Tales of a fourth-grade nothingburger: a critical inquiry into deficit-framed research.

This article critically examines the pervasive use of the statistic that deaf high school graduates read at approximately a fourth-grade level, focusing on 14 research articles published between 2013 and 2023 in the Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education (JDSDE). The authors found that most studies frame deaf students' reading abilities within a deficit or "normalcy" model that compares them unfavorably to hearing peers, often advocating for spoken language and hearing technologies as solutions, while rarely challenging the validity or implications of such comparisons. Few articles adopt culturally responsive or diversity-focused frameworks, and none critically question the appropriateness of hearing-based norms or the methodologies underpinning the fourth-grade reading level claim. The article calls for future research that embraces critical, multilingual, and community-centered approaches, includes deaf scholars, and moves beyond deficit-based paradigms to better reflect the linguistic and cultural diversity of deaf learners.