational Service providers - directly serving over ten thousand students and clocking close to three hundred thousand tutoring hours.

Is Your Child Phonetically Deaf?

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Here is a reading research fact every parent and teacher must burn into their memory bank:

All reading programs work
but not for all students.

More importantly, all reading programs produce failing students. One of these failing students might be your child – especially if your child is special needs and needs more than a conventional reading approach.

For example, did you know that some students are “phonetically deaf”? While there is nothing wrong with their hearing, they just don’t get phonics or “a skills-first approach.” Phonics is simply too complicated. They need a different reading approach.

In my book, The Failure Free Reading Methodology: New Hope for Non-Readers, I explain in great detail what the research has to say about phonetically deaf students. They are not new. These students actually constitute the largest number of students who are currently failing in school.

Sadly, they sit in class not understanding how to rhyme or break words into their individuals sounds or how to put these individual sounds back into meaningful units. They come home in tears or fail to look forward to going to school or their reading class. They start to give up and become a behavior problem or lose confidence in their reading ability. They start to see themselves as losers.

And worse, they are never given the opportunity to demonstrate what they are really capable of doing, namely, to read for meaning – with fluency, expression and comprehension – from a passage or an actual book. Why? Because, their school is under the mistaken belief that they can’t.

How can they possibly read for meaning with fluency and comprehension, if they can’t do the “basics” you are told. And so back they go to be drilled more and more on their weakness – their lack of knowledge of letters sounds. They get older and older and soon they become teenagers sitting in front of computer screens with dancing bears and bunny rabbits.

1. But is knowledge of letters and sounds really the fundamental cornerstone of reading?
2. Is this knowledge absolutely essential to moving forward?
3. More importantly, can students who can’t get phonics, learn to read with meaning and expression?

The answers are: no, no and yes! No. Knowledge of letter sounds is only one of a variety of different ways to learn how to read. No. While important for some reading skills, phonics is not the cornerstone for future reading success. Yes, Yes Yes, Sudents who can’t get phonics, can learn to read with meaning and expression regardless of their special needs.

If you have a phonetically deaf child, let me give you two good pieces of news. First. You are not alone. Researchers are now finding that up to 30% of students in regular education and up to 50% of special needs students don’t get phonics. For example, the Federal Government recently spent billions of dollars, promoting “a phonics-first” reading approach known as Reading First. All students were taught phonics first, using the best scientifically validated reading research methods. So I ask: how did they do in this “phonics is the only way to fly approach?”

The answer: not very well.  Consider the following excerpt taken from Edweek.

“A major federal evaluation of Reading First issued in 2008, for example, found that the program helped more pupils ‘crack the code’ to identify letters and words, but did not have an impact on reading comprehension …“  (Dec. 3, 2008).

Here’s the second piece of information. This research is clear, learning phonics doesn’t seem to transfer to reading comprehension!

Am I anti-phonics? No! But we need to put it in perspective. Phonics is not and never has been a necessary condition to either learning to read aloud or more importantly, learning to read for meaning.

If your child is failing in a phonics first approach, you need to change the approach. There are viable non-phonic, non-flashcard alternatives readily available. It is never too late to help your child reach his/her full potential. There is hope.