Examining Reading Difficulty and Reading Disability in Racially and Socioeconomically Diverse Student Populations

h i s special thematic issue addresses the intersection of race, socioeconomic class, and disability for students who are vulnerable to experiencing T difficulty in school. This collection is one of three inspired by the 18th biannual symposium of the Extraordinary Brain Series (Terry et al., 2022a, 2022b). Sponsored by The Dyslexia Foundation, this interdisciplinary meeting of researchers and educators has convened for more than 20 years to discuss new discoveries related to the identification and treatment of dyslexia and related reading difficulties. However, the 2020 symposium, titledDyslexia in Vulnerable Student Populations: Leading for Change, was canceled due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, just as the nation’s awareness of racial disparities and injustices was rising. As a global society, we are only just beginning to understand the immediate and long-term impacts of the events of the last 2 years on our children. In the United States, students have experienced disruptions to typical schooling since March 2020, and emerging data indicate that their experiences varied widely (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2022; Office for Civil Rights, 2021). In general, it appears disparities that were present before the pandemic only exacerbated, as students who