Some children experience more difficulty than others becoming literate, often at great emotional, intellectual, social, and economic cost to themselves, but also to those who love and care for them, and for society at large. The causes of those difficulties and what to do about them have been the source of much research and sometimes heated disagreement among researchers and educators--disagreements that, in one form or another, go back well over a century. The current focus of this attention (from the media, some researchers, parents, and politicians) is on the construct dyslexia--a term used (mostly) to describe serious difficulty with the word reading aspect of the reading process. Currently, there is a well-organized and active contingent of concerned parents and educators (and others) who argue that dyslexia is a frequent cause of reading difficulties, affecting approximately 20% of the population, and that there is a widely accepted treatment for such difficulties: an instructional approach relying almost exclusively on intensive phonics instruction. Because the dyslexia and instructional arguments are inextricably linked, in this report, the authors explore both while adopting a more comprehensive perspective on relevant theory and research. [The content of this article was presented as a plenary session at the 2020 Literacy Research Association Conference.]