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Editor: Eldo W. Bergman, Jr., MD
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The Texas Reading Institute (TRI) is a non-profit educational institute that seeks to maximize the student's ability to read and learn from print.  TRI integrates assessment, intervention, and technology.    The focus of assessment is to measure objectively each factor that promotes or retards reading development.  Intervention includes student instruction to address the factors that are holding back reading, plus parent training, family support, and teacher in-services.  Technology includes talking computers to support reading and writing in content courses. 

The printed word is the major repository for information.  Reading is the most efficient access route to print.  Print is the principal source for growth in background knowledge, vocabulary, and understanding of language structure.  In turn, these three are major determinants of comprehension. 

Students who read below grade level in first grade are at very high risk of severe reading impairment in grade four (88%) and grade nine (74%).   In addition, students who read below grade level in first grade fall almost a year behind in oral language comprehension by fourth grade.  Thus, the "print impaired" first grader is well on his way to being a "print and listening" impaired fourth grader:   he doesn't learn well from print, and he is less proficient than he once was at learning from listening.  Students know when they are not learning as easily and as well as their classmates, but they don't know why.  For many, the confusion about their plight profoundly effects their self-esteem, mood, motivation, and attention.

Dr. Bergman believes that these acquired deficits -- these "Matthew effects" -- are powerful contributors to the observed failure of most remedial programs to bring the poor reader up to grade level.  He believes the 20% or more of Americans going through school without fair access to the printed curriculum results in incalculable loss of human potential.  He believes this loss is preventable.  His beliefs are based on his personal experience.

Dr. Bergman is a child neurologist and father of five, including two boys who formerly had serious reading problems.  In 1986, finding little hope in the literature that the older son would learn to read at grade level any time soon, he developed a talking-computer support system.  The purpose of the system was a) to avoid the loss of self-esteem, vocabulary, and comprehension skills that are associated with reading impairment, and b) to buy time until ongoing reading intervention could develop reading skills. 

The talking computer system read his son's textbooks aloud, while displaying the text on the computer screen.  In this way the system provided a way for his son to have independent access to his science, history, and literature books, as well as support for note taking and writing.  As his principal stated in a 1989 television interview, " This can help children we have never been able to help before.  I don't know how many there are, but they are real and they are out there. " The interview ends with the sixth grader saying, " This allows me to work by myself -- not to be dependent on everybody else.   And that makes me feel good. "

In 1987 the system was used in a doctoral dissertation study in a university learning lab and subsequently in two public school districts. The results were noted by a national computer company and featured in several prominent magazines (for example, TIME magazine, December 11, 1989).  Later the work earned Dr. Bergman the Jefferson Award for Public Service (Washington, DC, 1991), the Innovative Practices Award from the Texas Education Agency and the Texas Learning Disabilities Association (Austin, TX, 1991), and the Mayor's Award for Public Service (Houston, TX, 1992).

In 1995 Dr. Bergman made a formal request to his school district -- the fifth largest in the country -- to form a committee of experts to review all aspects of reading services in the district, including assessment, remediation, and support services for persistent reading problems.  This became the PEER Committee on Reading.  He served on that committee and on the Persistent Reading Disabilities sub-committee, whose report is available on line.

For a independent review by a Houston investigative reporter, see "Why Johnny Might Someday Be Able to Read," by Shaila Dewan, Houston Press, May 14, 1998.  For this report the National Association of Secondary School Principals awarded Ms. Dewan a 1998 Benjamin Fine Award for Outstanding Education Reporting.