That idea is comforting. It is also wrong.

Dyslexia is not a visual disorder. It is a language‑based learning disability rooted in how the brain processes speech sounds and connects them to print. People with dyslexia struggle with foundational skills such as phonics and with reading fluency not because letters look confusing, but because written language does not come automatically.

For decades, peer‑reviewed research has whether fonts can meaningfully improve reading for people with dyslexia, and it is clear that . Studies comparing so‑called dyslexia fonts with standard typefaces such as Times New Roman, Arial or Calibri show no reliable gains in accuracy, speed or comprehension. In some cases, unfamiliar fonts even slow readers down.

This does not mean presentation is irrelevant. Reasonable font size, spacing and contrast can make text more comfortable to read and reduce visual fatigue. But these benefits apply to everyone. They do not address the core difficulties that define dyslexia, and they should not be mistaken for evidence‑based solutions.

So why does the font narrative keep resurfacing?

Because it offers a visible, low‑cost response to a complex, invisible problem. It is a form of performative accessibility — easy to announce, easy to implement and easy to celebrate — while leaving the real barriers intact. Changing a font is simple. Teaching children to read using systematic, explicit instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics is not. Providing early screening, trained teachers and assistive technologies like audiobooks and text‑to‑speech requires time, money and political will.

Accommodations that actually help people with dyslexia, such as audiobooks, computer apps that read documents aloud and write by listening to students speak, or extended time are often necessary to help students stay engaged with grade-level content while they are learning. They preserve access and dignity in the classroom by providing students with the opportunity to show what they know without struggling.

Children with dyslexia also need explicit, systematic instruction to learn to read and write independently. When accommodations like those above replace teaching rather than support it, students are denied the very skills that would allow them to access text on their own. Genuine accessibility means providing both: access to content now, and the instruction needed for independence later. These are not cosmetic changes. They are structural ones.

New York offers a telling contrast. Last year, Gov. Kathy Hochul signed creating a Dyslexia and Dysgraphia Center in the state Department of Education. The center will share best practices by setting standards for dyslexia screening in elementary schools, define evidence-based instruction, set expectations around teacher preparation and professional development related to dyslexia. The law is grounded in the science of reading and acknowledges dyslexia for what it is — a that has long been ignored and requires research‑aligned screening and specialized instruction for students as well as professional support for teachers, leaders and other school staff throughout New York state.

New York City’s NYC Reads initiative, launched under former Schools Chancellor David Banks and now continuing under Mayor Zohran Mamdani and new Chancellor , reflects the same understanding. By prioritizing curriculum quality, teacher training and evidence-based instruction, NYC Reads shifts the focus from symbolic gestures to systemic change. These reforms are harder, slower and far less photogenic than a font swap. They are also far more likely to work.

Crucially, strong instruction is a prerequisite for identifying dyslexia. When classroom reading instruction is weak or inconsistent, it becomes nearly impossible to distinguish between children who were poorly taught and those who have a language-based learning disability. Teachers cannot reliably find dyslexic students until high-quality, evidence-based instruction is in place for everyone. Accommodations for access to grade-level work must be accompanied by evidence-based instruction. That is why literacy and dyslexia advocates were delighted to hear the new chancellor announce that NYC Reads will be deepened rather than abandoned by the new administration. When all kids get strong reading instruction schools, it creates the conditions under which dyslexia can be identified early and addressed appropriately.  It allows for all children to thrive.

Policy reform changes how systems function; performative accessibility changes how documents look. The distinction matters and the stakes are high. Literacy is not just an academic outcome — it is a gateway to affordability, opportunity and dignity. People who can read fluently are better positioned to navigate housing applications, understand contracts, access health care, secure stable employment and participate fully in civic life than those who cannot. Teaching children to read well is not merely an educational goal; it is a commitment to a more equitable society.

But here’s the truth: Policies don’t teach kids, teachers do. For these new laws to make a real difference, schools have to pair them with the right tools. That means making sure teachers have the training, curriculum and ongoing support they need to turn policy into progress and to help every child become a confident reader.

Like , my son has dyslexia. That means I know firsthand how frustrating it can be for kids when they don’t have the tools needed to succeed.

As early as preschool, I could see my son was challenged in a way other children weren’t. Although he was bright, curious, and articulate, he couldn’t connect letters and sounds. At first, I was told that this was normal for boys his age. “Wait and see,” his school said. When I insisted something was wrong, he was placed in a 12-week remedial reading program, but the instruction he received emphasized guessing words from context instead of decoding them. I remember sitting in on one session and seeing the interventionist praise him for reading “b�Dz���” from context clues instead of the word on the page, canoe.

In the end, my son was diagnosed with dyslexia, dysgraphia and ADHD; but crucial time had been lost, and a new struggle to find suitable support for him began. Sadly, my story is not unique. It is the story of countless children across our nation, and the impact on children’s life trajectories can be extreme: of learners with dyslexia don’t even graduate high school.

The nation’s new literacy laws recognize what parents and advocates have known for years: Too many children are struggling to read, not because they can’t, but because their teachers never had the right frameworks to teach them effectively.

With that in mind, here are five evidence-based strategies district and school leaders can use to ensure that the promise of new dyslexia laws translates into real-world benefits for students.

1. Screen Early and Universally

Early identification saves years of frustration. Also, students at risk for reading difficulties when they receive intervention early, compared to students who have to wait. Districts should implement universal K-2 literacy screening to flag reading risk factors before gaps widen. These screenings don’t diagnose dyslexia, but they help educators intervene before the problem becomes entrenched and the child is years behind grade-level reading. The goal is simple: no more “wait and see.”

2. Train Every Teacher in Structured Literacy

Teachers need to understand both the how and the why behind effective reading instruction. Training in Structured Literacy, grounded in the science of reading, gives educators the knowledge and confidence to teach decoding explicitly and systematically. If schools can give every K-2 teacher this foundation, fewer students will slip through the cracks, whether they have dyslexia or not.

3. Align Instruction Across All Tiers

Reading intervention shouldn’t depend on luck or location. Districts must create tiered instructional systems that use consistent, evidence-based methods whether students are in a general classroom, a pull-out intervention or a special education setting. A student shouldn’t encounter three different reading approaches in one day. Consistency and repetition across all tiers of instruction are what help struggling readers make lasting progress.

4. Build Accountability for Implementation and Impact

Legislation has impact only when it’s paired with leadership and accountability. Districts need tools to measure both implementation fidelity and student growth over time. This means tracking whether teachers are applying what they’ve learned and whether students’ reading skills are improving as a result. To the extent possible, data should support decision-making. And as new systems and practices are rolled out, it’s equally important to identify and stop using those that aren’t working. Letting go of ineffective programs or outdated methods creates space, financially and mentally, for what truly moves the needle on student learning.

5. Collaborate Across Roles and Keep Parents at the Table

Real, lasting change doesn’t happen in silos, it happens when we come together. District leaders, teachers and parents each play a vital role in shaping how children learn to read. Parents are often the first to recognize when a child is struggling, and their insight is invaluable. When schools and families work side by side, grounded in trust and open communication, they create the momentum that sustains progress. It’s this shared commitment, rooted in collaboration and care, that will carry us toward lasting, nationwide literacy success.

Schools have reached a pivotal moment in the movement to transform literacy instruction. Across the country, evidence-based strategies and resources are finding their way into classrooms, giving more students the opportunity to become confident, capable readers. But now, the real work begins.

I hope education leaders will look beyond policy victories to the classrooms where those laws take shape. The legislation that has passed represents a powerful promise to our students, but a promise only matters if it’s fulfilled. It’s time to turn legislative intent into lasting, measurable progress in literacy for every child.

When Ohio mother Joy Palmer raised concerns in 2013 her daughter was already falling behind in first grade, she feared it was because of hearing problems caused by chronic ear infections. School officials told her testing revealed no concerns and her daughter was performing well enough – except for her classroom behavior. 

And when Jackie Castillo-Blaber’s daughter was struggling in 2020 with grasping the alphabet and numbers in kindergarten, school officials in her upstate New York district told her many students were behind because of the pandemic and her daughter’s behavior was the biggest issue.

Three different mothers. Three different states. Three different decades.

Yet, the similarities are striking.

The three mothers of color felt dismissed when they raised concerns. When they insisted something was wrong, they were asked if there were issues at home or whether they knew to read to their children after school — which felt like an attack and criticism of their parenting.

“There’s this view that reading struggles are moral failures,” said Castillo, mother of Genevieve, 9, a fourth grader. “There’s just so much bias … when you look at parents and you say, ‘They’re probably not [doing] enough, that’s the reason why [their kid can’t read].’ ”

But in all three cases, the culprit wasn’t a bad parent or child.

It was undiagnosed dyslexia that began to manifest as frustration. For these three girls, acting out was a way to mask fears of falling behind or an inability to keep up academically with their peers – and later became behaviors that subsided once they received intervention.

A growing number of studies in recent years show students of color, , are for mental health issues and like dyslexia. And despite increased dyslexia screening in many states, many students are still not receiving the support they need. 

While dyslexia affects about one in five people and it’s one of the most common causes for reading difficulties in elementary school children, only 10% of kids with dyslexia receive special education services and intervention, according to the . 

It’s worse for Black and brown kids. 

In 2019, one study found that Black eighth graders were to be identified with a learning disability compared to their white peers.

The mislabeling of Black and brown children influences the support and services they get in the classroom, with experts believing there’s a strong correlation between misidentification, disparities in compared to their white peers and . 

Disabled white students, said Jacqueline Rodriguez, chief executive officer at National Center for Learning Disabilities, are often identified with both a learning disability and mental health issues, but the emphasis “is always on the [learning disability].” 

Yet, for Black and brown families “…we see a ton of emotional disabilities, but we don’t see the corresponding [learning disabilities,” Rodriguez said. 

School officials then “spend so much energy trying to quell the emotional response to the inability to read or write,” Rodriguez continued, “that they don’t actually address the academic interventions that would remove those emotional outbursts.”

Researchers point to an overall when it comes to recognizing dyslexia, but a slowing of teacher diversity and implicit bias may also be key elements in misidentifying disabilities for students of color.

A found school psychologists often believe the behavior of a Black or brown child is “willful or purposeful and not related to a disability,” and under-identification could reflect “a bias by education professionals who tend to be more responsive to white parents, or professionals may hold lower expectations of Black students’ academic abilities which may lead them to ignore a possible disability and ‘problem’ behavior.”

Student impact

A found 50% of dyslexic students reported being bullied and 30% said they felt lazy, stupid or less intelligent than their peers. 

Between 2016 and 2020, the number of children diagnosed with depression and anxiety increased by 27% and 29% respectively. Students with learning disabilities, including dyslexia, were at even higher risks, , according to the .

And those numbers are likely even higher for Black and brown youth who go unidentified, said clinical neuropsychologist Karen Wilson.

“When kids don’t understand what they’re reading, and they don’t understand that the reason why they’re struggling is because of a difference in the way their brain is wired, they will form their own narrative,” Wilson said, who is also the psychology department chair at California State University, Dominguez Hills and expert with , a learning disability advocacy nonprofit.

It’s an ongoing reality for Palmer’s 20-year-old daughter, Dey’Leana, who didn’t receive intervention or learn to read until she was 13. 

“I couldn’t get the confidence back that this little girl had, no matter how much I tried to say, ‘Yes, you’re good!” Palmer said. “Even to this day, … she compares herself to her siblings about what she can and cannot do.”

Jackson remembers times when her daughter would hit herself in the head and repeat the words “I’m stupid,” at home. She would pretend she was sick to avoid going to school. She would break her glasses to have an excuse for why she couldn’t read the words on the page.

In class, she wouldn’t sit still. She became the class clown – a coping mechanism so her peers would laugh at her jokes instead of at her when she read, Jackson said. Her behavior became so disruptive that Jackson began to get daily calls from school officials to come get her daughter.

“She was trying to do anything she could to get out of the classroom to avoid reading,” Jackson said. “As a Black mother – a single mother – at that time, it just was a very traumatizing time for both her and I, especially … not knowing there were rules and regulations to special education, not understanding that they should have been addressing dyslexia.”

In Ohio, Palmer’s daughter refused to do school work. She would stare blankly at her teachers, walk out of the classroom or try to put earphones in. 

“You can always teach a child to read, but once the self esteem is broken, it’s so much harder to repair, if ever,” said Resha Conroy, founder and executive director of the .��

Misidentification of a child’s disability can be expressed in several ways, including externally like Jackson’s daughter, or internally like Palmer’s daughter who tried to avoid drawing attention to herself.

“If you don’t address the reading, the behavior tends to become worse,” said Monica McHale-Small, director of education for the . “No matter what color the kid is, if kids are unidentified, misidentified or late identified, you start to see all those behavioral manifestations. … There’s always that phenomenon where a kid would rather be perceived as bad than to be perceived as dumb.”

For many Black and brown children, a broken self-esteem and externalizing behaviors “pushes them into the ,” Jackson added.

“Why do I say pushed? Because the older they get, the more frustrated, the more anxiety, the more [they think] ‘I need to get out of this classroom before I am humiliated or the teacher calls on me … I’m going to do something that’s going to get me out of this pressure cooker,’” said Jackson, who founded the and has worked with several families because of her experience with her daughter, Latecia.

Black students with disabilities were nearly four times more likely to receive multiple out-of-school suspensions and twice as likely to be expelled than white students with disabilities, according to the 2019 report by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

The report also found Black children make up around 19% of all students with disabilities, but made up 50% of students with disabilities in correctional facilities.

Going forward

All 50 states have around dyslexia, according to the National Center for Improving Literacy – including at least in kindergarten – but, there’s still concern about implementation.

“Apart from screening, there has to be action after that, so what do you do if you find that someone is at risk?” Wilson said, adding that legislation doesn’t always mean intervention.

“Even when we think about, the protections that are put in place when we think about IDEA and section 504 –  they’re mandating equitable access – but implementation depends often on district capacity or on family advocacy,” she said. “Protection on paper means very little without accountability and practice.”

Black and brown children are , where there’s higher turnover of staff and more young, or temporary, educators who may not know the signs of learning disabilities or have access to professional development.

General teacher preparation programs offer limited coursework in special education, usually only three to six credit hours, Rodriguez said.

“A school that is well funded with high-quality teachers [that have been in the school system longer] with professional development, … is more apt to identify differences between students that learn and think differently quicker, because they know the red flags,” Rodriguez said. 

A first step forward toward more equitable dyslexia intervention for students of color is to create “more cohesive preparation” between general and special education teachers, she added.

Experts also called for comprehensive bias training and greater teacher diversity efforts to help with disparities in disability identification. 

“Whether well intentioned or not, we do bring bias into the classroom with us, not just around expectations for academics, but also expectations for behavior,” Conroy said. 

White educators may be more prone to implicit bias, and use how students of color are more likely to experience or as reasons behind misbehavior rather than think it’s a disability, according to the 2019 U.S.Commission on Civil Rights report.

It’s something the three mothers experienced repeatedly. 

Jackson was told by Nebraska school officials at one point her daughter wasn’t able to read because her biological mother was incarcerated and she had lived with her grandmother.

“Their justification was they were doing the very best that they could do for her and that she wasn’t trying hard enough,” Jackson said.

Palmer recalled an instance where a teacher had asked if her daughter was “able to be taught by a male teacher or does she have daddy issues?”

“Everyone assumed I was a single mom,” Palmer said. 

Most recently, when Castillo’s daughter began to have trouble in school, including crying out of frustration in class, she was referred to a social worker and asked about what things were like at home.

“There’s an overwhelming bias that a lot of us experience as parents of color … that there must be something broken at home, and that’s why your kid is acting out,” Castillo said. “Nobody had reached out to me to be like, ‘Hey, what have you tried with her? Have you noticed this at home?’ … There’s just this assumption that it’s a broken family.”

Although the three mothers eventually received some special education intervention for their daughters, which prompted some progress, Palmer and Jackson had to seek extra support outside the public school system with tutors or private programs.

“We need to ensure [schools] are working with parents and not against parents, that we are creating a team environment, … so [parents] feel safe and that they are in an environment where the children can get support,” Jackson said. “Children don’t have time to wait for systems to take decades to rectify and reframe education.”

Castillo is still navigating what more can be done for her fourth grader, who is receiving after-school tutoring in a neighboring county, paid by her school district. 

Her daughter is “doing much better” and now is able to de-escalate her frustration “to the point where she’s not crying anymore, and is getting through it,” but she still struggles with reading and writing.

“It’s a work in progress,” Castillo said.

She worries the intervention isn’t enough. She also has had to provide transportation for her daughter’s tutoring sessions, and recently moved the meetings to Zoom “to save money on the gas cost, car repairs and tolls.”  

She believes the tutoring would be more effective if it was during the school and worries about “the educational consequences my daughter will have to pay” if the intervention is not moved.

“[My daughter] needs to be able to write paragraphs right now and she can’t,” Castillo said. “All of these things that are going to lead up into what she needs to do to have a chance at a decent job when she graduates and I don’t see it happening. I see the gap only widening.”

And yet, shows that the skills needed for reading begin developing before a child is born, and that signs of reading challenges can emerge as early as 18 months old.

“People don’t understand that children don’t start kindergarten with a clean slate,” said Nadine Gaab, an associate professor at the Harvard School of Education involved in the research. Learning to read “is a long process with many milestones that unfold over many years, and it starts primarily with oral language. Years of brain development lead up to the point where formal instruction puts it all together and enables them to read. The process starts in utero.”

The human brain evolved specifically for spoken language, said Perri Klass, professor of journalism and pediatrics at New York University and the national medical director of the nonprofit . Every society across the world uses spoken language, but the transition from spoken to written language is a giant leap for the brain.  

That jump, Klass said, requires the brain to recruit structures and networks throughout its many layers and folds just to recognize a letter on a page, involving the vision and memory portions of the brain. The brain then must remember the sound the letter represents and connect that letter with others to make sounds that associate with the picture on a page. Finally, at lightning speed, the brain recognizes that those letters work together to say, “Cat.”  

“Learning to read is a challenge for all children,” she said. “And for some children it’s really a struggle. It’s not that you develop spoken language and then, boom, you get to school and develop written language. Spoken and written language have been developing together directly from birth, and all the exposure to language from the environment — what they hear from their parents, whether they’re read to, talked to, whether someone sings to them or holds them — are there. So, it’s the brain the child takes to school that helps them succeed at this impressive task of learning to read.”

Klass points to the new Harvard research to underscore how early that “brain the child takes to school” begins developing. For years, a prevailing attitude has been that a child starts learning to read in pre-K or kindergarten. A longitudinal study by Gaab and her colleagues using MRI scans and an array of other assessments confirmed that the bases for reading skills begin to develop in the child’s brain by birth and continue building between infancy and preschool. 

“We wanted to see how early the developmental trajectories of children who later develop good versus poor reading skills diverge, because that can give us a really important clue for when we should intervene, as well as what some of the risks and protective factors are,” Gaab said, 

A key finding of the study is that the developmental trajectories of children with and without reading disabilities start to diverge around 18 months, rather than at 5 or 6 years old as previously assumed.  

And yet, Gaab said, a wide gap currently stands between the time children are identified as having a reading impairment and the start of intensive intervention. This is particularly problematic for children diagnosed with dyslexia, she said, adding that researchers call this the The majority of school districts in the U.S. employ a “wait-to-fail” approach, meaning that many children are only flagged by the school system after they have failed to learn to read over a prolonged period of time — often years — even though there’s evidence that reading intervention is most effective earlier. The experience of failure can erode self-esteem, she said, and lead to the higher rates of anxiety and depression that are found in struggling readers.

The Study

The study, “Longitudinal Trajectories of Brain Development from Infancy to School Age and Their Relationship with Literacy Development,” is the first to track brain development from infancy to childhood focused literacy skills — a window into later academic attainment.     

Over a decade, Gaab and co-authors Ted Turesky, Elizabeth Escalante and Megan Loh conducted MRI brain scans of 130 study participants starting at 3 months old. Half of the children had a risk of dyslexia, with either an older sibling or one or both parents diagnosed with dyslexia, which can increase a child’s risk of reading challenges. For the first year of the study, the babies peacefully slept through the scan, tucked into the MRI machine wearing noise protection (“We got really good at putting other people’s babies to sleep,” Gaab said). 

At 18 months old, the babies came back for another scan, though “peacefully sleeping” was becoming a fond memory. By the time the babies were toddlers, the researchers took a break, for reasons any parent of unruly toddlers can understand. The children returned when they were a more cooperative 4 years old and every year after until age 10. 

The study also assessed such factors as cognitive abilities, literacy environment and home language. Funded by the NIH, the researchers aimed to continue for another five years and follow the participants into high school. Though the grant application had received a fundable score at NIH, future funding is uncertain due to the Trump administration’s termination of .

Building the Brain’s Architecture

Babies are born with the raw material they need to hear, see, move and remember. The nerve fibers, or axons, that connect these disparate brain regions don’t grow automatically. They are cultivated by babies’ environments. MRIs of the participants as infants showed predictably smaller brains that appear more solid or smooth in the images. By the time the children were 5, the scans showed a robust network of branching pathways of these nerve fibers, said coauthor Turesky.  

“The infant brain is very different compared to all other stages of life,” he said. “But if you look at the scan of a child at 5 years and then at 10 years, you can see there’s hardly any change in [those pathways]. Those early years are a time of very rapid growth.”

Though the human brain remains plastic and mutable for a lifetime, Turesky said, the scans underscore that earliest years are the busiest for building brain architecture — a fact that has important policy implications for early intervention and improved literacy curricula in preschools. 

Giving Them the ‘Good Stuff’

Some brains are better equipped to build the neural scaffolding that ultimately leads to reading, Gaab said, and some brains are less optimized, which means those children might struggle to read. It doesn’t mean their brains are faulty, or that there is something seriously wrong with them. 

“They’re built differently, and they’re optimized for other things, because every brain is different,” she said. “But it does point to the need for good early pre-reading instruction and the games and good oral language input, and home and school environment interactions that we know build these connections. Some brains just need more of the good stuff.”  

“Call it preventative education, just like preventative medicine,” she said. “Help these kids build these connections before they struggle and prevent them ever seeing a special educator or ever getting a dyslexia diagnosis.” A large number of studies now show that early intervention and prevention are leading to better outcomes for children at risk of dyslexia, Gaab said, and the research has led to aimed at early identification and intervention. 

That includes teaching the specific skills that can close the gap between proficient and struggling readers. Those skills include phonological awareness, letter-sound knowledge, rapid automatized naming, vocabulary and oral language comprehension. This teaching takes place naturally when caregivers read aloud to their children. Reach Out and Read, the nonprofit Klass leads, has a network of clinicians who work directly with pediatric care providers to help them integrate read-aloud experiences into their interactions with parents and provides developmentally appropriate books for caregivers to take home. 

“Our tremendous advantage in pediatric primary care is that the clinicians see the children over and over in these early years,” Klass said. “We see them for a newborn visit and a one-month, a two-month visit … The schedule is sort of engraved on all our hearts, so we get to talk with the parents about reading and early literacy repeatedly during those early years of life. 

“We know that the developing brain is shaped most of all by the interactions with the adults taking care of that child, Klass said. “The wonderful thing about this study is that it literally looks at the building of the brain and says very clearly that it’s not just that the brain is being built, but the specific structures that will allow the child to read.” 

If doctors can identify young children who are going to struggle more with learning to read as they get older, they can target those families with books and other support early on, Klass added.

“We’re hoping with…the books the caregivers are taking home, the child is learning a motivational lesson: ‘I like books. If I carry a book and give it to my parent, they might sit down and talk to me in that voice,’” Klass said. 

Klass said no one needs to tell parents to “teach” this idea to their children. The children will sort it out if they grow up around books and reading. A baby doesn’t want or need an authority on literacy to walk through the door and teach them how to read, Klass said. A baby wants their parent’s voice, presence and back-and-forth interactions. 

“Your baby wants to be on your lap hearing you read. Your baby will love books because your baby loves you.”

Memphis students with dyslexia will start receiving targeted reading support this school year through the district’s first universal intervention program in an effort to increase state test scores.

Under a nearly $540,000 contract approved by the Memphis-Shelby County school board last month, an outside literacy company will boost support for nearly 5,000 students who show characteristics of dyslexia. But one local reading expert noted that many students struggle with comprehension, which needs intervention beyond foundational skills.

MSCS is required by state law to screen every student for signs of dyslexia, such as difficulty connecting letters with sounds. But Tennessee allows only to students, in order to trigger state and federal disability services.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

Jo Anna McCall, an education consultant for Utah-based Reading Horizons, the literacy company contracted by the district, said the end goal of the program is to increase MSCS scores on the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP. .

McCall said students with characteristics of dyslexia often get “lost in the shuffle” of general classroom instruction.

“Many have fallen through the cracks, and it’s going too fast for them, and so we have to slow down,” she said.

In an Aug. 26 board meeting, MSCS leaders said Reading Horizons will train at least one district staff member per school building to run small group tutoring sessions using the company’s dyslexia-focused curriculum by the end of the school year.

It’s unclear who exactly will receive that training or when they will run the 30-minute intervention sessions recommended by the company.

Reading Horizons’ method is based in the science of reading, a literacy strategy focused on phonics and fluency that has gained traction in education systems in recent years. Laura Kelly, a Rhodes College education professor who specializes in elementary literacy, said MSCS already uses the science of reading in its classroom curriculum.

“So my question is, what is this adding that their existing curriculum doesn’t already have?” she said.

Focusing on foundational phonics skills will help students with dyslexia, Kelly said. But she worries that won’t translate into improvement on comprehension skills – which means it’s unlikely to boost TCAP scores.

“TCAP is not a phonics test; it’s a comprehension test,” Kelly said. “And there is a good chunk of kids that master foundational skills, and then they still don’t comprehend what they’re reading.”

McCall said Reading Horizons’ method does go beyond phonics skills, including time in each lesson to read and write sentences or passages of text.

The company’s method is unique, she said, because of a “marking system” that helps students sound out words. Students mark vowels with x’s, break words into syllables, and follow simple pronunciation rules that McCall says guide about 75% of English words.

“I think of this as training wheels on a bicycle,” McCall said. “As students are learning the patterns to the word, they’re going to have these markings. And then when they read passages, the marks won’t be there, but they can apply them when they come to an unfamiliar word.”

According to Reading Horizons’ contract, the company will provide scripted manuals, flashcards, and longer texts targeted to skills students are learning. There will also be one six-hour training for chosen MSCS staff and one-day targeted coaching budgeted at $3,000 each for 30 sessions.

MSCS Director of Curriculum Amy Maples said the district is investing the “bare minimum” funding level for Reading Horizons’ program, which company leaders said cuts out additional training and coaching sessions for school staff.

But Maples said MSCS could invest more in the program after the first year depending on results. The contract with Reading Horizons has the option for renewal through 2030.

District leaders will also be screening more students for characteristics of dyslexia this year, according to an emailed statement sent to Chalkbeat.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at .

Henry Dunbar’s parents say he has a gift for learning by doing — making a fantastic omelet, helping his dad in the garage or driving any vehicle that a third grader is allowed to pilot. He works hard and is motivated to make them happy.

So they were at first baffled when Henry, their middle child of five and their oldest boy, didn’t take to academics.

Henry and his siblings were homeschooled in part so they could spend more time with their father, Aaron Dunbar, an air traffic controller with an irregular schedule.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

The setup worked well for his two older sisters. Even his younger sister, then a toddler, started picking up knowledge by osmosis. But concepts like letter sounds or days of the week didn’t stick in Henry’s brain.

“When he was very little, it was almost like he was messing with you,” said his mother, Abbey Dunbar, the family’s primary educator. “Because it was like, gone, truly gone. As if we’d never done it.”

The family tried postponing kindergarten for a year, joining a homeschooling co-op and sending Henry to an Olathe public school for special education services.

The services helped, but didn’t seem like enough. Henry, normally a happy, energetic kid, would come home drained and discouraged from spending part of the day in a loud room with classmates who teased him.

Finally, the family turned to , a private school in Roeland Park that enrolls students who have dyslexia and similar disabilities. Henry is formally diagnosed with a severe auditory processing disorder and appears to have dyslexia based on testing at school.

Dyslexia is common. An often-cited figure is that 20% of people have symptoms, though some estimates are lower. But parents around the metro area told The Beacon .

Horizon serves as a small-scale — and pricey — example of what it looks like to orient education around helping dyslexic students succeed.

Henry, who recently turned 10, has started to thrive in an environment that’s geared toward his needs, with highly trained staff, minimal distractions and tiny classes grouped by skill level.

“It’s less tiring and my brain doesn’t have to worry about all that stuff,” Henry said. “I’m on the same pace as everybody else.”

Providing enough resources��

A pediatric occupational therapist and mother of three, Kelly Reardon noticed her oldest child, Lily, was slow to catch on to early reading skills.

At first, teachers at her Catholic school in Johnson County weren’t worried.

“I didn’t want to be that hypochondriac parent,” Reardon said. “I would always lean on her teachers to fact check my own perceptions.”

As Lily entered kindergarten, Reardon’s worries grew. Teachers still said Lily was doing great.

“She’d come home and fall apart,” Reardon said. “I know what that means. ‘We’re not actually doing great. We’re just holding it together, barely getting by.’”

In first grade, a teacher validated Reardon’s concerns, prompting her to seek dyslexia testing.

Reardon saw Lily’s diagnosis as a way to explain to others — and to her smart, perfectionist daughter — why it was harder for her to learn certain things and what support she needed.

She also knew she needed more resources. So she enrolled Lily in Horizon Academy’s summer program.

“Lily had come home from camp and said, ‘Mom, can I go to school here next year?’” Reardon said.�� “For a first grader to ask to make a change to a new school, that’s a big decision.”

Reardon doesn’t blame Lily’s original school for not having all the support she needs.

”What was more challenging for me was the amount of pressure on me to be that advocate for her and convince myself and convince others that she needed that,” she said. “It makes me sad to think about the other families that have no idea.”

Though families’ first instinct is often to trust that schools will alert them to dyslexia and provide appropriate services, some find to notice the problem, seek testing, advocate for services and search for the most effective school or private tutoring.

Horizon encourages parents to be involved and educates them about dyslexia, but some say the school’s expertise lifts the burden of feeling it’s all on them to figure out a solution.

“Before we found Horizon, we had a lot of fear, because we were kind of carrying it all,” said Abbey Dunbar. “To walk into a place where they’re not afraid at all of these challenges and they see it every day and they know exactly how to help … It’s just kind of that relief.”

How Horizon works

A walk down the hallways gives a sense of what Horizon Academy is all about.

One section showcases stickers students earn for using vocabulary words in context. Another uses colorful ribbons to illustrate the components of skilled reading. Yet another features photos and descriptions of famous people with dyslexia or other learning disabilities.

“We just want our kids to be aware that it’s only one part of you,” Head of School Vicki Asher said. “We’re going to teach you how to read, but look at all these other gifts that you can develop and nurture.”

The Dunbars are struck by the focus on Henry’s strengths, something the family also leaned into when they realized he struggled with academics. When he spoke with The Beacon, Henry was still excited about getting chosen to drive a robot that day in school.

They also appreciate the school’s attention to detail — such as not scheduling lawn mowing at distracting times — and the high capacity for tailoring instruction to Henry’s needs.

During the fall of 2024, Asher said Horizon had 117 students and 46 faculty members, less than a 3-to-1 student to teacher ratio.

Although students might meet in groups of 12 or more for homeroom, specials and certain subjects, they study key topics like reading and math in tiny groups with similar skill levels.

The average reading group includes about three students, Asher said, but some receive one-on-one attention.

Reardon said since switching to Horizon, Lily is making progress, experiencing successes and having less emotional difficulty after school because she’s not overwhelmed.

“They’re matching her with kids that have similar missing skills, and then the instruction is taught specifically targeting those skills,” Reardon said.

Faculty members are trained in Orton-Gillingham, a method designed specifically for people with dyslexia.

Gabi Guillory Welsh, Horizon’s director of therapeutic language and literacy, said most of the school’s teachers hold an associate level certification that requires a 60-hour course and 100-hour practicum.

The high proportion of highly trained faculty comes with a high price tag.

Asher said the school raises funds to provide scholarships for 35 to 40% of students. In the past, scholarships have been about $8,000 on average and up to about $17,000. Tuition was nearly $30,000 for the 2024-25 school year and will be nearly $31,000 for 2025-26.

As a business owner, Reardon understands the price tag.

“They’re paying people. They’re providing this expensive training to each staff member that works there to provide the best service to these kiddos,” she said. “Of course it costs an arm and a leg.”

But she worries about families who can’t afford Horizon.

“The worst thing would be ‘I know my child needs to go there, but I just can’t afford that,’” she said.

Horizon is open to students from kindergarten through ninth grade.

The school is looking for students it thinks it can serve well based on its expertise, Guillory Welsh said, often meaning that their primary diagnosis is dyslexia.

Horizon who are primarily diagnosed with behavioral or emotional issues, though it finds receiving proper instruction can help with some of those concerns, such as reducing school anxiety.

Students arrive at various ages, often a few years into elementary school.

“Our goal is to bring them in, remediate, rebuild them and then return them to their traditional school,” said Asher.��

For most children, that could mean attending for two to five years.

When The Beacon visited in fall 2024, Horizon had two kindergarten students for the first time and only a few first graders. Meanwhile, there were two whole homeroom classes of fourth graders and two more classes that were mixes of fourth and fifth graders.

Guillory Welsh said that pattern represents a paradox: The best time to intervene is in the early years, but it’s rare to get a diagnosis that early.

“Students have kind of missed that window (for early intervention) by the time they start failing,” she said. “They could have been learning differently.”

How dyslexic kids learn

After years of struggling to get proper services for her son, also named Henry, Annie Watson knew he needed a way to catch up on his reading skills.

Full-time tuition at Horizon Academy wasn’t an option.

“We couldn’t afford that,” she said. “But we could afford the tutoring — barely.”

So Henry started to attend twice-weekly sessions after school, followed by a summer intensive program, both through Horizon. He progressed so well that his regular teachers were confused why he had a special education plan.

Henry’s tutor “saved his life,” Watson said. “That one person, and the fact that we made it work financially.”

Watson thinks one of the keys to Henry’s progress was the Orton-Gillingham method.

Teaching methods that don’t focus on phonemic awareness (the ability to recognize and play with speech sounds) and phonics (the relationship between letters and sounds) make it harder for many students to learn to read — something some state governments are .

For dyslexic students, proper reading instruction is especially crucial and they might need more repetition and multisensory teaching methods for the information to click.

Full-time and tutoring students at Horizon learn little-known rules of the English language, like why “forgotten” has two Ts but “traveling” only has one L. (It has to do with which syllable of the root word is accented.)

Recently, Watson said, she and her daughter disagreed about how to pronounce a word. Henry told them they were both wrong, citing a rule so elaborate she wondered if he was pranking them. But when she looked it up, Henry was right about the pronunciation and the obscure rule.

Henry Dunbar, the full-time Horizon student, is at an earlier point in his education. But his parents said they were already struck by his progress.

“It feels so good to be on this side of things, as things are starting to work and things are clicking,” Aaron Dunbar said.

Henry has “been working diligently here. He’s been fitting in so well. He’s made great friends. He’s doing excellent with the teachers, and he’s now reading, which before he wasn’t doing,” he said. “Like he’s actually — he knows how to read.”

This first appeared on and is republished here under a .

Tuesday Willaredt knew her older daughter, Vivienne, struggled to read.

She tentatively accepted teachers’ reassurances and the obvious explanations: Remote learning during the COVID pandemic was disruptive. Returning to school was chaotic. All students were behind.

Annie Watson was concerned about her son Henry’s performance in kindergarten and first grade.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

But his teachers weren’t. There was a pandemic, they said. He was a boy. Henry wasn’t really lagging behind his classmates.

So Willaredt and Watson kept asking questions. So did Tricia McGhee, Abbey and Aaron Dunbar, Lisa Salazar Tingey, Kelly Reardon and T.C. — all parents who spoke to The Beacon about getting support for their kids’ reading struggles. (The Beacon is identifying T.C. by her initials because she works for a school district.)

After schools gave reassurances or rationalizations or denied services, the parents kept raising concerns, seeking advice from teachers and fellow parents and pursuing formal evaluations.

Eventually, they all reached the same conclusion. Their children had dyslexia, a disability that makes it more difficult to learn to read and write well.

They also realized something else. Schools — whether private, public, charter or homeschool — aren’t always equipped to immediately catch the problem and provide enough support, even though some estimates suggest .

Instead, the parents took matters into their own hands, seeking diagnoses, advocating for extra help and accommodations, moving to another district or paying for tutoring or private school.

“You get a diagnosis from a medical professional,” Salazar Tingey said. “Then you go to the school and you’re like, ‘This is what they say is best practice for this diagnosis.’ And they’re like, ‘That’s not our policy.’”

Recognizing dyslexia

It wasn’t until Vivienne, now 12, was in sixth grade and struggling to keep up at Lincoln College Preparatory Academy Middle School that a teacher said the word “dyslexic” to Willaredt.

After the Kansas City Public Schools teacher mentioned dyslexia, Willaredt made an appointment at Children’s Mercy Hospital, waited months for an opening and ultimately confirmed that Vivienne had dyslexia. Her younger daughter Harlow, age 9, was diagnosed even more recently.

Willaredt now wonders if any of Vivienne’s other teachers suspected the truth. A reading specialist at Vivienne’s former charter school had said her primary problem was focus.

“There’s this whole bureaucracy within the school,” she said. “They don’t want to call it what it is, necessarily, because then the school’s on the hook” to provide services.

Missouri law requires that students in grades K-3 be , said Shain Bergan, public relations coordinator for Kansas City Public Schools. If they’re flagged, the school notifies their parents and makes a reading success plan.

Schools don’t formally diagnose students, though. That’s something families can pursue — and pay for — on their own by consulting a health professional.

“Missouri teachers, by and large, aren’t specially trained to identify or address dyslexia in particular,” Bergan wrote in an email. “They identify and address specific reading issues students are having, whether it’s because the student has a specific condition or not.”

Bergan later added that KCPS early elementary and reading-specific teachers complete state-mandated dyslexia training through LETRS (Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling), an intensive teacher education program that emphasizes scientific research about how students learn to read.

Missouri is in LETRS.

In an emailed statement, the North Kansas City School District said staff members “receive training on dyslexia and classroom strategies,” and the district uses a screening “to help identify students who may need additional reading support.”

Kansas has also worked to update teacher training. But the state recently and to its Blueprint for Literacy.

Public school students with dyslexia or another disability , or IEP, a formal plan for providing special education services which comes with federal civil rights protections.

But a diagnosis isn’t enough to prove eligibility, and developing an IEP can be a lengthy process that requires . Students who don’t qualify might be eligible for accommodations through a .

A spokesperson for Olathe Public Schools said in an email that the district’s teachers participate in state-mandated dyslexia training but don’t diagnose dyslexia.

The district takes outside diagnoses into consideration, but “if a student is making progress in the general education curriculum and able to access it, then the diagnosis alone would not necessarily demonstrate the need for support and services.”

Why dyslexia gets missed

Some families find that teachers dismiss valid concerns, delaying diagnoses that parents see as key to getting proper support.

Salazar Tingey alerted teachers that her son, Cal, was struggling with reading compared to his older siblings. Each year, starting in an Iowa preschool and continuing after the family moved to the North Kansas City School District, she heard his issues were common and unconcerning.

She felt validated when a Sunday school teacher suggested dyslexia and recommended talking to a pediatrician.

After Cal was diagnosed, Salazar Tingey asked his second grade teacher about the methods she used to teach dyslexic kids. She didn’t expect to hear, “That’s not really my specialty.”

“I guess I thought that if you’re a K-3 teacher, that would be pretty standard,” she said. “I don’t think (dyslexia is) that uncommon.”

Louise Spear-Swerling, a professor emerita in the Department of Special Education at Southern Connecticut State University, said estimates of the prevalence of dyslexia range from as high as 20% to as low as 3 to 5%. She thinks 5 to 10% is reasonable.

“That means that the typical general education teacher, if you have a class of, say, 20 students, will see at least one child with dyslexia every year — year after year after year,” she said.

Early intervention is key, Spear-Swerling said, but it doesn’t always happen.

To receive services for dyslexia under federal special education guidelines, students must have difficulty reading that isn’t primarily caused by something like poor instruction, another disability, economic disadvantage or being an English language learner, she said. And schools sometimes misidentify the primary cause.

Tricia McGhee, director of communications at Revolucion Educativa, a nonprofit that offers advocacy and support for Latinx families, has had that experience.

She said her daughter’s charter school flagged her issues with reading but said it was “typical that all bilingual or bicultural children were behind,” McGhee said. That didn’t sound right because her older child was grade levels ahead in reading.

“The first thing they told me is, ‘You just need to make sure to be reading to her every night,’” McGhee said. “I was like, ‘Thanks. I’ve done that every day since she was born.’”

McGhee is now a member of the KCPS school board. But she spoke to The Beacon before being elected, in her capacity as a parent and RevEd staff member.

Dyslexia also may not stand out among classmates who are struggling for various reasons.

Annie Watson, whose professional expertise is in early childhood education planning, strategy and advocacy, said some of Henry’s peers lacked access to high-quality early education and weren’t prepared for kindergarten.

“His handwriting is so poor,” she remembers telling his teacher.

The teacher assured her that Henry’s handwriting was among the best in the class.

“Let’s not compare against his peers,” Watson said. “Let’s compare against grade level standards.”

Receiving services for dyslexia��

Watson cried during a Park Hill parent teacher conference when a reading interventionist said she was certified in Orton-Gillingham, an instruction method designed for students with dyslexia.

In an ideal world, Watson said, the mere mention of a teaching approach wouldn’t be so fraught.

“I would love to know less about this,” she said. “My goal is to read books with my kids every night, right? I would love for that to just be my role, and that hasn’t been it.”

By that point, Watson’s family had spent tens of thousands of dollars on Orton-Gillingham tutoring for Henry through Horizon Academy, a private school focused on students with dyslexia and similar disabilities.

They had ultimately moved to the Park Hill district, not convinced that charter schools or KCPS had enough resources to provide support.

“I felt so guilty in his charter school,” Watson said. “There were so many kids who needed so many things, and so it was hard to advocate for my kid who was writing better than a lot of the kids.”

So the idea that Henry’s little sister — who doesn’t have dyslexia — could get a bit of expert attention seamlessly, during the school day and without any special advocacy, made Watson emotional.

“Henry will never get that,” she said.

While Watson wonders if public schools in Park Hill could have been enough for Henry had he started there earlier, some families sought help outside of the public school system entirely.

The Reardon and Dunbar families, who eventually received some services from their respective schools, each enrolled a child full-time in Horizon Academy after deciding the services weren’t enough.

Kelly Reardon said her daughter originally went to a private Catholic school.

“With one teacher and 26 kids, there’s just no way that she would have gotten the individualized intervention that she needed,” she said.

The Dunbars’ son, Henry, had been homeschooled and attended an Olathe public school part-time.

Abbey Dunbar said Henry didn’t qualify for services from the Olathe district in kindergarten, but did when the family asked again in second grade. Henry has a diagnosed severe auditory processing disorder, and his family considers him to have dyslexia based on testing at school.

She said the school accommodated the family’s part-time schedule and the special education services they gave to Henry genuinely helped.

“​​I never want to undercut what they gave and what they did for him, because we did see progress,” Dunbar said. “But we need eight hours a day (of support), and I don’t think that’s something they could even begin to give in public school. There’s so many kids.”

T.C., whose daughters attended KCPS when they were diagnosed, also decided she couldn’t rely on services provided by the school alone. One daughter didn’t qualify for an IEP because the school said she was already achieving as expected for her IQ level.

In the end, T.C. said, her daughters did get the support they needed “because I paid for it.”

She found a tutor who was relatively inexpensive because she was finishing her degree. But at $55 per child, per session once or twice a week, tutoring still ate into the family’s budget and her children’s free time.

“If they were learning what they needed to learn at school… we wouldn’t have had that financial burden,” she said. Tutoring also meant “our kids couldn’t participate in other activities outside of school.”

Support and accommodations

Tuesday Willaredt is still figuring out exactly what support Vivienne needs.

Options include a KCPS neighborhood school, a charter school that extends through eighth grade or moving to another district. Outside tutoring will likely be part of the picture regardless.

Willaredt is worried that her kids aren’t being set up to love learning.

“That’s where I get frustrated,” she said. “If interventions were put in earlier — meaning the tutoring that I would have had to seek — these frustrations and sadness that is their experience around learning wouldn’t have happened.”

When Lisa Salazar Tingey brought Cal’s dyslexia diagnosis to his school, he didn’t qualify for an IEP. But his classroom teacher offered extra support that seemed to catch him up.

In following years, though, Salazar Tingey has worried about Cal’s performance stagnating and considered formalizing his accommodations through a 504 plan.

She wants Cal, now 10, to be able to use things like voice to text or audiobooks if his dyslexia is limiting his intellectual exploration.

Before his diagnosis, she and her husband noticed that every school writing assignment Cal brought home was about volcanoes, even though “it wasn’t like he was a kid who was always talking about volcanoes.”

When he was diagnosed, they learned that sticking to familiar topics can be a side effect of dyslexia.

“He knows how to spell magma and lava and volcano, and so that’s all he ever wrote about,” Salazar Tingey said. “That’s sad to me. I want him to feel that the world is wide open, that he can read about anything.”

This first appeared on and is republished here under a .

California sends mixed messages when it comes to serving dyslexic students.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is the most famous dyslexic political official in the country, even authoring a  to raise awareness about the learning disability. And yet, California is one of 10 states that doesn’t require dyslexia screening for all children. 

Education experts agree that early screening and intervention is critical for making sure students can read at grade level. But so far, state officials have done almost everything to combat dyslexia except mandate assessments for all students.

“It needs to happen,” said Lillian Duran, an education professor at the University of Oregon who has helped develop screening tools for dyslexia. “It seems so basic to me.”

Since 2015, legislators have funded dyslexia research, teacher training and the hiring of literacy coaches across California. But lawmakers failed to mandate universal dyslexia screening, running smack into opposition from the California Teachers Association.

The union argued that since teachers would do the screening, a universal mandate would take time away from the classroom. It also said universal screening may overly identify English learners, mistakenly placing them in special education. 

The California Teachers Association did not respond to requests for comment for this story. In a letter of opposition to a bill in 2021, the union wrote that the bill “is unnecessary, leads to over identifying dyslexia in young students, mandates more testing, and jeopardizes the limited instructional time for students.”

In response, dyslexia experts double down on well-established research. Early detection actually prevents English learners — and really, all students — from ending up in special education when they don’t belong there.  

While California lawmakers didn’t vote to buck the teachers union, they haven’t been afraid to spend taxpayer money on dyslexia screening. In the past two years, the state budget allocated $30 million to UC San Francisco’s Dyslexia Center, largely for the development of a new screening tool. Newsom began championing the center and served as its  in 2016 when he was still lieutenant governor. 

“There’s an inadequate involvement of the health system in the way we support children with learning disabilities,” said Maria Luisa Gorno-Tempini, co-director of UCSF’s Dyslexia Center. “This is one of the first attempts at bridging science and education in a way that’s open sourced and open to all fields.”

Parents and advocates say funding dyslexia research and developing a new screener can all be good things, but without mandated universal screening more students will fall through the cracks and need more help with reading as they get older.

Omar Rodriguez, a spokesperson for the governor did not respond to questions about whether Newsom would support a mandate for universal screening. Instead, he listed more than $300 million in state investments made in the past two years to fund more reading coaches, new teacher credentialing requirements and teacher training.

The screening struggle

Rachel Levy, a Bay Area parent, fought for three years to get her son Dominic screened for dyslexia. He finally got the screening in third grade, which experts say could be  to prevent long-term struggles with reading. 

“We know how to screen students. We know how to get early intervention,” Levy said. “This to me is a solvable issue.”

Levy’s son Dominic, 16, still remembers what it felt like trying to read in first grade.

“It was like I was trying to memorize the shape of the word,” he said. “Even if I could read all the words, I just wouldn’t understand them.”

Dyslexia is a neurological condition that can make it hard for students to read and process information. But teachers can mitigate and even prevent the illiteracy stemming from dyslexia if they catch the signs early.

Levy, who also has dyslexia, said there’s much more research today on dyslexia than there was 30 years ago when she was first diagnosed. She said she was disappointed to find that California’s policies don’t align with the research around early screening.

“Unfortunately, most kids who are dyslexic end up in the special education system,” Levy said. “It’s because of a lack of screening.”

Soon after his screening in third grade, Dominic started receiving extra help for his dyslexia. He still works with an educational therapist on his reading, and he’s just about caught up to grade level in math. The biggest misconception about dyslexia, Dominic said, is that it makes you less intelligent or capable.

“Dyslexics are just as smart as other people,” he said. “They just learn in different ways.”

The first step to helping them learn is screening them in kindergarten or first grade.

“The goal is to find risk factors early,” said Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan, a speech-language pathologist and a professor at the University of Houston. “When you find them, the data you collect can really inform instruction.”

Cárdenas-Hagan’s home state of Texas passed a law in 1995 requiring universal screening. But she said it took several more years for teachers to be trained to use the tool. Her word of caution to California: Make sure teachers are not only comfortable with the tool but know how to use the results of the assessment to shape the way they teach individual students.

A homegrown screener

UC San Francisco’s screener, called Multitudes, will be available in English, Spanish and Mandarin. It’ll be free for all school districts. 

Multitudes won’t be released to all districts at once. UCSF scientists launched a pilot at a dozen school districts last year, and they plan to expand to more districts this fall. 

But experts and advocates say there’s no need to wait for it to mandate universal screenings. Educators can use a variety of already available screening tools in California, like they do in 40 other states. Texas and other states that have high percentages of English learners have Spanish screeners for dyslexia.

For English learners, the need for screening is especially urgent. Maria Ortiz is a Los Angeles parent of a dyslexic teenager who was also an English learner. She said she had to sue the Los Angeles Unified School District twice: once in 2016 to get extra help for her dyslexic daughter when she was in fourth grade and again in 2018 when those services were taken away. Ortiz said the district stopped giving her daughter additional help because her reading started improving.

“In the beginning they told me that my daughter was exaggerating,” Ortiz said.

 “They said everything would be normal later.”

California currently serves about 1.1 million English learners, just under a fifth of all public school students. For English learners, dyslexia can be confused with a lack of English proficiency. Opponents of universal screening, including the teachers association, argue that English learners will be misidentified as dyslexic simply because they can’t understand the language. 

“Even the specialists were afraid that the problem might be because of the language barrier,” Ortiz said about her daughter’s case.

But experts say dyslexia presents a double threat to English learners: It stalls them from reading in their native language and impedes their ability to learn English. And while there are some Spanish-language screeners, experts from Texas and California say there’s room for improvement. Current Spanish screeners penalize students who mix Spanish and English, they say. 

Duran, who helped develop the Spanish version of Multitudes, said the new screener will be a better fit for how young bilingual students actually talk. 

“Spanglish becomes its own communication that’s just as legitimate as Spanish on its own or English on its own,” Duran said. “It’s about the totality of languages a child might bring.”

Providing Multitudes free of cost is important to schools with large numbers of low-income students. Dyslexia screeners cost about $10 per student, so $30 million might actually be cost-effective considering California currently serves 1.3 million students in kindergarten through second grade. The tool could pay for itself in a few years. Although there are plenty of screeners already available, they can stretch the budgets of high-poverty schools and districts.

“The least funded schools can’t access them because of the cost,” Duran said.

In addition to the governor, another powerful state lawmaker, Glendale Democratic state Sen. Anthony Portantino, is dyslexic. While chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, he has repeatedly, and unsuccessfully, authored legislation to require public schools to screen all students between kindergarten and second grade. 

Portantino’s 2021 bill received unanimous support in the Senate Education and Appropriations committees, but the bill died in the Assembly Education Committee. Portantino authored the same bill in 2020, but it never made it out of the state Senate.

“We should be leading the nation and not lagging behind,” Portantino said. 

Portantino blamed the failure of his most recent bill on former Democratic Assemblymember Patrick O’Donnell, who chaired the Assembly Education Committee, for refusing to hear the bill. 

“It’s no secret, Patrick O’Donnell was against teacher training,” Portantino said. “He thought our school districts and our educators didn’t have the capacity.”

O’Donnell did not respond to requests for comment. Since O’Donnell didn’t schedule a hearing on the bill, there is no record of him commenting about it at the time.

Portantino plans to author a nearly identical bill this year. He said he’s more hopeful because the Assembly Education Committee is now under the leadership of Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, a Democrat from Torrance. Muratsuchi would not comment on the potential fate of a dyslexia screening bill this year.

Levy now works as a professional advocate for parents of students with disabilities. She said without mandatory dyslexia screening, only parents who can afford to hire someone like her will be able to get the services they need for their children.

“A lot of high school kids are reading below third-grade level,” she said. “To me, that’s just heartbreaking.”

This was originally published on CalMatters.

A 13-year-old who can’t tell if $20 million is greater than $200,000.

A first grader who doesn’t recognize that the numeral 5 is greater than the numeral 3 if the 3 appears larger in size on their paper.

These are among the hallmarks of dyscalculia (pronounced dis-kal-KYOO-lee-uh), a learning disorder that hinders students’ ability in math, as they were observed in the classroom by long-time teachers. 

But educators who saw these types of limitations in their students through the years told The 74 they didn’t always know what they were seeing — or how to mitigate it. 

Toronto teacher Mufrida Nolan attributed some students’ difficulty with mathematics to a lack of confidence or foundational knowledge gaps. But some showed persistent problems, she said, including difficulty understanding place value — despite multiple explanations — or trouble memorizing basic math facts. 

“To support these students, I relied on general strategies like breaking concepts into smaller steps, using visual aids and providing extra practice,” she said. “These interventions were helpful to a degree, but they lacked the specificity needed to address the unique challenges of dyscalculia, which I didn’t understand at the time.”

Just as dyslexia disrupts areas of the brain related to reading, Roughly of students suffer from the condition, according to the Learning Disabilities Association of America.

Research indicates a link between the two: Children diagnosed with dyslexia are than those without a dyslexia diagnosis. 

Teachers say, too, that dyslexia, which affects , is far better understood, leaving them mostly on their own in combating the math disorder that’s evidenced by . 

Most of the educators who talked to The 74 said they first heard about dyscalculia in the early 2000s or 2010s, but said it didn’t start gaining traction until roughly three years ago, around the same time that teachers, policymakers and academic experts began to re-evaluate math instruction for all students in the face of COVID-era learning loss. 

Nolan and other educators from the United States and Canada have been meeting online since September in a group called “Overthink Tank” to share the latest research and best practices on this lesser-known disorder. 

Maureen Stewart, a seven-year Math for America Master Teacher — the nonprofit MfA was founded in 2004 to help retain and nurture outstanding New York City math educators — is grateful for the outlet. But, she said, identifying children as having the disorder is only the first step in helping them. 

“The label is really not as important as the strategy,” said Stewart, who works in Brooklyn and has 17 years of teaching experience. “We have to be aware as educators, what am I seeing in this child and what does it really mean? It’s not like a checklist, and if you have everything on this checklist, you therefore have this thing.”

Mathematician John Mighton, the founder of the curriculum JUMP Math, said research in cognitive science suggests the teaching methods that work best for students with dyscalculia also work best for almost all other students. This includes scaffolding concepts into manageable chunks and providing lots of opportunity for practice. 

But, he said, he agrees with teachers who say students with dyscalculia sometimes need something extra, adding it varies from one child to the next. 

“Most of the students I’ve taught who had dyscalculia just needed to go back to very basic foundational concepts and learn them properly,” he said. “Then they can surprise you in how quickly they progress. Because teachers usually don’t have time to do this work, some think that the missing thing is invariably difficult to find or remediate.”

Mighton said, too, that teachers should introduce concepts with generic or semi-abstract models and representations rather than those that are overly detailed or contextualized, meaning they should steer away from complex word problems and present materials more plainly. He added that the sequence of problems should become incrementally harder. 

Of course, dyscalculia is not the only challenge schools face in bolstering student achievement in math. Years of falling test scores have made K-12 learners’ lack of proficiency a full-scale emergency: It could as the world moves even more toward technology-focused jobs.

Dawn Pagliaro-Newman, also an MƒA Master Teacher in Brooklyn, learned of dyscalculia through her daughter, Olivia, a fifth grader who loves to cook and who hopes to one day work for NASA. 

Olivia attends a state-approved private school for students with learning disabilities where she said her teachers have equipped her with special tools to address dyscalculia. 

“It’s like you need certain things to help you get through math,” Olivia said, adding it often takes her extra time to finish assignments. “If there is a test on division, that will take me hours. It’s hard for me.”

Dawn Frank, who also teaches in Toronto, said children with dyscalculia have no flexibility with numbers. Most learners, when they come to understand that 5+5 = 10, will also realize that 5+6 = 5+5 +1, Frank said. 

Students with dyscalculia would not. 

A sixth grader, when multiplying 21 x 30 would understand that 20 x 30 = 600 and another 30 is 630, she said. But students with dyscalculia would follow a standard set of rules, or algorithm, for solving the problem, “and in doing so would work much harder,” she said. 

Some children also struggle with estimates. A second grader subtracts 4 from 20 and gets the answer 6 and does not see that this is not possible, Frank said. 

“Anxiety is a common response,” she said. “Students, when they are anxious, will often avoid math. They might try to go to the bathroom a lot. There are students who miss school because their anxiety is so high or they purposefully have some kind of issue in the class before or in recess that causes them to miss math class.” 

Children with dyscalculia, she said, also often have difficulty with time management and reading maps. 

Further complicating matters, there is no consensus on how many types of dyscalculia there are: some experts say four, others more. And even when a child is diagnosed with the disorder, that doesn’t guarantee they will qualify for services. 

, for example, that a clinical diagnosis of dyslexia, dysgraphia (a learning disability related to writing), or dyscalculia do not automatically qualify a student for special education programs and services — but that they are conditions that could qualify a student as having a learning disability.

Some families have tremendous difficulty in accessing the help their children need. Maryland-based attorney Nicole Joseph has represented some 800 students and their families in their fight for educational access in the past 20 years. Most suffer some combination of dyslexia, dysgraphia and dyscalculia, she said.

Part of the problem for children who struggle from math-related learning disabilities, Joseph said, is that teachers aren’t properly trained enough to help them — nor do they have sufficient time for the repetition and individual attention required. 

While the has clarified the need for — and that this is particularly critical for children who, like Joseph’s son, have dyslexia — there is less clarity around mathematics. 

Joseph said, too, that schools often fail to properly diagnose learning disabilities in well-behaved children, those who she called “bright, struggling and masking.” Part of her job is to help parents get a diagnosis — often through private psychologists — and to get schools to recognize their disability.

Despite these ongoing challenges, Pagliaro-Newman is hopeful about teachers’ growing understanding of the disorder. 

“Because discussions of dyslexia, autism, and other neurodivergence have become more commonplace, I find that parents and educators are now turning their attention to math,” she said.

Increased awareness and the development of better strategies might help some children avoid later pitfalls. While they will struggle with the disorder for life — like dyslexia, dyscalculia doesn’t go away — some can still achieve great heights in the subject with workarounds, teachers in the Overthink Tank group told The 74. 

“I am very excited about the conversations that are being had in the education community about how best to support these learners — as well as the questions being asked regarding much-needed research and funding,” Pagliaro-Newman said. 

LINCOLN —��A first-of-its-kind statewide report related to reading and dyslexia for Nebraska K-12 students shows strides in addressing literacy as policymakers see room for improvement.

The Nebraska Department of Education submitted its on Sept. 3 as required under . State Sen. Lou Ann Linehan of Elkhorn shepherded the legislation through in 2023 as a from that began assessing K-3 students three times a year to get them on individualized reading improvement plans and supports earlier, if needed. In 2017, the Legislature “dyslexia” in state law.

LB 298 requires each public school in the state to report the number of students in the 2023-24 academic year who were:

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

• Tested for a specific learning disability in the area of reading, including tests that identify characteristics of dyslexia and the results of such tests.
• Identified as having a reading issue, including dyslexia, pursuant to assessments under the Nebraska Reading Improvement Act, which Linehan passed in 2018.
• Identified as having a reading issue who have shown growth on the measure used to identify the reporting issue.

“Things only get measured in government if somebody’s watching, and you have to have somebody watching,” Linehan told the Nebraska Examiner of the report.

Breaking down the report

The data indicates that of 10,225 public K-12 students ages 3 to 21 who were tested last year for a specific learning disability in the area of reading, 4,747 students (46.43%) were eligible for special education services.

However, the department cautions that the term “specific learning disability” is broad and consists of various distinct areas in which a child might need additional support to meet state standards: oral expression, written expression, basic reading skills, reading fluency, reading comprehension, mathematics calculation and mathematics problem solving.

“In sum, there is currently not a clean and clear way to fully identify the number of students with a specific learning disability in reading,” the report states.

There is also great variance in what “universal screeners” are used across school districts to assess students in grades K-3, with up to 13 different screeners used across the state’s 244 school districts.

In the 2023-24 academic year, 23,814 students in grades K-3 —��more than a quarter of all K-3 students —��were on a reading improvement plan. Of those, 22,538 students (94.64%) were reported to improve during the year.

Elizabeth Tegtmeier of North Platte, president of the Nebraska State Board of Education, which oversees the Education Department, said the report to the Legislature had “fallen short” of her expectations. She said she and the board expected a “serious and detailed audit.”

Linehan, who has dyslexia, said until that breakdown was publicly available, “I don’t think you’re going to find out what schools are actually addressing this and which schools still need more help in identifying it.”

District-specific data

The Examiner and Linehan requested data broken down by district, excluding data concealed for federal privacy reasons.

Of 196 districts, for example, more than 50% of K-3 students were on a reading improvement plan in 20 districts. In contrast, fewer than 10% of K-3 students were on a reading plan in eight districts. The median was 28.2% of K-3 students on a reading plan in each district. The department masked data for 48 districts for privacy reasons.

The districts with the highest percentage of students on a reading improvement plan were Umo N Ho N Nation Public Schools (75.93%), Bayard Public Schools (66.23%), Southern School District 1 (59.79%), Maxwell Public Schools (59.62%) and Kimball Public Schools (59.35%).

The districts with the lowest percentage of students on a reading improvement plan were�� Norfolk Public Schools (5.45%), Gordon-Rushville Public Schools (6.1%), Johnson County Central Public Schools (7.3%), Tekamah-Herman Community Schools (7.33%) and Seward Public Schools (7.97%).

Six school districts reported a greater than 100% improvement rate, which David Jespersen, a department spokesperson, was likely due to “uncertainty” about the various parameters in the first year of reporting.

The report showed 100 districts reported 100% growth, while no reported growth percentage was shown for 54 districts.

The five school districts with the lowest reported growth percentage were: Ralston Public Schools (23.32%), Madison Public Schools (36.49%), South Sioux City Community Schools (39.22%), East Butler Public Schools (50%) and McCook Public Schools (50.85%).

However, the department cautioned that one growth point on one screener might not equate to the same growth on another assessment.

“It is difficult to interpret the significance of the reported student growth based upon the 2024 data collection,” the report states.

Linehan said that district-specific data is important in part because when she in 2017, with former State Sen. Patty Pansing Brooks of Lincoln, multiple teachers and superintendents said they had never taught a student with dyslexia.

‘Bottom line, it’s a journey’

Linehan said the data can also show that the department understands the state has a problem and needs to prioritize where funds go.

David Jespersen, a spokesperson for the Education Department, said that while the department can’t “fully verify” that all school districts are following the three annual assessment periods, “we have no reason to believe they were not.”

The state-level funding is designed to employ to support teachers who teach children from age 4 to third grade how to read. Linehan passed the appropriation in this year.

Tim Royers, a teacher in Millard Public Schools, and president of the Nebraska State Education Association that represents teachers, agreed the report indicates progress but said it is “certainly not job done.”

He said expanded training opportunities for staff, parents and other stakeholders is needed to provide holistic support to students.

“Bottom line, it’s a journey,” Royers said. “There’s definitely some evidence of progress there but we feel that there’s still work to be done.”

For the 2023-24 academic year, ranged from seven students in McPherson County Schools to 15,411 students in Omaha Public Schools. The median enrollment was 100 K-3 students per district. Total enrollment ranged from 52 to 51,693 students, with a median of 379.

Improving data collection and literacy

In a to Nebraska Education Commissioner Brian Maher, Linehan and State Sen. Dave Murman of Glenvil, the Legislature’s Education Committee chair, pointed to a report from the .

It stated that third-grade reading proficiency can be a significant indicator of later academic success, including graduation and college-going rates.

Linehan and Murman said the department should also consider doing away with a specific part of the department’s rule on special education services. They pointed to a subjective “environmental, cultural or economic disadvantage” that could be impacting a student’s learning but doesn’t qualify them for a “specific learning disability.”

The Education Department suggested various ways to improve data collection, such as:

• Adding clear language to specify the total number of students evaluated for any form of a specific learning disability, including reevaluation.
• Implementing clear guidelines for categorizing students identified with a specific learning disability, the total number of which is broken down into:
  • Number of students with a primary disability in reading (in two brackets —��age 3 to third grade, fourth grade to age 21).
  • Number of students evaluated but not identified as having a disability in reading.
  • Number of students identified with having a disability in another area.

“Without early support, the gap between dyslexic students and their peers can widen, making it harder to catch up later,” the report states.

The report states that policymakers, educators and stakeholders must collaborate to address the identified gaps.

“By refining data collection processes, enhancing instructional strategies and providing adequate resources, we can better support our students and advance literacy outcomes across the state, the department writes.

The future of literacy policy

Linehan has advocated throughout her eight years in the Legislature for students with dyslexia. This is her final year in the Legislature because of term limits.

She and Murman suggested the department offer insight into demographics, performance on reading evaluations, types of evidence-based reading interventions deployed and criteria for student progress.

Royers said “the gift of time” is important for teachers when screening can be time intensive, especially in kindergarten or early grades when students might begin to develop coping mechanisms. For example, a student might memorize sight words or a combination of shapes that could mean “cat” that a teacher might not catch without one-on-one intervention.

“We know what the playbook is, but it takes a lot of investment at a one-on-one level in order to execute the playbook properly,” Royers said of young students.

Royers said giving educators more time, or bringing in support staff, would be most helpful to join the spirit of recent legislation to be proactive.

One of Linehan’s fears is not catching children as early as possible, which she agreed is difficult. Teachers see a range of students, with some already able to read a book, while others haven’t yet learned the alphabet.

Linehan said new funds should be invested in staff, not “the newest curriculum out there.”

The State Board of Education and Legislature should also collaborate for accountability, she said. For example, they should seek more specific information about the use of new teaching coaches: specific goals, such as the number of coaches needed and how many teachers the state should support.

Tegtmeier said the Education Department will continue to , particularly with a to improve third grade reading proficiency to 75% by 2030. For the , were proficient on state assessments.

“Literacy remains a board priority with significant amounts of resources devoted to it,” Tegtmeier said. “It is imperative that guidelines and regulations from NDE accompany the assessment requirement to ensure consistency throughout the state. Our students, parents and taxpayers deserve no less.”

A review of Nebraska’s 244 school districts for offers insights into proficiency in English Language Arts for K-12 students statewide. There were new “cut scores” to define “proficiency” in this subject area�� that the Nebraska Department of Education said “better reflect student achievement in Nebraska when compared to students nationally.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nebraska Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Cate Folsom for questions: info@nebraskaexaminer.com. Follow Nebraska Examiner on and .

Then came her dyslexia diagnosis. 

My husband and I explained to her, “Mi amor, not everyone’s brain is wired the same way, and yours is having a hard time putting letters and sounds together. This isn’t your fault.”

I told this guidance counselor about my frustration. I knew the most important indicator of lifelong success is the ability to read, and reading-related learning challenges are common. Yet schools aren’t set up to support these students. It didn’t make sense.

Individual instruction is the best way for struggling readers to catch up, but affordable options were hard to come by.

“You’re just a mom,” he said, dismissively. “There’s nothing you can do.” 

I wouldn’t just give up and hope my daughter would eventually read well enough to get by. 

Most kids don’t learn to read alone, and no child should be expected to somehow figure it out. My family became a team, navigating this challenge together: switching schools multiple times, finding specialized centers, doing hours of research. I sold my business so I could dedicate myself to Lucy — scheduling intensive instructional intervention while ensuring she could be a kid. I started a book club for her and went to soccer and swimming lessons so she could see her friends. 

Today, Lucy is an honor roll high school student and a strong reader. But getting here was a lonely, humbling road. I heard people talking about my kid having “a problem.” I was doing everything I could, but doing it alone was so difficult. It’s partly why I founded here in Miami in 2020. I know what it’s like to have a struggling child and little guidance. And I now know from experience, it doesn’t have to be like that. 

The Lucy Project is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit advocating for and providing science-backed reading instruction. A full-time team of five — curriculum specialist, operations director, learning specialist, executive assistant and me — runs the show. We have school partnerships, teacher training programs and one-on-one lessons. Five part-time learning specialists are fully trained by my team. In October, we’ll hire six more. 

Our first chair was also a mom whose child has dyslexia. Currently, half of the board comprises moms in similar situations, bringing firsthand experience and dedication. While I lead as CEO, I’m a parent who spends ample time guiding parents with emotional support and effective resources so the whole family will thrive. Our goal is to create a replicable, scalable model that serves all children.

The Lucy Project has served more than 375 students from 36 Miami-Dade schools and has worked with four Title I schools in underserved communities: Kinlock Park, W.J. Bryan, Goulds and Norwood elementary schools.

The project harnesses the Science of Reading to enhance literacy skills among children, particularly in underserved communities. It’s the backbone of The Lucy Project’s professional learning and student programs, as Science of Reading moves everyone forward. It is crucial for many and essential for some. 

Lessons are fun, interactive and responsive to each student’s changing needs. Learning specialists break down reading and spelling into smaller skills and help students build on them over time. Early intervention is everything. While the majority of second- and third-graders reached grade-level proficiency within one school year, remediation makes the biggest impact in kindergarten. 

Norwood Elementary’s partnership launched the first Literacy Hub, which included summer professional learning for two kindergarten teachers and coaching throughout the year. All students engaged in Structured Literacy lessons in small groups, and those who needed focused support received it one-on-one. At the start of the 2023 school year, 52% of kindergartners were on grade level. By year’s end, that number was .

The Lucy Project also hosts seminars, apprenticeships and professional learning that have empowered more than 100 teachers so they can empower their students. Our team helps Miami-Dade students access daily reading remediation and provides parents with emotional support, guidance through the school system,and referrals to appropriate agencies.

We provide income-based private tutoring on a sliding scale, depending on household income. A mix of corporate and individual donors and grants from foundations fund these programs and make financial assistance possible for families in need. 

To catalyze cutting-edge literacy education, The Lucy Project is hosting a conference, , on July 30. Featuring nationally recognized experts in structured literacy education from leading universities like Stanford and Yale, the event is open to educators and families, who can . The idea is to empower South Florida families and the whole community with practical teaching strategies that provide results.

Having this type of community support network for students and families. It takes a team to ensure every child learns to read and succeed in life. Together, school administrators, educators, literacy specialists, nonprofits, parents and caregivers, and funders who collaborate are a force that can change the world. 

It’s time to start thinking like a team. Because we are.

LINCOLN — When Millard North High School junior Janae Harris was in second grade, she read to a kindergarten class but kept getting stuck on words.

The teacher continually corrected her, Janae said, and told her she “needed to learn how to read” before she read to another class.

“I was embarrassed, and to this day it is terrifying to read out loud, and I continuously struggle to overcome it,” Janae told the Legislature’s Education Committee on Monday. “This moment will replay in my head forever.”

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

Janae, who is in Millard’s STEM Academy and is captain of her school’s girl’s lacrosse team, among other involvements, has dyslexia. She testified in support of to create a Dyslexia Research Grant Program for new technologies.

“I want to do everything in my power to minimize the struggles of dyslexic students,” Janae said.

‘Proficient, capable communicator’

State Sen. Lou Ann Linehan of Elkhorn, who introduced the bill, also has dyslexia and has to . The proposed research program would set aside $1 million for Nebraska businesses researching artificial-intelligence-based writing assistance for individuals with dyslexia.

Linehan told the Nebraska Examiner that some educators have long discredited the lifelong disorder or cast it off as having to do with a student’s IQ or intelligence. She herself has struggled with the disorder, recalling how “horrified” she felt before her 1995 interview to work for then-U.S. Senate candidate Chuck Hagel.

She said she worried about whether she could communicate and whether Hagel would understand.

“I finally just told him, and he said, ‘Well, that’s easy. We’ll just get somebody to proof all your stuff,’ which is what we did,” Linehan said. “Then I got to the point where I was proofing things because somebody showed me how to have a tool so that I could become proficient.”

Linehan later served as Hagel’s campaign manager and his chief of staff in the U.S. Senate and said the impact of such research could be “huge.”

“This program could take a student who was afraid to write, afraid to communicate, struggling through college, and turn them into a proficient, capable communicator,” Linehan said.

It’s estimated that as many as 15%-20% of the world’s population has dyslexia, according to the .

‘Fully partake’ in learning

In the past year, a group of University of Nebraska-Lincoln college students working in this field approached Linehan to discuss their fledgling business, Dyslexico, which they started about two years ago in the , based on the experiences of one of its co-founders, Grace Clausen.

Clausen, who has dyslexia, grew up in a school system that didn’t always work for her, according to fellow Dyslexico co-founder Bridget Peterkin of Omaha.

Peterkin said corrective writing tools — from Word or Google Docs to Grammarly — do not always work, and other AI-based models, such as ChatGPT, may add words a writer didn’t intend.

In one example Peterkin showed to the Examiner, a student wrote “wondering” when they meant “wandering.” In another, the student wrote “I say a figure” instead of “saw.”

“It was never going to catch that because it was spelled correctly,” Peterkin, a senior computer science major at UNL, said of other spelling or grammar programs.

Unlike other programs, the Dyslexico software is powered through AI but finds a middle ground in not rewriting sentences, as ChatGPT did to grow with users over time and provide analysis that Peterkin and her team said might be able to help educators.

“We want to have a solution for the schools that helps students have the support to get their spelling and grammar correct while they can maintain their original voice and be able to fully partake in the learning process,” Peterkin said.

Another Nebraska-born startup that got its has grown to international success: , which has  a goal of “building the future of sports” with video and data entry.

Getting into students’ hands

Tristan Curd of Omaha, Dyslexico project manager and a senior computer science major at UNL, said Dyslexico has gotten into the hands of students and successfully launched with a public beta version last year. Dyslexico is also .

In the last year, Dyslexico entered agreements with two schools for test runs, providing developers with some feedback from The Pittsburgh New Church School for Children with Dyslexia and Millard Public Schools.

“There’s always going to be that distinction between us developing it and the actual users using it,” Curd said. “To get that info, it’s big.”

The company is also in talks to partner with Services for Students with Disabilities at UNL. Pablo Rangel, a disability specialist with SSD, testified before the Education Committee Monday in support in his individual capacity.

‘Independence and autonomy’

Rangel, who has dyslexia, said he could have benefited from such a program. He said Dyslexico could better prepare all K-12 students for college.

“The Dyslexico software does for individuals with dyslexia what prosthetics do for people who are missing a part of their body,” Rangel said. “It supports independence and autonomy for a person to move forward where typically they might retreat and give up.”

Colby Coash, on behalf of the Nebraska Association of School Boards and the Educational Service Unit Coordinating Commission, also testified in support of LB 1253.

Nick Lauver of Papillion, a business development associate for Dyslexico and a senior actuarial science and finance double major at UNL, said the company has already heard about some successes from educators, which have been “some of the brightest points” in the software’s development.

‘Redundant and unnecessary’

Megan Pitrat, a 10-year special education teacher in Syracuse, testified in opposition to LB 1253 on behalf of the Nebraska State Education Association. She said that while dyslexia is a problematic disorder, there are already systems in place to help students.

“I believe that allocating funds to research something that is already being serviced within the functioning system is redundant, unnecessary and a waste of precious funds that could instead be used to support teachers and systems that, as always, do the best with what we are given,” Pitrat testified.

State Sens. Lynne Walz of Fremont and Justin Wayne of Omaha tried to draw a distinction between NSEA’s testimony and LB 1253’s intent, which they said is to research and create but not demand the use of such technology. Pitrat said she would probably not use such technology and did not anticipate it being helpful.

“With all due respect, it’s not about you, it’s about the student,” Wayne said.

“OK, but as a practitioner, I’m determining, based on my experiences and my practice, how to deliver special education services to my students,” Pitrat responded.

‘Panacea’ or ‘game changing’

After the hearing, the NSEA referred questions to Tim Royers, president of the Millard Education Association, who clarified that the NSEA’s opposition comes in wanting to raise cautions and warn against framing such technologies as a “panacea.”

“We have concerns about digital, especially AI tools, being put in the driver’s seat to try and work on something that is as challenging to work on as dyslexia,” Royers told the Examiner.

He said the amount of time he’s lost by getting trained on tools that ended up being shelved after “two months tops” was a net loss for his time working with students.

Curd said Dyslexico wants to work with the Nebraska Department of Education on a large-scale research study in schools next year and aims to help an estimated 295,000 Nebraskans with dyslexia.

“If we can get it in the hands of the youngest people possible and make an impact that lasts throughout their lives, that’d be huge,” Curd said.

Janae Harris said she participated independently with Dyslexico and described the software as “game changing.” She said her “fervent hope” is that LB 1253 helps get Dyslexico into the hands of more students.

“Without the ability to read and write, Nebraska youth cannot be productive citizens and reach success,” Janae said. “Who knows what others could achieve with the help of this grant.”

The committee took no immediate action on LB 1253.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to clarify Janae Harris’ experiences with Dyslexico and the number of Nebraskans the company aims to help.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nebraska Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Cate Folsom for questions: info@nebraskaexaminer.com. Follow Nebraska Examiner on and .

State lawmakers plan to require that all students be tested for dyslexia and other reading challenges, but the hurdles ahead point to a bigger problem with how California’s public schools teach reading.

Before teachers can screen their students, they themselves need to be trained both in how to use the screening tests and how to help the students who get identified as struggling readers. Many experts and educators say most public school teachers in California weren’t adequately trained to teach students how to read.

“Nobody goes into teaching to mess up a kid’s life,” said Leslie Zoroya, a teacher coach specializing in literacy at the Los Angeles County Office of Education. “Teachers do think they’re teaching kids to read. But when you look at the data, it’s telling us that is not the case.”

Across the state, only about 42% of third-graders met or exceeded English language arts standards last year.

The mandatory dyslexia screening policy was a part of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s  released last week, which allocated $1 million to form a panel of experts who would compile a list of reliable screening tools as well as determine the types of training needed for teachers. The proposal seeks to screen all students between kindergarten and second grade starting in the 2025-26 school year.

The policy proposal comes after several legislative efforts, , to require dyslexia screening in California’s public schools. They failed largely due to . The statewide teachers union argued the practice of screening all students would disproportionately push English learners into special education and said the legislation needs to provide more resources for teachers.

The union did not respond to questions for this story about the types of support and training teachers need. But for some experts, the fact that teachers even need training to help students who struggle with reading illustrates just how far behind California is in literacy instruction.

“We’re going to need a lot more training,” Zoroya said. “This needs to be a statewide effort.”

The problem is twofold, according to experts. First, most of California’s public school districts use reading curricula based on “balanced literacy,” an approach to reading instruction based on the idea that children are natural readers. It relies on exposure to books and the enjoyment of reading with less of an emphasis on sounding out words. Second, the experts say, teacher preparation programs don’t train teachers enough in “structured literacy” or “the science of reading,” which focuses heavily on phonemic awareness and phonics — the practice of matching letters to sounds and sounding out words. 

Betina Hsieh, the chair of the teacher education program at Cal State Long Beach, said balanced literacy curricula do include some phonics and argued that the balanced literacy approach works for most students. 

“No one is saying that phonics and phonemic awareness is not important,” she said. “The thing is, it only gets you so far.”

But Hsieh agrees that all younger students should be screened for dyslexia and reading challenges and that teachers need to be trained. But she expressed frustration that there’s already so much material squeezed into teacher credentialing programs.

Zoroya argues that if teachers had been better trained in phonics instruction, dyslexia screeners would be a natural extension of their instruction. Because screeners test students’ ability to pair letters to sounds, a teacher who is adept in phonics will have an easier time navigating not just screening but helping students overcome their reading challenges.

“This work is too important for adults to be out here arguing,” she said. “We have too many kids coming out of elementary school not being able to read well.”

Too little phonics

Zoroya, who trains teachers across the 80 school districts in Los Angeles County, said most elementary school teachers don’t know how to teach reading through “structured literacy.” The approach’s focus on phonics enables students to sound out unfamiliar words. 

Across California, students typically learn reading by being exposed to text and being read to in the classroom. Teachers focus on cultivating a love of reading as opposed to a more systematic instruction in letter sounds. While most students are able to learn reading through the former method, many are left behind. Dyslexia, a neurological condition that causes difficulty reading, affects about  people across the country. 

According to experts, the fact that California is  that doesn’t screen all students for dyslexia is a symptom of the broader problem of how public schools in the state teach reading. For educators, reading instruction remains hotly debated. 

“It reminds me a bit of politics right now,” Zoroya said. “Even reading is very polarized.”

The debates over reading instruction have a deep and contentious history, which some refer to as “the reading wars.” In California, the “balanced literacy” approach  in the reading wars. But teachers and parents  have spoken out against it, calling it a well-intentioned but  to teach reading. 

Santiago Cuevas, a first grade teacher at San Francisco Unified’s Lafayette Elementary, said he received hardly any training in phonics instruction while earning his credential at San Francisco State University. He had to study the concepts of the “science of reading” on his own to pass the , one of the requirements for a teaching credential. The assessment tests prospective teachers’ ability to develop a reading curriculum, ranging from phonics to reading comprehension. 

Cuevas said he was lucky to get hired at a school that happened to be committed to teaching phonics. But for most other teachers, the material they studied to pass the reading instruction assessment becomes an afterthought because their districts use balanced literacy.

“The RICA is just one of the things on the checklist to becoming a teacher,” Cuevas said. “It’s kind of strange how we didn’t talk about the science of reading at all at SF State.”

Margaret Goldberg, a literacy coach in West Contra Costa Unified, said not only are most teachers using faulty curricula, they’re also not assessing their students enough between kindergarten and second grade. Statewide literacy data is only available starting in third grade. But because students show signs of reading challenges as early as kindergarten, teachers need to take reading instruction seriously as early as age 5, she said. 

“In some ways, it feels very comfortable to primary grade teachers who say their students will catch up later,” Goldberg said. “So it can be very uncomfortable when we put a universal screening measure in place.”

That discomfort materialized in the fight to mandate screening for dyslexia in California. The California Teachers Association, the state’s largest teachers union,  for multiple years despite a chorus of literacy experts calling for early screening for all students. The union said the legislation lacked details around what types of training teachers would need and how often students should be screened. 

Cuevas said teachers who are more comfortable with phonics and the science of reading will be much more comfortable screening students. 

He said, for example, if a student had a hard time saying the word “chair,” the balanced literacy approach would recommend just giving that child more books about chairs. But a teacher with training in structured literacy and phonics instruction has a more systematic approach that includes more testing and targeted instruction.

“It just seems like everyone’s trying to kick the can down the road,” Cuevas said. “With the science of reading, you just think differently.”

A necessary change

Goldberg and Cuevas agree that teachers, even those supportive of balanced literacy, have the best intentions. But they said that the shift toward mandatory screening should be accompanied by a shift toward more phonics instruction.

Goldberg said teachers first need to understand why screening matters. She said teachers typically see assessments as punitive and burdensome, but tests used to detect dyslexia and other reading challenges are a tool for improving instruction. Teachers might not understand why the tests ask students to sound out nonsense words, but Goldberg said sounding out random clusters of letters is the best way to detect whether a student will struggle with reading. 

“They seem like arbitrary tasks,” she said. “Once you understand why each measure is important, administering the screeners is actually quite simple.”

School and district administrators also need to embrace these shifts. Meghan Trutter, a reading intervention specialist in the San Jose area, said teachers who learn about the science of reading later in their careers often tell her “this is what I needed all along.” 

But Trutter said she’s concerned about whether districts will support teachers with the right curricula once the state mandates screening. If teachers aren’t given the necessary textbooks and materials to teach phonics, screening will be a pointless exercise.

“If the district executives don’t get it, they’re going to be another roadblock,” she said. “I can see teachers saying ‘We’ve identified the problems, now what?’ The district might say ‘I don’t know.’”

However, educators say there’s some much needed changes coming to teacher credentialing programs. A law signed in 2021 requires programs to teach the science of reading approach . 

“I believe new teachers that are coming out of these programs are going to be better equipped to teach students how to read,” said Mara Smith, a reading specialist with the L.A. County Office of Education who helped revise California’s standards for teacher credentialing.

Long-term obstacles

The overhaul necessary in higher education will be easier said than done, according to some professors. Hsieh, at Cal State Long Beach, said one issue is the segregation of special education and general education programs. 

She said prospective teachers in general education programs don’t get the training they need in phonics because those skills are more intensely taught in special education programs that focus on working with struggling students. 

Another problem is the short length of teacher training programs. Elementary and middle school teachers earn the same multiple-subject credential. Their training spans instruction for kindergarten through eighth grade. Hsieh says this leaves little wiggle room for changes to teacher-training curricula.

“We’re working on being flexible and adaptive, but it’s challenging,” she said. “There’s so much that’s being demanded of teachers.”

And it’s not just classroom teachers and district administrators who are entrenched in balanced literacy. Most professors teaching in California’s credentialing programs are also committed to the approach, according to Kathy Futterman, a professor at Cal State East Bay. She said most professors aren’t sufficiently trained in structured literacy.

“I don’t know how many professors and instructors have themselves mastered structured literacy,” she said. “I feel like I’ve been swimming upstream and swimming solo for a long time.”

Futterman said the push for structured literacy as well as for mandatory screening started as a grassroots movement among parents and classroom teachers. But without a more systemic transformation, reading instruction in California will remain a patchwork, she said.

“We are heading in the right direction,” Futterman said. “Now we have to make sure everybody can be on board.”

This story was originally published on .

For years, the California Teachers Association has opposed universal dyslexia screening for students, helping to defeat legislation that would have mandated it. And yet, many classroom teachers are advocating for all students to be tested. 

As another possible legislative battle looms, the statewide teachers union’s opposition to mandatory screening continues to frustrate many educators. According to classroom teachers across the state, the California Teachers Association’s position will perpetuate a “wait-to-fail” approach to reading instruction that forces educators to sit by while students fall further and further behind.

Dyslexia is a neurological condition that causes difficulties with reading and affects  in the United States. But early screening and support can mitigate or even prevent illiteracy stemming from the learning disability.

Officials at Decoding Dyslexia CA, a grassroots advocacy group, say hundreds, if not thousands, of teachers working with students who struggle with reading support universal screening. The California Teachers Association doesn’t understand the benefits of screening all students for dyslexia, said Megan Potente, one of the co-directors of Decoding Dyselxia CA. 

“I think there’s some misinformation,” Potente said. “Some of the reasons for their opposition aren’t supported by the research.”

Doug Rich, a veteran teacher and reading specialist at San Francisco Unified, said he’s “gone rogue” and started screening all of his students for signs of dyslexia. He said testing is relatively quick — taking less than 10 minutes — but the results are crucial.

The test results can tell him where his students are struggling, whether it be sounding out letters or recognizing words. If all students were screened in kindergarten, Rich says, fewer would end up working with him.

“We know so much about dyslexia,” he said. “We know the underlying causes. We have these simple tools that are efficient and accurate.”

Reading instructors, education experts and neuroscientists all agree: early screening is one of the best ways to mitigate or even prevent the illiteracy that can be caused by dyslexia. Despite having some of the best experts in the field of dyslexia research, California remains  that doesn’t require universal screening.

That’s not for lack of trying. State , a Democrat from Glendale who’s dyslexic, tried and failed twice in the past three years to pass legislation that would have mandated universal screening for students in kindergarten through second grade. In February, he said he is trying .

Although it has not taken a position on the latest bill, the California Teachers Association opposed Portantino’s last two bills. Claudia Briggs, a spokesperson for the union, said the association’s leadership team believed that bills would have caused “.” The association’s position is that universal screening will take valuable time away from instruction and may misidentify English learners as dyslexic by mistaking their lack of fluency in English for a learning disability. Briggs said the union would decide its position on the new bill in March.

Potente is optimistic about this year’s bill. It has 33 co-authors, more than double that of last year’s bill. 

If the bill gets to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk, it’s not clear whether he’ll sign it. Newsom, who’s also dyslexic, supported dyslexia research by funding UCSF’s Dyslexia Center to the tune of $28 million in recent years. In 2021, he published a children’s book based on his childhood experiences. His office, however, declined to comment on whether he supports universal screening.

In response to the union’s objections, a chorus of experts and classroom teachers, backed by a well-established body of research, contradict its arguments. CalMatters interviewed 10 teachers from across California who said screening students early prevents students from needing more intensive services when they’re older. They also said universal screening would prevent English learners from being referred to special education because it would allow teachers to remedy early signs of reading challenges.

“Teachers are already spending an overabundance of time using other horrible assessments for reading,” Rich said, referring to tests for reading comprehension or vocabulary. “And they’re not getting good information.”

A patchwork of screening

Some districts, like Pleasanton Unified in the Bay Area, already screen all students in kindergarten, first and second grades. In other districts, top officials encourage screening all students but haven’t adopted a universal screening policy. 

Jennie Johnson, a reading intervention teacher for the Lancaster School District, 50 miles north of Los Angeles, said the district is in its first year of screening all students. It’s also training teachers on how to use the results from the screening to refine reading instruction. 

Universal screening is even more critical now because pandemic-era learning loss resulted in so many students reading below grade level, Johnson said. Half of the fifth graders at her school are currently reading at a third grade level.

“We are not surprised by the lack of literacy because that’s where our school typically is,” she said. “But the number of fourth and fifth grade students reading below grade level is alarming this year.”

In other districts, it’s up to individual teachers to advocate for screening their students. Kristen Koeller, a reading intervention teacher in the Cupertino Union School District, said she has to be strategic about which students get screening. When she recommends a student for a dyslexia screening, she said her supervisors encourage her to use other reading assessments that have been purchased as a part of the district’s reading curriculum. She said this ultimately discourages teachers from using screeners that haven’t been approved by district officials.

While district-approved assessments can help determine a student’s reading level, Koeller said they don’t test whether a student is at risk of dyslexia. 

“You can be a bit of a rebel,” Koeller said. “But you can’t just go around thumbing your nose at your boss. I just continue to advocate respectfully for the change I’d like to see.”

Decoding Dyslexia CA includes a coalition of teachers like Koeller who are willing to buck both district policies as well as the California Teachers Association. They lobby state lawmakers and sponsored Portantino’s universal screening bills. 

By at least one measure, most California voters support these efforts. A  found that 87% of the state’s voters are in favor of a policy requiring universal early screening. 

Without a mandate, teachers say, whether a dyslexic student learns to read will be left to chance. That approach deepens inequities, as some students have parents who can afford private assessments and tutoring. But those who lack the resources are much more likely to become illiterate adults. 

“I see this as a huge social justice issue,” said Lori DePole, also a co-director of Decoding Dyslexia CA. “This ‘wait-to-fail’ model that we’re using in California is unacceptable.”

The California School Psychologists Association also supports screening all students between kindergarten and second grade, saying a small investment of resources earlier in a child’s education can pay off exponentially. 

“If you catch them young, you can implement interventions that may prevent them from needing more intensive services later,” said Melanee Cottrill, executive director of the .

The importance of early screening

Kristina Delgadillo, a middle school special education teacher at Visalia Unified in the San Joaquin Valley, said she regularly works with students who could have learned to read if they had been screened earlier. She said screening younger students is worth the relatively small time investment.

“I’ve been assessing too many kids for the first time in fourth, fifth and sixth grade when I should have already been providing them services,” she said. “I see kids fall through the cracks.”

Delgadillo cited  that found that it takes an additional 30 minutes a day for a kindergarten or first grade student with dyslexia to read at grade level. But if a student waits until fourth grade to be screened, it takes two hours a day.

Echoing the concerns of school psychologists, education experts say teachers can mitigate the illiteracy caused by dyslexia if they can detect the warning signs early. Even third grade can be too late, as students go from “learning to read to reading to learn” in other subject areas. If teachers can’t get students reading at grade level by then, it means they’ll struggle with reading textbooks in social studies or word problems in math class.

“Students don’t want to be in a classroom if they can’t read,” said Jordan Paxhia, a special education teacher at San Francisco Unified. While effective reading instruction on its own can’t ensure a student’s success, universal screening is a crucial step to making sure all students can read at grade level.

“Literacy may not be a panacea, but it certainly would give students more of a chance,” Paxhia said.

Teachers say screening English learners is even more urgent. If left unaddressed, dyslexia could delay students’ acquisition of English while they struggle to read their native language as well. And because they aren’t diagnostic tools, a red flag on a dyslexia screener won’t mean a student will be sent immediately to special education. If a dyslexia screener detects a student is struggling with reading, a teacher will spend more time with the student. From there, the teacher and the school can provide more resources and services if necessary.

“I’m not overly concerned about false positives,” Paxhia said. “It doesn’t mean they have dyslexia. And isn’t that a better use of our time than letting something go unnoticed?”

It’s harder to reverse the damage for a student who isn’t screened early. High school and middle school teachers know this best.

Holly Johnson teaches ninth grade English at Santiago High School in Garden Grove. She works with students who read below grade level, but by the time they arrive in her classroom it’s too late to remedy the effects of dyslexia. She doesn’t know for sure how many of her students have dyslexia, but she said it’s clear that they never got the help that would have been provided had they been screened earlier.

“Screening can be done in high school, but it’s so difficult,” she said. “Their relationship with school and their narrative has already been built.”

Research shows that failing to read at grade level can have ripple effects for a student’s academic success as well as their mental health. Students who can’t read will struggle across all subjects in school. They’re less likely to  and tend to  once they enter the labor force. But in the short term, illiteracy leads to anger and hopelessness for Johnson’s students.

“Rather than being embarrassed about reading, they’ll pick a fight with the teacher,” Johnson said. “That’s more cool than everyone knowing you can’t read.”

A failure to screen students and help them in earlier grades means high school teachers like Johnson must not only teach them how to read but how to rebuild their identities as students.

“If we can get these kids diagnosed, their problems won’t be as big,” she said. “All of it can be nipped in the bud.”

This story was originally published by .

Kate was ultimately diagnosed with dyslexia, and the ensuing years of private school and tutors it took to get her the help she needed shaped the lives of both her parents. In Baton Rouge, Laura opened a charter school for students with dyslexia. In Washington, the moderate Republican advocates for changes in federal policy. 

Now ranking member of the Senate education committee, Sen. Cassidy has a powerful perch from which to draw attention to a reading disability that affects an estimated Americans. “At some point you’ve got to concede that the status quo is not working,” he told The 74. “If you look at reading scores, they’ve not budged.”

But student achievement hasn’t budged much at Louisiana Key Academy either. The school, which Laura Cassidy co-founded in 2013, has never earned higher than an F in the state’s school grading system. Its performance score this year — based mostly on state test results — is 39.9, compared to a .

At the same time, the school has won praise for providing targeted, foundational literacy instruction for students who were grade levels behind in their traditional schools. Parents whose children failed to develop reading skills in district schools, even with special education, have watched them gain confidence and earn good grades at Key. The state board recently granted the charter approval to expand to two additional sites and add a high school. 

“There is huge demand for Key Academy,” said Caroline Roemer, executive director of the Louisiana Association of Public Charter Schools. But though the school is clearly filling a void, officials shouldn’t let up on holding charters like Key accountable for students’ progress, she said.

“We will never say choice is enough,” she said. Academic improvement should also be the objective, she said, bluntly adding that it’s important for schools to find “the balance between the power of choice [and] the expectation that the goal is to suck less.”

The earlier, the better 

At a time of heightened interest in how children learn to read, the Cassidys’ combined work demonstrates the challenges — and also, the paradoxes — facing families with dyslexic children and the schools they attend.

To Laura Cassidy, a retired surgeon, the F on the state’s report card is not a reflection of dyslexic students’ ability to learn. Many arrive in third, fourth and fifth grade when parents realize they aren’t catching up with their peers. 

“After January, most traditional schools teach to the [state test], and we don’t do that. We’re trying to produce fluent readers,” she said. “The earlier they come to our school, the better because they’re in an environment where they’re like, ‘Oh, OK, I’m not the only one who was struggling with this and I’m not stupid.’ ” 

Despite the F, the school earns a B from the state for student progress. Its performance score has increased since 2019 when it was 36.3. 

When their children are younger, many parents are more concerned with their improvement than hitting state proficiency targets, said DeJunné Clark Jackson, president of the nonprofit Center for Literacy and Learning, near New Orleans. But as they prepare for graduation, those grades tend to matter more,

“The reality is the school is swimming upstream,” said Jackson, also a leader of parent advocacy group Decoding Dyslexia Louisiana. But it’s “reaching parents in a place of desperation.”

Angela Normand hit that point when her son Max was in third grade. He was getting D’s and F’s in reading at his school in Tangipahoa Parish, about 40 miles from Baton Rouge. Teachers told her that boys sometimes learn to read more slowly than girls. But even with special education, he didn’t improve.

He entered Key Academy in January 2020, and within two months, “he was reading every sign on every building,” she said. Despite remote learning through the end of the school year, Max’s reading skills grew stronger. Now in sixth grade, he has five A’s and one B. 

She said the “unfair, inaccurate grade” the state gives the school has probably deterred other parents from exploring whether Key Academy can help their children.

‘The plight of families’

The low grade hasn’t hurt state support. When the school first renewed its charter in 2018, the board added an to evaluate schools that serve students well below grade level. While Key Academy students must still take the Louisiana Educational Assessment Program, the schools also give additional standardized tests that measure students’ phonological, fluency and vocabulary skills.

State accountability systems “are not set up to deal with a school like this,” said John White, former Louisiana state superintendent. The adults responsible for Key Academy’s students, he added, “were not the adults who were there for the origin of the students’ struggles.”

He credited the Cassidys for simultaneously “drawing attention to the plight of families” whose children have dyslexia and advancing school choice. 

A second school opened this year in Covington, east of Baton Rouge, despite opposition from the local St. Tammany Parish district, where there has never been a charter. A third site will open in Shreveport next year. An October report from the state board, supporting the expansion, said the charter offers “compelling evidence” for its model and would provide something that doesn’t otherwise exist in that area.

The Cassidys, meanwhile, have advocated for reforms that would impact all Louisiana schools, including that recognizes training in dyslexia therapy in teacher licensing. 

‘Not blue or red’

At the federal level, Sen. Cassidy— still a practicing gastroenterologist — focuses on some of the same thorny issues facing dyslexic students. He demonstrated his awareness of those challenges during a committee hearing last summer on pandemic learning loss.

“Did they fall further behind than their peers?” he asked Connecticut Education Commissioner Charlene Russell-Tucker about students with reading disabilities. “Do you screen children for dyslexia?” 

And he in 2021 that would make dyslexia a separate disability under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Currently, it’s part of a larger “specific learning disability” category. The change, he said, would draw more attention to dyslexia and help ensure students get help earlier, especially since don’t require screening.

But his bill faces resistance from some special education advocates. Denise Marshall, CEO of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, said learning disabilities “tend to co-occur” and that removing dyslexia from that category might cause educators to miss other needs.

White, Louisiana’s former state superintendent, hopes Sen. Cassidy’s role on the committee will also prompt conversation about foundational reading skills at a time when states and districts have federal relief funds to train teachers and purchase curriculum.

“Now,” he said, “would be an opportunity for some leadership in Washington to say, ‘Lets connect the dots.’ ” 

Sen. Cassidy said Sen. Bernie Sanders, the committee chair, will set the agenda. But he hopes to work with Democrats on the issue, mentioning Sen. John Hickenlooper of Colorado, who about own struggles with dyslexia, and Sen. Maggie Hassan, who in 2016 when she was governor of New Hampshire.

“This issue is not blue or red,” Sen. Cassidy said. “This is, ‘Do I care about a child achieving potential even if the child learns differently?’ I’d like to think that would give us a lot of common ground.”

However, there is a downside that is not understood: exclude or neglect many struggling readers, even though most of them suffer from similar learning difficulties and require similar evidence-based instruction.

This is particularly inequitable because a are low-income, or of color, or register as having low IQs. These children already suffer delays in getting extra help because many educators their early reading difficulties on poor family backgrounds rather than on poor instruction — a prime example of the soft bigotry of low expectations.

The National Center for Improving Literacy considers dyslexia in that it is “disproportionately underdiagnosed in children of color and children in poverty.” I described these students as “” in a report in 2003. 

Of course, advocates for children with dyslexia vehemently oppose any such injustices. But some laws and practices exert hidden influences that have just such an effect. How does this happen? And how can reading reformers accelerate a change from reforms centered on dyslexia to more inclusive policies that will help virtually all struggling readers? 

To start with, there must be recognition of the widespread but largely false association among dyslexia, high IQs and creativity. Dyslexia is constantly brought to public mind by media portrayals of a who overcame their reading difficulties and became high achievers. Yet, eminent reading scientist decades ago that studies have “led to the discovery that the early word reading difficulties of children with relatively low general intelligence and verbal ability are associated with the same factors (weaknesses in phonological processing) that interfere with early reading growth in children who have general intelligence in the normal range.”

More recently, cognitive neuroscientist and reading expert Mark Seidenberg : “Within [the] broad range of IQs, poor readers struggle in the same ways, need help in the same areas and respond similarly to interventions.”

Nonetheless, these scientific facts are absent or short-changed in many, if not most, state laws. While , not just dyslexia, very few encompass essential requirements for all struggling readers — instruction based on the science of reading, multi-tiered interventions and teacher training — and, as of last year, only eight addressed all three components. 

The most insidious confusion and inequity are found in special education law. Dyslexia is classified under the Individual with Disabilities Act  as a “” — but eligibility is typically determined based on “a severe discrepancy between achievement and intellectual ability,” a criterion that embodies the false association between IQ/creativity and reading difficulties and disproportionately harms low-income and minority struggling readers. 

Though the discrepancy gap test has been , and Congress has encouraged identification of specific learning disabilities through , it is and endures in practice.

A consequence is the pernicious “” — the higher the IQ, the earlier the discrepancy is detected — so students with lower IQs have to wait longer for interventions, and most .  

This injustice is inexcusable, because it is well known . It takes following the science of reading, which generally prescribes the same foundational instruction for all students, within the tiered framework of Response to Intervention. 

But this doesn’t happen.  

One big reason is that the science of reading remains a raging battlefield. For another, while Response to Intervention — systematic early assessment and evidence-based interventions, notably high-dosage tutoring — seems an incontrovertible approach, there are .  Seidenberg’s is that it “has only one flaw: It has to be implemented in real-world environments” that are often inhospitable because of lack of funds and because implementation is “undercut by the disagreements about how reading works.” 

Dyslexia advocates see that their efforts alone are . Many state chapters of , parent groups that are the most powerful grass-roots forces for reading reform, are increasingly pushing to enact or strengthen broad in the wake of the pandemic. These laws embrace all struggling readers, not just those identified as dyslexic. An exemplar chapter is , which is spurring a coalition to strengthen Maryland’s right-to-read law.

Still, the notion that dyslexia is a fairly exclusive province of an IQ elite persists. Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy and others are pushing that would make dyslexia a separate specific learning disability under IDEA while ignoring the need to improve the law for other students with similar difficulties.

Any path to literacy for all students faces a steep incline. That’s why it’s so necessary to expose the inequities in some approaches and cheer on dyslexia advocates who are stepping up in the struggle. 

When COVID struck in 2020, the then-eighth grader’s Upper Valley, New Hampshire middle school campus shut down for several weeks to pivot to virtual learning, like most others across the country. Paige knew then that her daughter Amy — whose name has been changed in this piece for the student’s privacy — was at risk of falling behind even further. Once online school started, live instruction was only on a “part-time basis,” Paige said.

“There was lost learning time,” she said. “Sometimes there weren’t teachers because the teachers were sick.”

Although Paige didn’t know it yet, Amy had dyslexia. For years, the now-17-year-old’s condition went undiagnosed. Meanwhile, it complicated the teen’s part-time job at a clothing store, because she struggled to type in email addresses at the cash register.

In a last-ditch effort to help her daughter, Paige connected with a tutor specializing in phonics-based literacy, who she now works with via a relatively new state program. After beginning tutoring, Amy showed quick improvement on spelling and reading tests administered by her high school, Paige said. Amy’s literacy coach recognized signs of dyslexia and pointed the family toward screening for the disability, which led to her diagnosis and extra services at school.

“I’ve seen progress,” Paige said. “The way [her tutor] works with her is not a way … a teacher would have the time to work with her in a classroom situation.”

That sort of individualized, intensive coaching is a key solution the Granite State has bet on to help students like Amy get back on track after the pandemic. The state is entering its second year offering the scholarship, which uses a digital wallet to provide $1,000 for private tutoring to any young person whose education was negatively impacted by the pandemic. The scholarship is available to all students, regardless of need, and can be applied toward tutoring from state-approved educators.

“When I explain the program to [parents], they become very excited, like, ‘Oh, this is great,’” New Hampshire Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut said. “In some cases, they’re almost like, ‘It’s too good to be true. How can this possibly be?’”

But families in New Hampshire have tapped into less than a third of the available scholarship funds. So far this academic year, 724 young people have received scholarships — accounting for just $724,000 out of a $2.5 million total funded by federal COVID relief cash. Upon inception, the state granted scholarship eligibility only to students from low-income families, but with signups lagging and substantial funds remaining, they made access universal.

State testing in 2022 revealed that more than half of New Hampshire students were not proficient in math and over 40% were behind in English, though scores have rebounded slightly since 2021, according to data provided by the state. Research shows sustained individual or small-group tutoring can be one of the best ways to help children catch up.

“One student might be struggling with functions. Another is struggling with algebraic equations,” Edelblut said. “Those are the kinds of things that in a one-on-one tutoring session with a teacher that can be drawn out, they can be addressed, they can be targeted, and we can fill in those gaps.”

Soon after the Paige family began tutoring, they saw a post on social media about the YES! grant and realized they qualified. Though they’re still working out the logistics of the digital wallet, the funds will cover more than two months of intensive lessons, which will be “definitely helpful, without a doubt,” Paige said.

The program has also served its purpose for student Sylas Marrotte. The scholarship gave him access to a trained special education teacher for twice-a-week math and reading tutoring, grandmother Sherry Newman said.

“My grandson, who already had learning disabilities, was falling way behind [during COVID],” Newman wrote in an email to The 74. “The tutor was very flexible and supportive.”

The program could help to “democratize” the private tutoring market, which often is available only to wealthier families, said Matthew Kraft, associate professor of education at Brown University. 

But in his eyes, the slow uptake among low-income families is a damning indicator, signaling either poor advertising to the neediest parents or failure to alleviate other barriers such as transportation costs. 

It’s possible many families “just never learned about the program or couldn’t figure out how to sign up or didn’t think that they could make it work,” Kraft said. “I don’t think … they’ve met the demand in that group of students.”

Nationwide, parental interest in learning recovery options has been lower than policymakers would have hoped, according to recent from the Brookings Institute. Despite significant gaps in learning for millions of students across the country, less than a third of families said they wanted their kids to participate in tutoring and less than a quarter said they were interested in district-run summer camps.

Even if all the New Hampshire tutoring funds get disbursed, Kraft observed, it will still only serve 2,500 learners — a drop in the bucket compared to the state’s over 185,000 students, including roughly 50,000 who are eligible for free- or reduced-price lunch, a proxy indicator for the number of students living in poverty.

The New Hampshire Department of Education does not “at this time” know the share of low-income students who have taken advantage of the tutoring scholarship money compared to wealthier youth, Edelblut said. Students could opt for virtual sessions in cases where transportation presented a barrier, he noted.

The YES! scholarship is one of three state-funded tutoring options available to New Hampshire families. The state announced this month that it had that will give more than 100,000 students access to the site’s 24/7 digital tutoring services. Since early in the pandemic, the state has also partnered with Khan Academy founder Sal Khan’s initiative, providing the state’s students with free access to the site’s learning resources. That site has seen about 4,300 New Hampshire visitors, said Kimberly Houghton, a spokesperson for the state’s Department of Education, although she did not have figures on how many tutoring sessions students have actually participated in.

Among the 74 individuals and organizations registered by the state as , including specialists in math, literacy, speech and executive functioning, a handful said over email that none or just one student had reached out for tutoring sessions.

But Krista Martin, who runs the Sylvan Learning centers in Portsmouth and Salem, has worked with six students who have used YES! scholarship money to pay for sessions. Two of those families were already paying for Sylvan tutoring services before the grant and now use the funds to offset costs, but the other four enrolled once they received the scholarship, Martin said. 

For the most part, families come in hopes that the sessions will help their kids recover from the pandemic, Martin wrote in an email.

“​​For many of our students, the breakdowns started during the COVID years,” Martin said. “Since the pandemic, we have heard from many families that they want their children to enjoy school again and show interest in what they are learning like they did before COVID.”

For the Paige family, Amy’s struggles began earlier, but YES! has helped — at least a little — along the way. On an August evening in northern New Hampshire, tutor Lynne Howard sat at her dining table and helped the teen break down words into their individual sound components. Howard was a longtime reading specialist in the local schools and now runs a tutoring company called Summit Literacy.

“Say hush,” Howard said.

“Hush,” Amy responded.

“Now say hush but change ‘shh’ to ‘mm,’ ” Howard added on.

“Hum,” Amy answered.

Word by word, sound by sound, Howard and Amy made out ways to fill the student’s learning gaps. They identified prefixes, suffixes, root words, closed and open vowels — steadily making progress to improve her spelling. And their time together ended with praise that, for many years before tutoring, Paige was concerned she’d never hear about her daughter’s literacy.

“And that’s it, you worked hard today,” Howard said at the end of an hour. “Excellent job.”

But for who have dyslexia, like Anri Haglund, now 14 and a seventh-grader in Michigan, reading birthday messages often comes with anxiety and stress as they try to decipher them or read them aloud at parties.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

“There was one birthday card,” Haglund recalled to the Michigan Advance. “It was a word that I think I’ve seen, but I just never read it because I would just kind of mumble it and sometimes get away with that. And I was just kind of sitting there sweating and thinking, ‘What if I screwed this word up?’”��

So what is dyslexia? According to the , it is “a specific learning disability that is neurobiological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities.” Problems with reading comprehension are common.

In the classroom, Haglund struggled without many systems in place to help him work through his literacy issues.��

“Something that was difficult with school when I was younger was reading, spelling and writing,” Haglund said. “And one of the strategies my teachers told me that really didn’t work for me was, if I didn’t know a word, or if I couldn’t sound it out, they would say, ‘Reread and reread it.’ And that was just not working. … I just kind of felt like, ‘Oh, I’m stuck at the same spot.’”

Dyslexia poses significant threats to many elementary children learning to read but can affect adults, too. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that about 15% of Americans have dyslexia. It is also estimated that only one in 10 children with dyslexia will receive an Individualized Education Program (IEP) and get the services they need to learn how to read.��

But a bipartisan bill package making its way through the Michigan Senate would create systems for identifying and intervening to better assist students with dyslexia.��

Here’s what the bills would do:

• , introduced by Sen. Jeff Irwin (D-Ann Arbor), would ensure school districts screen children in grades kindergarten, 1st grade, 2nd grade and 3rd grade for dyslexia and reading disabilities by utilizing a universal screening assessment.
• , introduced by Sen. Lana Theis (R-Brighton), would mandate teacher preparation institutions to include instruction on the characteristics of dyslexia, the consequences of dyslexia, evidence-based interventions and accommodations for students with dyslexia and create a classroom style that uses multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) to ensure the needs of students are met.
• , introduced by Sen. Dayna Polehanki (D-Livonia), would mandate that new teacher’s certificates only be granted to those who have received instruction on the characteristics of dyslexia, secondary consequences of dyslexia, effective interventions, accommodations for those with dyslexia, and methods to create schoolwide and classroom systems by using MTSS.
• , introduced by Sen. Jim Runestad (R-White Lake), would create a seven-person advisory committee consisting of people from various professional backgrounds that have knowledge on screening and interventions for dyslexia, who would be charged with helping to develop a dyslexia resource guide.

Runestad told the Advance the bills will empower students with dyslexia and equip them with the interventions necessary to thrive in a school environment.��

“If these kids don’t get early help and early intervention, they’re never going to be good readers; they’re gonna have all kinds of learning issues,” Runestad said. “It’s been proven over and over and over if you get these kids the resources, the intervention early they can be absolutely fabulous students.”

Irwin said the bills would address an issue in the 2016 third-grade reading law mandating students who are more than a grade level behind in reading levels to be held back. He said this package will “make sure that they include a component that will help our educators identify kids who have characteristics of dyslexia” and then use “multi-tiered systems of support interventions in the classroom to bring those kids up to speed.”��

The bills last month were reported out of the Education and Career Readiness Committee and are now on the Senate floor. A similar package was in 2020, but was not taken up for a vote.��

Irwin touted bipartisan support for the bills.

“Sometimes it doesn’t matter what party they’re from, you know, this is about literacy,” he said, adding that “this is about doing the right thing for reading.”��

Susan Schmidt, a former teacher and current tutor to kids for dyslexia, including Haglund, helped bring the idea for the bills to the attention of lawmakers and helped in crafting the legislation. She told the Advance that throughout her time teaching, she saw numerous colleagues who “didn’t have the training” needed to help students with dyslexia.��

Schmidt said the bills could help relieve stress for parents and children. Some parents are left to turn to expensive tutoring to help their child, which can be even more difficult for low-income families.��

“All these parents, you know, they’ve sort of been waiting for some answer for the dysfunction of what they’ve gone through,” Schmidt said. “It’s as simple as let’s train our teachers, let’s get them screened, let’s intervene early. I mean, it’s dead simple, but it’s very complex in the outcomes of what happens.”

Elyse Presnell-Swenson, who has with dyslexia and is the parent of a child with dyslexia, has also been a vocal advocate for the bills. She helped lead the , Michigan Dyslexia Laws, which aims to boost visibility for the legislation and the issue of dyslexia in schools.��

“I don’t think any parent should have to go through what we’re going through, or any child,” Presnell-Swenson said. “Every child has a right to learn how to read.”��

Shannon Koenon, a board member of the Michigan Chapter of International Dyslexia Association, told the Advance that the bills “get at the root” of the issue and will ensure that steps are taken to help students in the classroom who have dyslexia.��

“They’re all going to be impactful,” Koenan said. “Educating those teachers, I think, is key. Because once they know the correct methodology and the science behind it, then they will start teaching differently in the classroom. … People are going through school and are not able to read. This will correct that.”��

Haglund, who spoke in favor of the bills in the Michigan Senate committee in November, said they will ensure other students get the help they need.��

“I’m quite happy to have dyslexia because it comes with so many amazing things,” Haglund said. “I think [the bills] would be very helpful, especially for younger kids who, like myself, who didn’t get the opportunity to work with a tutor who knew about dyslexia, and didn’t give me the same strategies over and over.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Susan Demas for questions: info@michiganadvance.com. Follow Michigan Advance on and .

Thirty-seven percent of the state’s fourth-graders score below the basic level on , and a shows many districts are struggling to provide strong reading instruction to disadvantaged Latino students — who make up over 40 percent of the state’s K-12 population.

Meanwhile other states, such as , have enacted major legislation aimed at improving reading achievement and have seen gains. 

Now, with young readers set by the pandemic, California lawmakers and state officials are trying to catch up and attacking the problem on multiple fronts. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation last month ensuring that prospective teachers learn reading instruction practices backed by research. Another proposed bill would require universal screening for dyslexia. And state Superintendent Tony Thurmond has launched his own literacy agenda, creating a aimed at making sure all third-graders can read by 2026 and pledging to distribute to students. But some wonder whether leaders have thought through all it will take to reduce racial gaps in reading performance.

Stephanie Gregson, deputy executive director of the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence, a nonprofit working to help low-performing districts improve, is among those saying a piecemeal approach to addressing poor reading performance won’t work.

“Where’s the coherence and the coordination of those efforts?” she asked during a recent virtual summit held by the California Reading Coalition, the new organization that released the “report card” ranking 287 districts on the percentage of low-income Latino third-graders meeting or exceeding grade-level reading standards. Gregson added that while this year’s includes $10 million for literacy training for teachers, “We have to think about the context of California. How far will $10 million go?”

Gregson, who began her career as an elementary school teacher in Sacramento and served as a deputy state superintendent until last month, said she was among those who left college unprepared to teach reading to students from homes where English is not the first language.

, now law, would aim to make sure that doesn’t happen to new teachers entering the field. The legislation requires colleges and universities to meet higher standards for ensuring that new teachers can teach “foundational reading skills” and have strategies for supporting English learners. The state’s Commission on Teacher Credentialing will certify teacher preparation programs, and candidates for elementary and special education teaching positions will have to pass a new literacy assessment, beginning July 2025.

The new assessment replaces an for teachers that many have criticized as outdated and difficult to pass. But that’s because teacher preparation programs aren’t doing an adequate job of making sure teachers are well prepared to teach reading, said Lori DePole, co-state director of Decoding Dyslexia California, an advocacy group that supports the new law.

“This bill raises the bar on teacher prep programs to do a better job in preparing … candidates to teach evidence-based reading instruction,” she said.

In a from the National Council on Teacher Quality, one school in the state — California State University, Bakersfield — was among the list of 32 with teacher preparation programs that include all five components of teaching children to read. Those are phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. CSU Bakersfield and CSU Dominguez Hills were among the six schools earning A’s for their graduate programs.

DePole’s group pushed to make sure the new legislation incorporates for teaching students with dyslexia, a learning disability in which children have difficulty processing speech sounds, and, therefore, can struggle with learning to read, spell and speak. 

The organization wants the state to go even further by joining almost 40 others that require schools to implement early for dyslexia. An estimated 15 percent of the population is affected by dyslexia, which could amount to nearly a million children in California.

“They are the canaries in the coal mine,” DePole said. “We can target these kids early on so they don’t have to wait to fail.”

Reading laws are ‘equity laws’

Some argue that Thurmond has waited too long to make early reading achievement a priority. Kymyona Burk, policy director for early literacy at the Foundation for Excellence in Education, said the state has made “some efforts over the years but not with a state-led, comprehensive approach.”

The foundation’s tracks states’ adoption of literacy policies across five areas, including support for teachers, intervention and notifying parents if teachers identify reading problems. California has “minimal or no fundamental principles,” according to the analysis, while Alabama, Arizona, Mississippi and North Carolina are among the 12 states with comprehensive K-3 policies.

“I look at these laws as equity laws,” Burk said during the reading summit. “Some of these things are already happening in higher-performing or higher-income schools. They’re not happening, and they’re not required to happen, everywhere.”

The state, in fact, settled last year after students sued because of poor literacy skills. The settlement includes $50 million in block grants to 75 low-performing districts.

Burk led work in Mississippi when the state implemented a new reading program that emphasized phonics, ensured teachers were using high-quality curriculum materials and trained both university faculty and classroom teachers. Between 2013 and 2019, Mississippi’s fourth-graders climbed from 39th in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress to second. And in 2019 — when reading scores for fourth-graders dropped in 17 states — Mississippi was the only one showing significant improvement. 

“Because we’re California, we kind of snicker at Mississippi, but they did a good plan,” said Barbara Nemko, superintendent of the Napa County Office of Education and a member of Thurmond’s task force. ”They made more progress than anyone.”

Some critics have recently questioned Thurmond’s leadership throughout the pandemic. The Los Angeles Times that while his push to improve reading is noteworthy, it needs to “result in concrete measures that will bring about real improvement, including a statewide reading curriculum based on a body of real evidence, which might not be popular with all teachers. In other words, Thurmond must take on the tough stuff over the next year.”

At the district level, some leaders view Thurmond’s goal of getting all third-graders to read by 2026 as a way to win over voters when he faces re-election next year.

“Like many political statements, the date falls beyond the next election cycle and neglects third-graders in 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025,” said Don Austin, superintendent of the Palo Alto Unified School District.  “The lack of national urgency around this topic is staggering.”

Austin expressed a sense of urgency about his own district’s performance as well. The low-poverty, well-funded district’s elementary schools all score in the “very high” range on English language arts in the state’s . But in the California Reading Coalition’s report card, Palo Alto ranked near the bottom, with just 1 in 5 low-income Latino third-graders meeting or exceeding grade-level reading standards.

“I don’t believe we can truly call ourselves the best K-12 school district in California when populations of students are not experiencing the same degree of success,” he said.

The district has since trained teachers in the primary grades in strategies designed to help students with dyslexia and is considering new English language arts curriculum materials.

“We aren’t chasing a statement from Secretary Thurmond,” Austin said. “We identified the issue, put action steps in place, and plan to see what happens if a district can attack an issue with laser focus.”

Thurmond was not available for comment, but a department email said the “timing is right” to address reading issues. “Thanks to support in this year’s state budget, resources and conditions are in place to make good on a promise of reaching literacy by third grade, a key benchmark in measuring and predicting student success.”  

Nemko said reading, like other issues in education, has been politicized, but that doesn’t mean the task force can’t help bring together the different initiatives currently underway. Her office, for example, is one of seven grantees in the state involved in a federally funded to improve literacy from preschool through 12th grade.

“I don’t want to see seven different siloed reports,” she said. “That is confusing and doesn’t lead to a good outcome.”

Others want to see a stronger emphasis on ensuring districts have high-quality curriculum options. Chris Ann Horsley, senior director of elementary curriculum for the Bonita Unified School District, near Los Angeles, said she hopes the task force members “promote the research on successful reading programs and ensure publishers put together curricula using proven methods.”

Her district — where almost two-thirds of disadvantaged Latino third-graders read at grade level or above — ranked first in the coalition’s report card. English learners, she said, receive the same phonics-based literacy instruction as English-speaking students, but bilingual aides work in some classrooms to provide additional support. Along with requiring children to read 20-30 minutes a day outside of school, the method results in most English learners being fluent and proficient in English by second or third grade.

“The research has supported this … for years,” she said, “but our state has not ensured that adopted reading programs use this approach.”