Critical Reading Beyond Tests | How Dyslexics Read the World Differently

Critical reading and higher education demand reckoning with how we measure what students actually understand. Russell Van Brocklen exposes a fundamental flaw: standardized tests capture decoding speed, not the textual complexity and interpretive depth that dyslexic readers often excel at. When institutions design assessment systems that privilege one cognitive route, they don't just misdiagnose struggling readers—they erase entire ways of knowing. We explore why this matters for literacy, learning difference, and the power to define what counts as "good reading" in schools and beyond.

Reading the World | قراءة العالم
A bilingual podcast (English and Arabic) exploring world literature, culture, and higher education as ways of understanding how meaning is produced, circulated, and contested.

Each episode takes one question at a time—carefully, clearly, and without oversimplification.

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Transcript

This transcript has been edited for clarity, conciseness, and readability while preserving the substance, sequence, and meaning of the original conversation.

Opening

Ali Alhajji:
A student can read slowly, spell imperfectly, hesitate aloud, and still arrive at meaning with precision: understanding what the text says, what it implies, what it hides, and what it asks the reader to accept.

So here is the question I want to hold steady today: when institutions say they are measuring “reading,” are they measuring comprehension and interpretation, or are they measuring performance on one preferred route to the text?

Welcome to Reading the World. Each episode takes one concept carefully, without rushing past its consequences, because how we define a thing often determines who becomes visible within it and who does not.

Today’s question is simple to say and difficult to answer: How do assessment regimes define what counts as reading? And what becomes invisible when we treat one cognitive pathway, and one kind of performance, as the only legitimate way to be a reader?

I’m joined by Russell Van Brocklen, the Dyslexia Professor. Dyslexia may affect as many as 15 to 20 percent of learners, yet many families still hear “wait and see.” Russell’s work challenges that delay by translating structured-literacy approaches into practical steps families can use immediately, so progress is not only something promised at the next report card but something made thinkable now.

Russell, welcome to Reading the World.

Russell Van Brocklen:
Thanks for having me.

What Reading Tests Mistake for Reading

Ali:
We are going to move between research, lived experience, and institutional language, but we will try to keep our categories clear: what research tends to suggest, what experience can illustrate, and what we are arguing about systems that define reading through measurement.

Let’s begin with the most basic question. In one minute: what do most reading tests mistake for reading?

Russell:
The biggest problem with many reading tests is that they are designed for most readers—general education students. They often focus on the part of reading that works well for those students, especially rapid decoding and fluency.

But dyslexic readers often process differently. In dyslexia research, including work discussed by Sally Shaywitz in Overcoming Dyslexia, we see that dyslexic readers may show less activity in posterior regions associated with automatic word recognition, while relying more heavily on frontal systems involved in word analysis and articulation.

So when we test reading only through speed, fluency, and conventional decoding, we may be testing one pathway rather than reading itself.

For dyslexic students, we need to focus on how the student actually learns. That often means beginning with the student’s area of strong interest, moving from the specific to the general, and using writing as a measurable way to organize thought.

For example, rather than asking a broad question like, “What effect did Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech have on the Civil Rights Movement?” I might begin with something more specific: “What personally compelled King to give that speech?” That kind of specific question can create a pathway into analysis. One answer leads to another question, and gradually the student organizes meaning.

A Case Example: Reading Through Interest and Repetition

Russell:
One of my most successful cases was a student named Casey. She was ten years old, in fifth grade, and reading at about a second-grade level. She was extremely interested in Theodore Roosevelt, so I assigned her The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, a long biography written at a much higher reading level.

She used a process involving the audiobook, the printed book, and a specific question. She listened while following along in the text, always trying to answer a focused question, such as: “What did Theodore Roosevelt want to do?”

Every time she came to a word she did not know, she typed the word, looked it up in Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, selected the definition that made sense, typed it out, and returned to the text. She repeated this process again and again.

It took a long time—hours of work across months—but eventually she knew the vocabulary and could read the book deeply. By the time she finished, she had made enormous progress. The important point is that her progress came through interest, repetition, structure, and a pathway that matched how she learned.

Ali:
That is a strong example. Let’s move now to the metaphor from your written response. You suggested that the system measures traffic on one highway and calls that “reading,” even when some readers arrive by a different route. Explain that metaphor for a general listener. What is the destination, and what is the route?

The Route and the Destination

Russell:
The destination is understanding: comprehension, analysis, interpretation, and the ability to use what has been read.

The route is the method by which a reader gets there. For many students, the route is rapid, automatic decoding. But for dyslexic readers, the route may involve more conscious analysis, more articulation, and more effortful organization of words and meaning.

I experienced this in law school. I read more slowly and wrote more slowly than many of my classmates, but when it came to analyzing legal language and identifying the structure of an argument, I could process very quickly. In law, you are constantly asking: What is the conflict? What is the policy issue? How is the language being used? Where is the trick in the wording?

For me, that was word analysis followed by articulation. I was slower on the surface, but once I understood the structure, I could analyze the issue very rapidly.

This is why I say that dyslexic readers may arrive by a different route. The route may not look like conventional fluency, but it can still lead to sophisticated understanding.

Dyslexia, ADHD, and Organization

Ali:
Some of the characteristics you describe—fast thinking, disorganization, intense interest—also resemble ADHD or ADD. What is the difference between these categories?

Russell:
There is overlap, but they are not the same. A simple distinction I often use is this: both dyslexic and ADHD students may say they have ideas flying around their heads at high speed with little organization.

But when I ask dyslexic students to put their fingers on the keyboard, many describe a specific problem: the idea is in their head, then the moment they try to write it, the idea disappears. ADHD students may struggle with organization, attention, or consistency, but dyslexia is often more directly tied to reading and writing.

The solutions can overlap. Both groups may benefit from structure, interest-based work, and moving from specific points toward broader understanding. But dyslexic students often require much more repetition to make the process automatic.

Surface and Depth in Reading

Ali:
I want to bring in the humanities explicitly here, because Reading the World treats reading as an interpretive practice, not merely a technical skill.

In your response, you connect dyslexia to Wayne Booth’s distinction between surface markers and actual reliability. A narrator may speak hesitantly, contradict themselves on small details, or use broken syntax, and still be reliable in their account. You suggest that the same distinction applies to readers.

Explain that connection in plain language. What is the “surface” of reading performance, and what is the “depth”? Where do assessment systems confuse one for the other?

Russell:
The surface is what is immediately visible: speed, fluency, spelling, pronunciation, handwriting, and oral performance. The depth is comprehension, analysis, interpretation, and the ability to apply what has been read.

Assessment systems often confuse surface with depth. They treat a reader who is slow, hesitant, or inaccurate on the surface as though the reader lacks deeper understanding.

Let me give an example. I often use John W. Dower’s essay in Postwar Japan as History, a text used with advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students. It is dense, but the individual sentences are not necessarily impossible. The difficulty is that the paragraph contains many ideas at once. Readers have to hold those ideas together, identify relationships, and build a larger picture.

When I have presented this kind of text to experienced reading teachers, many struggle with the density. Dyslexic readers, once properly trained, may approach this differently. They may move from specific points to general understanding, ask questions, analyze key terms, and then articulate the larger structure.

That is depth. It is not simply whether the words were read quickly. It is whether the reader can understand, question, organize, and use the text.

Ali:
A skeptic might say: decoding is foundational. If the surface is unstable, depth must suffer. What is your response, without denying that decoding matters?

Russell:
Decoding does matter. I am not saying it does not. But decoding is not the whole of reading. A reader can have difficulty with fluency or speed and still have strong comprehension, interpretation, and analysis.

The problem is when the system treats decoding as the full definition of reading. It should be one part of the picture, not the entire picture.

Policy: Building the Second Road

Ali:
Let’s talk policy. In your written response, you were intentionally forceful. You criticized remediation-as-default and argued that we should “build the second road into the system.”

I want the most defensible version of that argument. If institutions genuinely accepted cognitive diversity as normal, not exceptional, what concrete changes would follow in assessment and instruction?

Russell:
The first change is that we would stop assuming that every student must use the same pathway. We would look at the student’s strengths and build from there.

I often explain this through sports. Suppose your future depended on basketball, but your body was not built for basketball. Even if we gave you the best coach and the best equipment, you still might not compete successfully against someone naturally suited to the sport. That does not mean you lack ability in general. It means the system tied your future to one narrow performance.

Something similar happens in reading. If the student’s difficulty is with the pathway being tested, then simply forcing more of the same pathway may not solve the problem. We should build instruction around the student’s strengths, interests, and cognitive profile.

For dyslexic students, that may mean structured work from the specific to the general, word analysis followed by articulation, use of technology, repeated engagement, and texts tied to meaningful areas of interest.

I have seen students make major gains when instruction is aligned with how they process. One student, Reed, was in fifth grade and testing very low in reading and writing. His mother worked with him using his strong interest in Wolverine from X-Men. With focused instruction, he made significant gains in reading, writing, and grammar.

The point is not that every student follows the same path. The point is that the path must be built from how the student actually learns.

Does Multiple Routes Mean Lower Standards?

Ali:
What would a thoughtful critic say—especially someone worried that “multiple routes” becomes “lower standards”? How do you answer in a way that protects rigor while refusing a narrow definition of who counts as a reader?

Russell:
My answer is that this is not about lowering standards. In many cases, I ask students to do more demanding work, not less.

For example, I use long and complex texts such as Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination. I may work with a student on a difficult text for a long time, sometimes years. The goal is not to make the task easier. The goal is to teach the student how to analyze words, build meaning, and articulate understanding.

When a student can identify what adults missed in a text, explain it clearly, and apply that understanding, that is rigor. It may not look like a standard reading worksheet, but it is not a lower standard. It is a different route to a demanding intellectual outcome.

We should not confuse accessibility with lowered expectations. A better system would preserve rigor while allowing more than one legitimate route to meaning.

When Assessment Becomes Enforcement

Ali:
Let’s return to the core question. At what point does an assessment system stop describing reading ability and start enforcing a narrow cognitive norm?

Russell:
It happens when the test claims to measure reading but only measures one narrow part of reading. If a test measures speed or surface decoding and then treats that as the whole of reading ability, it is no longer simply describing. It is defining.

A deeper understanding of reading has to include application. It is one thing to repeat information on a test; it is another thing to apply what you have learned. In law school, for example, the real work is not just reading words. It is analyzing conflict, policy, structure, and implication.

Some readers may score well on conventional reading tests but struggle to apply what they read. Others may read slowly but analyze deeply. That is why we need to distinguish between surface performance and meaningful understanding.

Dyslexic readers often work by moving from specific details toward a larger picture. Once they are trained to do that well, they can become very strong analytical readers. But if the assessment only measures speed and fluency, that strength may remain invisible.

Closing

Ali:
What I am taking from this is not that reading is anything we want. It is something sharper and more demanding: reading is plural, and institutions often mistake one route for the destination.

Russell Van Brocklen, thank you for joining Reading the World.

For listeners, if this episode gave you a new lens, share it with someone who thinks reading is only speed and accuracy. The question is not whether readers can arrive at meaning. The question is whether we are willing to recognize their route—and what we do to them when we refuse.