This chapter documents the success of a 12-month individualized structured language curriculum (LANGUAGE!) provided to middle
and high school juvenile offenders (n=45; 43 males; 2 females) enrolled in a rehabilitation program. Although individual students
participated in the program for an average of just 22.7 weeks (SD 8.51), they made significant gains (more than three years
growth) over this period in written language expression (composition), encoding (spelling), and decoding (isolated word recognition),
as documented by standardized literacy measures, moving from standard scores in the 60s and 70s to the 80s and 90s. Gains
on the Gray Oral Reading Test (GORT III) were consistent with these measures and well exceeded gains made by a comparison
group (n=51; 48 males, 3 females) which included students attending similar rehabilitation programs for a comparable period
of time, but these students were not offered the individualized LANGUAGE! curriculum. Details of the LANGUAGE! curriculum
and the basis of its success are discussed.