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"content": "\u003cp>CONCORD, Calif. — Ninth grader Soraya Martin is a bubbly, social teenager who recently found a new passion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m a very creative writer, I love to write stories for fun,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stories come naturally to Soraya, but reading and writing don’t. That’s because she has dyslexia. “Academically, school has always been a really big challenge for me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then last school year, she started using technology that allows her to do a number of things: dictate her writing rather than type, listen to books rather than read them on a page and take photos of notes on the board.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It changed everything. Instead of getting caught up in whether a word is spelled right, Soraya finds that with speech-to-text built into her school laptop, she can simply let the words flow from her brain out of her mouth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I started getting really good grades,” she says. “It made me feel like … I’m not stupid, I have so much to say and it just made me like ‘I can do this, I can do school and I can be good at it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This, her mom, Heather Martin, says, is the kind of promise screens hold for students like her daughter — students she worries are being forgotten in the nationwide backlash against screens in schools. Screens are increasingly being blamed for getting in the way of student learning: More than 30 states have banned cellphones in school. Some states have gone further with proposals or policies to entirely remove screens like laptops and tablets from classrooms. In late May, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued \u003ca href=\"https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/us-surgeon-generals-advisory-warning-on-the-harms-of-screen-use.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a surgeon general’s advisory\u003c/a> warning of the “harms of screen use,” citing its effects on children’s health and educational outcomes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Much of the pivot away from screens in schools has come from parents who are concerned screen use is getting in the way of their children’s learning — an argument Heather Martin hears in her own community in Concord, 30 miles northeast of San Francisco. She shares some of those concerns, but says, “Never once in the conversation has there been a discussion, except for me bringing it up with the other parents, about kids with disabilities.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Advocates worry those students are also being left out of the national conversation.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Screen-time policy proposals are often “a blunt instrument”\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Students with disabilities make up a quickly growing share of students in this country — there are more than 8 million of them. Many rely on assistive technology to get through the school day, including for note-taking, reading and writing. For example, blind and low-vision students may use screen reading or magnifying software to read. Others, like Soraya, use speech-to-text and audiobooks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>States including \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2026/05/01/nx-s1-5791657/states-schools-restricting-screen-time\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Alabama, Tennessee and Utah already have laws limiting screens\u003c/a> that take effect as early as July.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My concern is that that’s a really fast period of time for this to happen,” says Lindsay Jones, CEO of the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST), an education research nonprofit that focuses on making learning environments accessible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jones points out that some of these laws do make exceptions to restrictions on screens for students with disabilities — often a line in the text mentions assistive technology. But she says that should be the bare minimum and worries many policy proposals are “a very blunt instrument.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’ve moved so fast that we’ve really left our educators and our communities of people with disabilities this summer to figure it out,” she says. Perhaps with more time and input from disabled people, policies would better protect their rights, Jones adds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beyond concerns about state- and school-level bans on cellphones and screens, disability advocates point out that \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2025/03/11/nx-s1-5324746/trump-education-department-layoffs-closure-reorganization\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the shrunken U.S. Department of Education\u003c/a> is far less equipped to enforce civil rights. Those rights include access to assistive technology for students with disabilities. The Trump administration also \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2026/04/22/nx-s1-5791680/doj-disability-web-access-delay-schools\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">recently delayed a long-expected digital accessibility rule\u003c/a> for public institutions, including schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>“For some kids, the screen is their accessibility tool”\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>At Soraya’s high school in northern California, this past school year was the first that students’ phones were locked up in pouches for the entirety of the school day — as they are in many schools across the country. Heather Martin worries the phone ban could open the door to a broader ban on screens at her daughter’s school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A completely screen-free environment feels like it’s throwing the baby out with the bathwater,” she says. “It’s not looking at ‘screen free’ versus ‘accessibility free.’ And for some kids, the screen \u003cem>is \u003c/em>their accessibility tool.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As she talks about the change at her school, Soraya tenses up. “I hate them,” she says of the locked pouches. She says her phone isn’t just a distraction, it’s a safety net to call her parents if she has a panic attack, for example. And she feels singled out when she has to ask to get her phone out of its locked pouch for note-taking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Soraya’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2026/05/20/nx-s1-5810192/special-education-teachers-ai-ieps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">individualized education program (IEP)\u003c/a>, a legal document that outlines the accommodations and modifications she is supposed to receive at school, says she can use her phone for note-taking, along with other assistive technology. But because the cellphone ban is new, her teachers are still adjusting. Because she has several different classes and teachers throughout the day, she says it’s easy for some teachers to be unfamiliar with her accommodations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is the kind of “unintended consequence” Jones worries about as she considers a near future in which more schools move away from technology that she says has been game-changing for people with disabilities. When technology is used intentionally, she says, it can “actually allow us to create much more flexible environments, and those are really needed for people with disabilities.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jones’ organization, CAST, invented an educational framework called \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2025/04/15/nx-s1-5247585/teacher-training-special-education-disabilities-schools\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Universal Design for Learning\u003c/a> that encourages educators to design their classrooms to account for the different ways students learn. For instance, a teacher might give a math lesson using blocks, a diagram and a video to help impress the same lesson upon diverse learners. Or perhaps class reading is provided as an e-book so students with low-vision can magnify the text, while those with dyslexia can listen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As screen limits ripple through the nation’s schools, Jones hopes people with disabilities aren’t forgotten. “We need educators, we need people with disabilities, we need assistive technology providers,” to weigh in on how such policies are implemented in the classroom, says Jones. “That is going to be the best way forward for everyone to achieve their goals without trampling on people’s rights.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Soraya, using these kinds of tools has led her to embrace her learning differences. In fact, she just finished researching and writing a series of essays exploring how people with dyslexia learn. She has straight As for the first time in her life, but more importantly, she says she can express herself in a deeper, more meaningful way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I have so much more to say … It made me feel more confident in myself.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Edited by: \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/g-s1-123933/nirvi-shah\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Nirvi Shah\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>Visual design and development by: \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/348775569/la-johnson\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>LA Johnson\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"npr-transcript\">\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Transcript:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>SCOTT DETROW, HOST:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not long ago, the goal at many schools was to bring technology into classrooms. Now the pendulum has swung the other way. Dozens of states have already banned cellphones in school, and several are going further, getting all kinds of screens out of classrooms. But as NPR’s Jonaki Mehta reports, students with disabilities and learning differences feel left out of the conversation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>JONAKI MEHTA, BYLINE: Ninth grader Soraya Martin loves playing water polo, doing her friends’ nails, and recently, she’s found a love for writing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>SORAYA MARTIN: It’s my favorite subject. I’m a very creative writer. I love to just write stories for fun, but academically, school has always been a really big challenge for me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MEHTA: Soraya goes to public school in Concord, about 30 miles northeast of San Francisco. When we sat down on her living room sofa, she told me she was diagnosed with dyslexia in first grade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>SORAYA: For me to sit down and read a book, I can’t see the words straight, they jumble up in my head. I’ll read a paragraph, and then I completely forget what I just read.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MEHTA: Soraya also has anxiety and ADHD. And it’s been a journey for her to accept she isn’t less intelligent than her peers. She just learns differently. And for that, she needs tools, like software on her computer that lets her dictate her writing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>SORAYA: I have speech-to-text. I have read aloud tools, audio books.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MEHTA: She only got a phone in seventh grade, but it was a game changer because she could take pictures of notes on the board. That way, she could spend time in class actually listening. Soraya says, until last year, she refused any assistive technology because like any kid, it just sucked to feel different. But once she started using things like speech-to-text more freely…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>SORAYA: I started getting really good grades, and I had so much more to say. And it made me feel more confident in myself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MEHTA: Disability advocates say it’s those kinds of gains that technology in the classroom can allow for some students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>HEATHER MARTIN: A completely screen-free environment feels like it’s throwing the baby out with the bathwater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MEHTA: That’s Soraya’s mom, Heather Martin, who Soraya calls her biggest advocate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MARTIN: It’s not looking at screen-free versus accessibility-free, and for some kids, the screen is their accessibility tool.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MEHTA: So far, Soraya’s school isn’t going screen-free, but this was the first year it banned cellphones. Teachers and students are still adjusting, but at times, it’s been stressful for Soraya, like when she’s had to ask for permission to get her phone unlocked to take notes. And Heather worries this could be a slippery slope toward no screens. She says that debate has heated up for parents in her community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MARTIN: And never once in the conversation has there been a discussion, except for me bringing it up, about kids with disabilities or…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MEHTA: Heather shares the concerns around screens being a distraction. But she wants parents and policymakers to realize not every screen is the same for every child. Los Angeles Unified, the nation’s second-largest school district, is the first major district to require screen time limits. And states like Iowa, Utah and Alabama, already have laws on the books limiting screens, and some of them do have carveouts for kids with disabilities. But advocates have concerns about how thoughtfully assistive technology is being considered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KATE BARTLEIN: We see how quickly things are moving in terms of removing screens from classrooms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MEHTA: That’s Kate Bartlein of the National Center for Learning Disabilities. She says the jury is still out on what kind of screen use is good or bad and that nuance is often missing in the national debate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>BARTLEIN: Good instruction is good instruction. So having an educator who’s able to provide good instruction, whether that be through screens or not, can support learners of all different types.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MEHTA: Bartlein saw this with her own 11-year-old son who goes to school outside Minneapolis. He has dysgraphia, meaning he struggles with handwriting. And his teachers thought all he was capable of was writing simple words and sentences until they gave assistive technology a shot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>BARTLEIN: And using speech-to-text, he wrote this beautiful, impressive essay about his experience in an inclusive theater program and was able to use all of these incredible vocabulary words.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MEHTA: His teachers told Bartlein they were amazed he could write an essay at several grade levels above where he’d been before. This is the same kind of drastic change Heather Martin says she’s seen in Soraya since she started using assistive tools. For the first time in her life, Soraya has straight A’s, but more importantly, says Heather, her daughter can truly express herself now. Soraya pulls up an essay she’s working on at school that’s about a very relevant subject.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>SORAYA: Can my mom just read it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MEHTA: Sure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>SORAYA: Just read the introduction, this part.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MARTIN: OK. (Reading) School is supposed to be a place where everyone has a fair chance to learn. My main question from my research is why school expectations do not match how students with dyslexia actually need to be taught.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MEHTA: Both parents hope that as legislators and school leaders shape screen time policies, they remember the kinds of possibilities screens hold for kids like theirs. Jonaki Mehta, NPR News.\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>CONCORD, Calif. — Ninth grader Soraya Martin is a bubbly, social teenager who recently found a new passion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m a very creative writer, I love to write stories for fun,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stories come naturally to Soraya, but reading and writing don’t. That’s because she has dyslexia. “Academically, school has always been a really big challenge for me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then last school year, she started using technology that allows her to do a number of things: dictate her writing rather than type, listen to books rather than read them on a page and take photos of notes on the board.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It changed everything. Instead of getting caught up in whether a word is spelled right, Soraya finds that with speech-to-text built into her school laptop, she can simply let the words flow from her brain out of her mouth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I started getting really good grades,” she says. “It made me feel like … I’m not stupid, I have so much to say and it just made me like ‘I can do this, I can do school and I can be good at it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This, her mom, Heather Martin, says, is the kind of promise screens hold for students like her daughter — students she worries are being forgotten in the nationwide backlash against screens in schools. Screens are increasingly being blamed for getting in the way of student learning: More than 30 states have banned cellphones in school. Some states have gone further with proposals or policies to entirely remove screens like laptops and tablets from classrooms. In late May, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued \u003ca href=\"https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/us-surgeon-generals-advisory-warning-on-the-harms-of-screen-use.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a surgeon general’s advisory\u003c/a> warning of the “harms of screen use,” citing its effects on children’s health and educational outcomes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Much of the pivot away from screens in schools has come from parents who are concerned screen use is getting in the way of their children’s learning — an argument Heather Martin hears in her own community in Concord, 30 miles northeast of San Francisco. She shares some of those concerns, but says, “Never once in the conversation has there been a discussion, except for me bringing it up with the other parents, about kids with disabilities.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Advocates worry those students are also being left out of the national conversation.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Screen-time policy proposals are often “a blunt instrument”\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Students with disabilities make up a quickly growing share of students in this country — there are more than 8 million of them. Many rely on assistive technology to get through the school day, including for note-taking, reading and writing. For example, blind and low-vision students may use screen reading or magnifying software to read. Others, like Soraya, use speech-to-text and audiobooks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>States including \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2026/05/01/nx-s1-5791657/states-schools-restricting-screen-time\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Alabama, Tennessee and Utah already have laws limiting screens\u003c/a> that take effect as early as July.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My concern is that that’s a really fast period of time for this to happen,” says Lindsay Jones, CEO of the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST), an education research nonprofit that focuses on making learning environments accessible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jones points out that some of these laws do make exceptions to restrictions on screens for students with disabilities — often a line in the text mentions assistive technology. But she says that should be the bare minimum and worries many policy proposals are “a very blunt instrument.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’ve moved so fast that we’ve really left our educators and our communities of people with disabilities this summer to figure it out,” she says. Perhaps with more time and input from disabled people, policies would better protect their rights, Jones adds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beyond concerns about state- and school-level bans on cellphones and screens, disability advocates point out that \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2025/03/11/nx-s1-5324746/trump-education-department-layoffs-closure-reorganization\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the shrunken U.S. Department of Education\u003c/a> is far less equipped to enforce civil rights. Those rights include access to assistive technology for students with disabilities. The Trump administration also \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2026/04/22/nx-s1-5791680/doj-disability-web-access-delay-schools\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">recently delayed a long-expected digital accessibility rule\u003c/a> for public institutions, including schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>“For some kids, the screen is their accessibility tool”\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>At Soraya’s high school in northern California, this past school year was the first that students’ phones were locked up in pouches for the entirety of the school day — as they are in many schools across the country. Heather Martin worries the phone ban could open the door to a broader ban on screens at her daughter’s school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A completely screen-free environment feels like it’s throwing the baby out with the bathwater,” she says. “It’s not looking at ‘screen free’ versus ‘accessibility free.’ And for some kids, the screen \u003cem>is \u003c/em>their accessibility tool.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As she talks about the change at her school, Soraya tenses up. “I hate them,” she says of the locked pouches. She says her phone isn’t just a distraction, it’s a safety net to call her parents if she has a panic attack, for example. And she feels singled out when she has to ask to get her phone out of its locked pouch for note-taking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Soraya’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2026/05/20/nx-s1-5810192/special-education-teachers-ai-ieps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">individualized education program (IEP)\u003c/a>, a legal document that outlines the accommodations and modifications she is supposed to receive at school, says she can use her phone for note-taking, along with other assistive technology. But because the cellphone ban is new, her teachers are still adjusting. Because she has several different classes and teachers throughout the day, she says it’s easy for some teachers to be unfamiliar with her accommodations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is the kind of “unintended consequence” Jones worries about as she considers a near future in which more schools move away from technology that she says has been game-changing for people with disabilities. When technology is used intentionally, she says, it can “actually allow us to create much more flexible environments, and those are really needed for people with disabilities.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jones’ organization, CAST, invented an educational framework called \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2025/04/15/nx-s1-5247585/teacher-training-special-education-disabilities-schools\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Universal Design for Learning\u003c/a> that encourages educators to design their classrooms to account for the different ways students learn. For instance, a teacher might give a math lesson using blocks, a diagram and a video to help impress the same lesson upon diverse learners. Or perhaps class reading is provided as an e-book so students with low-vision can magnify the text, while those with dyslexia can listen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As screen limits ripple through the nation’s schools, Jones hopes people with disabilities aren’t forgotten. “We need educators, we need people with disabilities, we need assistive technology providers,” to weigh in on how such policies are implemented in the classroom, says Jones. “That is going to be the best way forward for everyone to achieve their goals without trampling on people’s rights.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Soraya, using these kinds of tools has led her to embrace her learning differences. In fact, she just finished researching and writing a series of essays exploring how people with dyslexia learn. She has straight As for the first time in her life, but more importantly, she says she can express herself in a deeper, more meaningful way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I have so much more to say … It made me feel more confident in myself.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Edited by: \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/g-s1-123933/nirvi-shah\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Nirvi Shah\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>Visual design and development by: \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/348775569/la-johnson\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>LA Johnson\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"npr-transcript\">\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Transcript:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>SCOTT DETROW, HOST:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not long ago, the goal at many schools was to bring technology into classrooms. Now the pendulum has swung the other way. Dozens of states have already banned cellphones in school, and several are going further, getting all kinds of screens out of classrooms. But as NPR’s Jonaki Mehta reports, students with disabilities and learning differences feel left out of the conversation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>JONAKI MEHTA, BYLINE: Ninth grader Soraya Martin loves playing water polo, doing her friends’ nails, and recently, she’s found a love for writing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>SORAYA MARTIN: It’s my favorite subject. I’m a very creative writer. I love to just write stories for fun, but academically, school has always been a really big challenge for me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MEHTA: Soraya goes to public school in Concord, about 30 miles northeast of San Francisco. When we sat down on her living room sofa, she told me she was diagnosed with dyslexia in first grade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>SORAYA: For me to sit down and read a book, I can’t see the words straight, they jumble up in my head. I’ll read a paragraph, and then I completely forget what I just read.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MEHTA: Soraya also has anxiety and ADHD. And it’s been a journey for her to accept she isn’t less intelligent than her peers. She just learns differently. And for that, she needs tools, like software on her computer that lets her dictate her writing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>SORAYA: I have speech-to-text. I have read aloud tools, audio books.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MEHTA: She only got a phone in seventh grade, but it was a game changer because she could take pictures of notes on the board. That way, she could spend time in class actually listening. Soraya says, until last year, she refused any assistive technology because like any kid, it just sucked to feel different. But once she started using things like speech-to-text more freely…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>SORAYA: I started getting really good grades, and I had so much more to say. And it made me feel more confident in myself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MEHTA: Disability advocates say it’s those kinds of gains that technology in the classroom can allow for some students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>HEATHER MARTIN: A completely screen-free environment feels like it’s throwing the baby out with the bathwater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MEHTA: That’s Soraya’s mom, Heather Martin, who Soraya calls her biggest advocate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MARTIN: It’s not looking at screen-free versus accessibility-free, and for some kids, the screen is their accessibility tool.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MEHTA: So far, Soraya’s school isn’t going screen-free, but this was the first year it banned cellphones. Teachers and students are still adjusting, but at times, it’s been stressful for Soraya, like when she’s had to ask for permission to get her phone unlocked to take notes. And Heather worries this could be a slippery slope toward no screens. She says that debate has heated up for parents in her community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MARTIN: And never once in the conversation has there been a discussion, except for me bringing it up, about kids with disabilities or…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MEHTA: Heather shares the concerns around screens being a distraction. But she wants parents and policymakers to realize not every screen is the same for every child. Los Angeles Unified, the nation’s second-largest school district, is the first major district to require screen time limits. And states like Iowa, Utah and Alabama, already have laws on the books limiting screens, and some of them do have carveouts for kids with disabilities. But advocates have concerns about how thoughtfully assistive technology is being considered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KATE BARTLEIN: We see how quickly things are moving in terms of removing screens from classrooms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MEHTA: That’s Kate Bartlein of the National Center for Learning Disabilities. She says the jury is still out on what kind of screen use is good or bad and that nuance is often missing in the national debate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>BARTLEIN: Good instruction is good instruction. So having an educator who’s able to provide good instruction, whether that be through screens or not, can support learners of all different types.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MEHTA: Bartlein saw this with her own 11-year-old son who goes to school outside Minneapolis. He has dysgraphia, meaning he struggles with handwriting. And his teachers thought all he was capable of was writing simple words and sentences until they gave assistive technology a shot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>BARTLEIN: And using speech-to-text, he wrote this beautiful, impressive essay about his experience in an inclusive theater program and was able to use all of these incredible vocabulary words.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MEHTA: His teachers told Bartlein they were amazed he could write an essay at several grade levels above where he’d been before. This is the same kind of drastic change Heather Martin says she’s seen in Soraya since she started using assistive tools. For the first time in her life, Soraya has straight A’s, but more importantly, says Heather, her daughter can truly express herself now. Soraya pulls up an essay she’s working on at school that’s about a very relevant subject.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>SORAYA: Can my mom just read it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MEHTA: Sure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>SORAYA: Just read the introduction, this part.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MARTIN: OK. (Reading) School is supposed to be a place where everyone has a fair chance to learn. My main question from my research is why school expectations do not match how students with dyslexia actually need to be taught.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MEHTA: Both parents hope that as legislators and school leaders shape screen time policies, they remember the kinds of possibilities screens hold for kids like theirs. Jonaki Mehta, NPR News.\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "Leading dyslexia treatment isn’t a magic bullet, studies find, while other options show promise",
"title": "Leading dyslexia treatment isn’t a magic bullet, studies find, while other options show promise",
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"content": "\u003cp>In 2019, a grassroots campaign led by parents succeeded in passing a wave of dyslexia legislation. Many states mandated hallmarks of the Orton-Gillingham method, specifically calling for “multisensory” instruction, to help students with dyslexia read and write better.* In New York, where I live, the city spends upwards of \u003ca href=\"https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/WB0pCERPDmI1Z96rsNTlhK?domain=ny.chalkbeat.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">$300 million\u003c/a> a year in taxpayer funds on private school tuition for children with disabilities. Much of it goes to pay for \u003ca href=\"https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/G7x6CG69GouWzYLxc7jTQO?domain=stephengaynor.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">private schools that specialize in Orton-Gillingham\u003c/a> instruction and similar approaches, which families insist are necessary to teach their children with dyslexia to read.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But two recent academic papers, synthesizing dozens of reading studies, are raising questions about the effectiveness of these expensive education policies. A review of 24 \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0014402921993406\">studies on the Orton-Gillingham method\u003c/a>, published in the July 2021 issue of the peer-reviewed journal Exceptional Children, found no statistically significant benefit for children with dyslexia. Instead, suggesting a way forward, a \u003ca href=\"https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/rrq.477\">review of 53 reading studies\u003c/a>, led by University of Virginia researcher Colby Hall and published online September 2022 in Reading Research Quarterly, found that much cheaper reading interventions for children with a variety of reading difficulties were also quite effective for children with dyslexia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s no litmus test for dyslexia and education experts say the diagnosis covers a range of reading problems. Orton-Gillingham is one of the oldest approaches to help struggling readers, dating back to the 1930s, and it explicitly teaches letters and sounds, and breaks words down into letter patterns. It also emphasizes multisensory instruction. For example, students might learn the letter “p” by seeing it, saying its name, and sounding it out while tracing it in shaving cream.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have this approach that’s so deeply rooted in legislation and in policy and practice, but we don’t have the evidence base to support it,” said Elizabeth Stevens, an assistant professor at Georgia State University, and the lead author of the 2021 Orton-Gillingham study. “The thinking is that OG [Orton-Gillingham] is the magic bullet, the thing that these students need. But Colby [Hall]’s paper says, ‘No, these other reading interventions that explicitly teach these foundational skills significantly improve their reading outcomes.’ These students can benefit from these other interventions.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The implication is that \u003cem>maybe\u003c/em> children diagnosed with dyslexia don’t need something that is substantially different from children with other reading struggles. This theory still needs to be tested. No well-designed research study has compared a dyslexia-specific remedy, such as Orton-Gillingham, head-to-head with more general interventions for children who struggle in reading.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than 2 million children, nearly 3 out of 10 who receive special education services in the United States, have been diagnosed with dyslexia or a closely related reading disability. Getting the solution right is important, not only to help these children read and write, but to spend taxpayer funds on helping them efficiently.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Monica McHale-Small, director of education at the Learning Disabilities Association of America, and previously with the International Dyslexia Association, said there’s a “growing consensus” that Orton-Gillingham approaches aren’t necessarily what all children with dyslexia need. “The research is there,” she said. “You can’t deny the findings of multiple studies.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many dyslexia advocates remain loyal to Orton-Gillingham, McHale-Small said, because so many parents have kids whom they believe were helped by Orton-Gillingham tutors. Meanwhile, it remains out of reach for many low-income families. Orton-Gillingham involves very expensive teacher training, she said, which many schools cannot afford. McHale-Small experienced the costs first hand when she was superintendent of the Saucon Valley school district in Pennsylvania and participated in a pilot study of Orton-Gillingham in 2016-17.** The American Institutes for Research, a nonprofit research group, found \u003ca href=\"https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/P7--COYZQzi577xZHEzLrb?domain=files.eric.ed.gov\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">no statistical benefits for these multisensory interventions\u003c/a> in a 2018 report.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Science evolves. Science has to be taken seriously,” said Maryanne Wolf, director of the Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners and Social Justice at UCLA and author of \u003ca href=\"https://www.maryannewolf.com/proust-and-the-squid\">Proust and the Squid\u003c/a>, a book about how the brain learns to read. “We don’t need emphasis on ‘multisensory’; we need emphasis on being explicit, systematic and after all of the components of language in our interventions.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The researchers in both the 2021 and 2022 studies all cautioned that the jury is still out on Orton-Gillingham. Better quality studies may still prove the method to be effective with children with dyslexia. Stevens had to throw out more than 100 of the studies she found; many were poorly designed, didn’t compare children who didn’t receive the treatment and didn’t measure outcomes well. In the end, she reviewed only 24 of the better Orton-Gillingham studies and just 16 had enough numbers to include in her calculations. Several of these were rather small, as few as 10 or 12 participants. That’s such a small number of children that it makes it hard to derive any meaningful conclusion from them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The corpus of studies included in our meta-analysis were not very high quality,” said Stevens. “We need to do more high-quality research to fully understand the effects of that approach on the reading outcomes for students with dyslexia.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The larger 2022 analysis of 53 reading interventions had a higher bar for study quality and only one Orton-Gillingham study made the cut. Several of the reading interventions that marketed themselves as “multisensory” also made the cut, but the researchers didn’t detect any extra benefits from them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They weren’t more effective than the ones that didn’t market themselves as multisensory,” said Hall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The good news is that most of the 53 reading interventions were effective and they had more similarities than differences. They were administered to children as either one-to-one tutoring sessions or in small groups. And they tended to provide direct, explicit step-by-step reading and writing instruction which includes not just traditional phonics but practice with clusters of letters, tricky vowel patterns and sounds. This is in sharp contrast with a teaching approach based on the belief that children can learn to read naturally if they are surrounded by books at their reading level and get lots of independent reading and writing time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Systematic instruction works for kids,” said Emily Solari, a prominent reading expert and a professor at the University of Virginia, who was part of the 12-member research team on the 2022 study. “That is what we need to do for kids with dyslexia and for word reading difficulties.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Researchers noticed good outcomes for several commercial interventions, such as Lexia Core5, Sound Partners, and Rave-O. Many non-commercial interventions were effective too, including Sharon Vaughn’s Proactive Reading intervention and Jessica Toste’s Multisyllabic Word Reading Intervention + Motivational Belief Training. Toste’s method isn’t sold commercially, but the University of Texas associate professor gives it away free to teachers upon request.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the meta-analysis, there were hints that spelling instruction may be especially beneficial to students with dyslexia. Frequency appeared to matter too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s been decades of research to show that we actually need to do really intensive intervention with these kids, not just two days a week for 20 minutes,” said Solari. “They need evidence-based core instruction, and then they need more. And often it’s a lot more.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The researchers could not ascertain a minimum threshold or dosage for effectiveness. That still needs to be studied.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the trickiest things about studying dyslexia is defining it and determining who has it. Experts disagree. Some insist it is a genetic condition, but there is no genetic test. Others say a child’s environment can cause it. Others believe it is neurobiological, but it is difficult to determine whether a reading difficulty is neurological in origin. The belief that children with dyslexia see letters backwards is a debunked myth of the past, but there is little agreement on what it is exactly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When I interviewed the researchers behind the 2022 meta-analysis on reading interventions, they explained to me that dyslexia, or word reading difficulty, falls along a continuum. “People think of dyslexia like a broken leg, you either have it or you don’t,” said Hall. “But dyslexia and word reading difficulties are more like high blood pressure. It still needs to be addressed, but it’s a different way of thinking about it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the 2021 and 2022 studies, researchers defined dyslexia as having “word-level reading difficulties.” Some children were formally diagnosed with dyslexia and others hadn’t been diagnosed, but they scored in the bottom 25 percent in basic word recognition, reading fluency and spelling. Dyslexia is generally distinguished from comprehension difficulties, but there is often overlap. Some children with word reading difficulties have excellent comprehension.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both McHale-Small at the Learning Disabilities Association and Wolf at UCLA believe that there are various types of dyslexia and each may need different interventions. Not every child diagnosed with dyslexia struggles to sound out words, for example. “The minute you see reading fluency problems, that is beyond phonics,” said Wolf. “Over time, some of those kids just don’t need that decoding emphasis.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We need more research,” said McHale-Small. “We know a lot about dyslexia but we need to know a lot more.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Millions of children and their parents are waiting for an answer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv>\u003cem>*Correction: Because of a mischaracterization of her research by Elizabeth Stevens, an earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that at least seven states require teachers to be trained in the Orton-Gillingham teaching approach and to use it to help students with dyslexia read and write better.\n\u003cp>**Clarification: Saucon Valley school district was not part of the pilot study, but McHale-Small served on the study's advisory committee and decided to implement an Orton-Gillingham intervention in her district.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/p>\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cbr>\nThis story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-leading-dyslexia-treatment-isnt-a-magic-bullet-studies-show-while-other-options-show-promise/\">\u003cem>children with dyslexia\u003c/em>\u003c/a> \u003cem>was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/em>The Hechinger Report\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"http://hechingerreport.us2.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=66c306eebb323868c3ce353c1&id=d3ee4c3e04\">\u003cem>Hechinger\u003c/em> newsletter\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>In 2019, a grassroots campaign led by parents succeeded in passing a wave of dyslexia legislation. Many states mandated hallmarks of the Orton-Gillingham method, specifically calling for “multisensory” instruction, to help students with dyslexia read and write better.* In New York, where I live, the city spends upwards of \u003ca href=\"https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/WB0pCERPDmI1Z96rsNTlhK?domain=ny.chalkbeat.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">$300 million\u003c/a> a year in taxpayer funds on private school tuition for children with disabilities. Much of it goes to pay for \u003ca href=\"https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/G7x6CG69GouWzYLxc7jTQO?domain=stephengaynor.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">private schools that specialize in Orton-Gillingham\u003c/a> instruction and similar approaches, which families insist are necessary to teach their children with dyslexia to read.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But two recent academic papers, synthesizing dozens of reading studies, are raising questions about the effectiveness of these expensive education policies. A review of 24 \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0014402921993406\">studies on the Orton-Gillingham method\u003c/a>, published in the July 2021 issue of the peer-reviewed journal Exceptional Children, found no statistically significant benefit for children with dyslexia. Instead, suggesting a way forward, a \u003ca href=\"https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/rrq.477\">review of 53 reading studies\u003c/a>, led by University of Virginia researcher Colby Hall and published online September 2022 in Reading Research Quarterly, found that much cheaper reading interventions for children with a variety of reading difficulties were also quite effective for children with dyslexia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s no litmus test for dyslexia and education experts say the diagnosis covers a range of reading problems. Orton-Gillingham is one of the oldest approaches to help struggling readers, dating back to the 1930s, and it explicitly teaches letters and sounds, and breaks words down into letter patterns. It also emphasizes multisensory instruction. For example, students might learn the letter “p” by seeing it, saying its name, and sounding it out while tracing it in shaving cream.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have this approach that’s so deeply rooted in legislation and in policy and practice, but we don’t have the evidence base to support it,” said Elizabeth Stevens, an assistant professor at Georgia State University, and the lead author of the 2021 Orton-Gillingham study. “The thinking is that OG [Orton-Gillingham] is the magic bullet, the thing that these students need. But Colby [Hall]’s paper says, ‘No, these other reading interventions that explicitly teach these foundational skills significantly improve their reading outcomes.’ These students can benefit from these other interventions.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The implication is that \u003cem>maybe\u003c/em> children diagnosed with dyslexia don’t need something that is substantially different from children with other reading struggles. This theory still needs to be tested. No well-designed research study has compared a dyslexia-specific remedy, such as Orton-Gillingham, head-to-head with more general interventions for children who struggle in reading.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than 2 million children, nearly 3 out of 10 who receive special education services in the United States, have been diagnosed with dyslexia or a closely related reading disability. Getting the solution right is important, not only to help these children read and write, but to spend taxpayer funds on helping them efficiently.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Monica McHale-Small, director of education at the Learning Disabilities Association of America, and previously with the International Dyslexia Association, said there’s a “growing consensus” that Orton-Gillingham approaches aren’t necessarily what all children with dyslexia need. “The research is there,” she said. “You can’t deny the findings of multiple studies.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many dyslexia advocates remain loyal to Orton-Gillingham, McHale-Small said, because so many parents have kids whom they believe were helped by Orton-Gillingham tutors. Meanwhile, it remains out of reach for many low-income families. Orton-Gillingham involves very expensive teacher training, she said, which many schools cannot afford. McHale-Small experienced the costs first hand when she was superintendent of the Saucon Valley school district in Pennsylvania and participated in a pilot study of Orton-Gillingham in 2016-17.** The American Institutes for Research, a nonprofit research group, found \u003ca href=\"https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/P7--COYZQzi577xZHEzLrb?domain=files.eric.ed.gov\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">no statistical benefits for these multisensory interventions\u003c/a> in a 2018 report.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Science evolves. Science has to be taken seriously,” said Maryanne Wolf, director of the Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners and Social Justice at UCLA and author of \u003ca href=\"https://www.maryannewolf.com/proust-and-the-squid\">Proust and the Squid\u003c/a>, a book about how the brain learns to read. “We don’t need emphasis on ‘multisensory’; we need emphasis on being explicit, systematic and after all of the components of language in our interventions.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The researchers in both the 2021 and 2022 studies all cautioned that the jury is still out on Orton-Gillingham. Better quality studies may still prove the method to be effective with children with dyslexia. Stevens had to throw out more than 100 of the studies she found; many were poorly designed, didn’t compare children who didn’t receive the treatment and didn’t measure outcomes well. In the end, she reviewed only 24 of the better Orton-Gillingham studies and just 16 had enough numbers to include in her calculations. Several of these were rather small, as few as 10 or 12 participants. That’s such a small number of children that it makes it hard to derive any meaningful conclusion from them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The corpus of studies included in our meta-analysis were not very high quality,” said Stevens. “We need to do more high-quality research to fully understand the effects of that approach on the reading outcomes for students with dyslexia.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The larger 2022 analysis of 53 reading interventions had a higher bar for study quality and only one Orton-Gillingham study made the cut. Several of the reading interventions that marketed themselves as “multisensory” also made the cut, but the researchers didn’t detect any extra benefits from them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They weren’t more effective than the ones that didn’t market themselves as multisensory,” said Hall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The good news is that most of the 53 reading interventions were effective and they had more similarities than differences. They were administered to children as either one-to-one tutoring sessions or in small groups. And they tended to provide direct, explicit step-by-step reading and writing instruction which includes not just traditional phonics but practice with clusters of letters, tricky vowel patterns and sounds. This is in sharp contrast with a teaching approach based on the belief that children can learn to read naturally if they are surrounded by books at their reading level and get lots of independent reading and writing time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Systematic instruction works for kids,” said Emily Solari, a prominent reading expert and a professor at the University of Virginia, who was part of the 12-member research team on the 2022 study. “That is what we need to do for kids with dyslexia and for word reading difficulties.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Researchers noticed good outcomes for several commercial interventions, such as Lexia Core5, Sound Partners, and Rave-O. Many non-commercial interventions were effective too, including Sharon Vaughn’s Proactive Reading intervention and Jessica Toste’s Multisyllabic Word Reading Intervention + Motivational Belief Training. Toste’s method isn’t sold commercially, but the University of Texas associate professor gives it away free to teachers upon request.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the meta-analysis, there were hints that spelling instruction may be especially beneficial to students with dyslexia. Frequency appeared to matter too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s been decades of research to show that we actually need to do really intensive intervention with these kids, not just two days a week for 20 minutes,” said Solari. “They need evidence-based core instruction, and then they need more. And often it’s a lot more.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The researchers could not ascertain a minimum threshold or dosage for effectiveness. That still needs to be studied.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the trickiest things about studying dyslexia is defining it and determining who has it. Experts disagree. Some insist it is a genetic condition, but there is no genetic test. Others say a child’s environment can cause it. Others believe it is neurobiological, but it is difficult to determine whether a reading difficulty is neurological in origin. The belief that children with dyslexia see letters backwards is a debunked myth of the past, but there is little agreement on what it is exactly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When I interviewed the researchers behind the 2022 meta-analysis on reading interventions, they explained to me that dyslexia, or word reading difficulty, falls along a continuum. “People think of dyslexia like a broken leg, you either have it or you don’t,” said Hall. “But dyslexia and word reading difficulties are more like high blood pressure. It still needs to be addressed, but it’s a different way of thinking about it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the 2021 and 2022 studies, researchers defined dyslexia as having “word-level reading difficulties.” Some children were formally diagnosed with dyslexia and others hadn’t been diagnosed, but they scored in the bottom 25 percent in basic word recognition, reading fluency and spelling. Dyslexia is generally distinguished from comprehension difficulties, but there is often overlap. Some children with word reading difficulties have excellent comprehension.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both McHale-Small at the Learning Disabilities Association and Wolf at UCLA believe that there are various types of dyslexia and each may need different interventions. Not every child diagnosed with dyslexia struggles to sound out words, for example. “The minute you see reading fluency problems, that is beyond phonics,” said Wolf. “Over time, some of those kids just don’t need that decoding emphasis.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We need more research,” said McHale-Small. “We know a lot about dyslexia but we need to know a lot more.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Millions of children and their parents are waiting for an answer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv>\u003cem>*Correction: Because of a mischaracterization of her research by Elizabeth Stevens, an earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that at least seven states require teachers to be trained in the Orton-Gillingham teaching approach and to use it to help students with dyslexia read and write better.\n\u003cp>**Clarification: Saucon Valley school district was not part of the pilot study, but McHale-Small served on the study's advisory committee and decided to implement an Orton-Gillingham intervention in her district.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/p>\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cbr>\nThis story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-leading-dyslexia-treatment-isnt-a-magic-bullet-studies-show-while-other-options-show-promise/\">\u003cem>children with dyslexia\u003c/em>\u003c/a> \u003cem>was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/em>The Hechinger Report\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"http://hechingerreport.us2.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=66c306eebb323868c3ce353c1&id=d3ee4c3e04\">\u003cem>Hechinger\u003c/em> newsletter\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "Learning with Dyslexia and Creating a Path to Success",
"title": "Learning with Dyslexia and Creating a Path to Success",
"headTitle": "MindShift | KQED News",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>This is chapter six of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54743/the-mindshift-guide-to-understanding-dyslexia\">MindShift Guide to Understanding Dyslexia\u003c/a>. You can find the remaining chapters and a complete \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">printable\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">PDF\u003c/a> of the entire guide by clicking \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since the large bulk of schoolwork involves reading and writing, dyslexics often experience anxiety around schooling, especially when called on to read aloud or expected to read or write large amounts of material. Many report feeling low self-esteem and believing that they are unintelligent or will never have the skills to succeed. Even when the proper diagnosis is handed down and intervention works, school life continues to be difficult for dyslexics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Further, discussion of the complex idea of dyslexia’s hidden gifts or special talents can give students the idea that academic work—heavy in reading and writing—simply isn’t for them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s not the case, says Dr. Sheryl Rimrodt-Frierson, who runs the pediatric clinic at the Vanderbilt Kennedy Reading Center.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She says that when she identifies kids as dyslexic, she doesn’t want them to close off their options. “I don’t want kids to sell themselves short about going to college,” she says. “So I will make sure that they know there are plenty of people out there who have done plenty—academic work, medical school, law school. I want them to understand that there’s a world of possibilities.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For many dyslexics, the road to academic and career success isn’t off-limits but more about taking a different path.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>VOICES OF DYSLEXIA: FOUR DIFFERENT PATHS TO SUCCESS\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The spread of information and advocacy is increasing awareness around dyslexia, and many who have experienced reading struggles are beginning to find their way through school—and life beyond it—more easily.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here are the stories of four dyslexic adults who found success in different ways. \u003cstrong>Notice how the themes of this guide have played out in their lives\u003c/strong>—by managing their anxiety and passing on their learning to support others with dyslexia to succeed; by advocating for themselves; by perfecting the art of listening; and by finding creative forms of self-expression.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>DONNA GARGETT, SOCIAL WORKER, HEAD OF A NONPROFIT SUPPORTING DYSLEXICS, AGE 41\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>When Donna Gargett was growing up in California in the 1980s, she remembers watching an episode of the television show “The Cosby Show” where the character Theo realizes he has dyslexia. Gargett thought to herself, “that’s me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now 41, Gargett is a social worker and head of a nonprofit that recruits and trains tutors in the Orton-Gillingham teaching method to help dyslexics in and around Jacksonville, North Carolina, where she lives. But even though she’s learned to manage her dyslexia over time, memories of reading and writing in school bring back anxiety. She often thinks about how she knew she had the same condition that Theo had, even though she wasn’t identified as dyslexic until college.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In grade school and high school, Gargett always felt “less than.” She struggled so much, once she even asked her parents if she was mentally disabled and they were hiding it from her. In elementary school, “I didn’t understand what was going on,” she says. “I was trying as hard as I could and still wasn’t getting it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Years of failure in school caused Gargett extreme anxiety, and she says it made her introverted. She spent most classes trying not to make eye contact with the teacher, hoping she wouldn’t be called on and instead would just “melt away.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Gargett found some relief once she reached college. “I found college to be much easier, knowing there wasn’t any reading out loud anymore was a huge relief for me personally,” she says. In college, she could record lectures and go home and listen to them over and over if she needed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gargett still finds it extremely stressful to read aloud, and avoids it at all costs, even in her work as an adult. Even though she finds it extremely rewarding to work with people who need help, the paperwork involved in social work case management is time-consuming and causes stress. She admits that she still makes a lot of mistakes, spells poorly, and takes a lot of time and energy to make sure documents are legible and correct.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But when both Gargett’s daughters, who are six and eight, were identified as dyslexic (the condition has a genetic component and tends to run in families), she knew she had to do something to try and change the stigma and provide an environment for them that didn’t contain so much anxiety.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s how she got started helping tutors get certified in Orton-Gillingham near her home. The tutors are able to help the students who are just like she once was—afraid that there was something wrong with them. The nonprofit, Blank Canvass, has spread to include Eastern North Carolina. Gargett is hoping that she’s breaking the stigma of dyslexia and dispelling the anxiety that haunted her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Parents come to me now, knowing that something is wrong, but they can’t put their finger on it,” Gargett says. “Because of my own personal story, and now as a parent, I can help guide these parents through the process. Self-esteem is the root of a lot of the problems caused by dyslexia, and [with the nonprofit] we are striving to build students’ individual strengths.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>MACKENZIE FANATICO, SENIOR AT ANGELO STATE UNIVERSITY\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Mackenzie Fanatico remembers her early elementary years as “chaotic,” because all her friends could read, and she couldn’t. She believed there was something wrong with her, that she was “stupid,” until a third grade teacher at her public school in Philadelphia asked her mother whether Mackenzie had ever been tested for dyslexia. She finally got tested and was diagnosed with dyslexia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it wasn’t until the fifth grade, after she’d endured a long illness and her family moved to the suburbs outside of Dallas, Texas, when she finally learned to read. There, an in-home tutor came to her house as she recovered, and Fanatico finally received the one-on-one attention she needed to learn to read.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even as her reading got stronger through middle and high school, Fanatico still required so much extra time to complete the same amount of work as other students, she realized that if she was going to succeed at all, she had to start talking to her teachers about what she needed to complete assignments and take tests.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She’d explain what was happening inside her dyslexic brain, and that she needed help taking notes by using a computer with voice-to-text and recording lectures so she could listen to them later. She needed lenience on hand-written tests, too, because she knew she would “butcher the spelling.” By forming relationships with her teachers, Fanatico did well in high school and made it to college.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now a senior at Angelo State University in the West Texas town San Angelo, she has used the same strategy to succeed in college—by forming relationships with her professors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I still need a whole lot of repetition,” Fanatico says. “My friends might study two hours for a class, but it takes me four or six hours to be able to ‘get’ the same material.” She often arrived an hour early to her college math class to go over work with her professor. Then she’d also spend an additional two or three hours afterward with professors as well, if possible, to go over homework. Teacher relationships, she says, have become a vital part of her learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fanatico also developed a close relationship with the learning disability center staff on campus, who helped her write a list of accommodations she could give to professors. Her college accommodations include permission to record lectures, take notes on a computer, lenience on spelling, and permission to use a special blue overlay on top of papers that helps her see letters and words more clearly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those relationships have helped her succeed: Fanatico earned straight A’s in both fall and spring semesters of her sophomore year of college. She plans to graduate with a degree in special education, hoping to form those special relationships with kids who struggle in school the way she did.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>ERIC MCGEHEARTY, ENTREPRENEUR, AGE 41\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Eric McGehearty says he has never once read a book with his eyes. Though the forty-year-old entrepreneur was identified as dyslexic when he was only five years old, the Dallas, Texas, native says all the books he has ever finished, he read by listening to audiobooks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>McGehearty says he figured out early that, for him, listening was the key to learning. He used audio books and listening techniques to complete his schoolwork, and eventually graduate from high school as class valedictorian.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Audio books were a big piece of my success as a student,” he says. “Through Learning Ally, I’ve been listening to audio books a couple of hours a day, every day, for 35 years. I am a very good ‘ear reader’.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like many dyslexics, elementary school was difficult for McGehearty, and he called himself at that time a “depressed and unhappy little kid.” By middle school, he was beginning to catch on to how to learn, and by high school, he says, everything clicked— he began asking for what he needed from his teachers so he could get the material.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He says that unlike many dyslexics, recording lectures didn’t help his learning nearly as much as focused listening did. Through a lot of trial and error, he developed a ‘listening system’ that ensured he would remember what the teacher was saying. He did it by always participating in the conversation the teacher was having.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If I speak it, I will remember it. In college, when the professor would get to the main idea, about every five to ten minutes I would ask a question, reframing the information in a way so that I would remember it,” he says. “I’d boil it down to the essential point. If the professor agreed, then I knew that I learned it.” McGehearty says that he raised his hand constantly in class so he could ask the questions essential to his learning, and some students teased him, accusing him of showing off. But he didn’t care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’d say, no, I’m actually trying to learn today.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>NATHAN SPOON, POET AND TEACHER, AGE 45\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Poet Nathan Spoon recalls always loving books and has special memories of sitting on his father’s lap in rural Tennessee, listening to his father read the Bible as he followed along.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though he read constantly and loved his books so much he kept them in a special place in his room, he knew that something wasn’t quite right—his reading was slow and “the letters always seem to wiggle on the page.” School was difficult, and he had to repeat fifth grade. According to Spoon, his high school education was ‘saved’ by his high grades in art that pulled up his GPA.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Spoon wasn’t diagnosed with dyslexia, autism, and ADHD until recently, when he was 44 years old. But his reading difficulties had never stopped him from devouring tons of reading material, which he’s not afraid to read slowly and often reads aloud to himself, which seems to help. And the difficulties never kept him from the poetry he’s been writing— he calls it ‘making language collages’—since he was seventeen, publishing in well-heeled journals and anthologies. He classifies his poetry as experimental, and instead of seeing his trouble with phonemes as a hindrance, he uses them like notes in constructing a piece of music.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The poetic form, Spoon says, especially modern and postmodern poetry, are perfect forms for dyslexics to work in, since they’re not bound by the rules of grammar or even syntax. In poetry, expressing emotions and the sound of the words provide the pleasure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Poetry is magical in that kind of way,” he says. “If a person writes two plus two equals green, then two plus two equals blue is a different kind of feeling.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Spoon says his success in writing poetry, a field that requires so much reading and writing, comes from an extreme willingness to fail and defy stereotypes. “I think there are all kinds of ways to approach the learning process. Getting into poetry, there’s this notion that the autistic person can’t understand poetry, that they’re too literal and will miss the nuance. There may be some truth to that—but there’s also truth to the notion that there are all kinds of ways to write poetry.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recently, he also began writing for academia to explore the topics of poetry and neurodiversity, and how slow processing might benefit comprehension.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For both McGehearty and Spoon, there’s a theme having to do with the importance of art education—both say that \u003cstrong>art classes saved their schooling experience in more than one way. \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Spoon, when art became available at his rural Tennessee school, he found something he could excel in, and the A’s he received in art helped to boost his GPA. “My academic performance was always very mixed, and I always did the absolute worst in math,” he says. “I graduated with a C-minus GPA only because I made A-pluses in art.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For McGehearty, his passion for art began with a fifth grade art teacher who he still remembers by name, Ms. Mary Dallas. McGehearty had just broken his right arm and he was unable to write because of the cast, but Dallas told him about artists who had great physical disabilities who learned to paint with their mouths, or their feet. These artists learned to express themselves despite their physical disability, Dallas told him, and he should try it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Every day, I went to that art class and made art with a different part of my body,” he says. “I made some of the coolest stuff. It didn’t look that great, but it was so much fun. And it was the greatest lesson to me, because I couldn’t read. And just because I couldn’t read didn’t mean that I couldn’t be successful in a different way.” That defining moment in McGehearty’s life changed his perspective, and he decided that he would become an artist. He took Ms. Dallas’s art class for the next four years and can’t thank her enough for her willingness to allow the open expression of his creativity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Art was a safe place for me,” he says. “I didn’t have to read.” McGehearty eventually earned a graduate degree in art and worked professionally as an artist for a decade before launching his own startup marketing company.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These four lives bring into high relief the main points of this guide:\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>SCHOOL IS CHALLENGING FOR THOSE WITH DYSLEXIA AND THEIR SELF-ESTEEM SUFFERS\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>• For Nathan, “the letters always seem to wiggle on the page,” and school was so difficult he had to repeat fifth grade.\u003cbr>\n• Donna felt extreme anxiety and became more introverted, trying not to get her teacher’s attention for fear she’d have to read aloud.\u003cbr>\n• Mackenzie believed that she was “stupid” and even with reading support, knew she had to put in a lot of extra time just to keep up.\u003cbr>\n• Eric called himself a “depressed and unhappy little kid” in elementary school.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>EARLY DETECTION OF DYSLEXIA CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>• Eric was diagnosed at five years of age. Although his elementary school years were difficult, he was able to discover ways to help himself learn effectively as early as middle school.\u003cbr>\n• “The Cosby Show” helped Donna recognize that she was not alone in her challenges.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>RELATIONSHIPS ARE IMPORTANT BETWEEN STUDENTS, TEACHERS AND PARENTS\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>• Mackenzie got the one-on-one tutoring she needed as a child to learn to read.\u003cbr>\n• She developed relationships with her teachers and professors, creating a list and explaining what she needed to be successful.\u003cbr>\n• Mackenzie also got personal accommodations, such as lenience on spelling and extra time with her teachers to review her homework.\u003cbr>\n• Eric’s teachers accommodated his need to verbally communicate his understanding of lecture material by asking frequent questions.\u003cbr>\n• Donna’s daughters inherited dyslexia, so she has worked to provide learning environments without the stigma she felt as a child. • Donna now trains teachers and supports parents through the process of getting help for their children.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>FINDING PLEASURE IN BOOKS, STORIES AND INFORMATION IS POSSIBLE FOR DYSLEXICS\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>• Nathan never lost his love for books that he learned from his father, and difficulties didn’t stop him from “devouring tons of reading material” in his own way.\u003cbr>\n• Eric found a way to read by listening all he needed to graduate at the top of his high school class.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>TECHNOLOGY CAN SUPPORT DYSLEXICS IN THEIR LEARNING AND ACADEMIC SUCCESS\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>• Self-advocacy allowed Mackenzie to get the technological accommodations, such as voice-to-text note-taking, lecture recordings, and blue overlays for reading texts.\u003cbr>\n• Eric’s teachers understood that he would be listening to all written material via audiobooks.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>CREATIVE EXPRESSION HELPS DYSLEXICS USE THE POWER OF THEIR RIGHT BRAINS WELL\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>• As a poet, Nathan has found a good match between the way his brain loves to use words and writing poems—his “language collages,” in which he can loosen the rules of grammar and syntax.\u003cbr>\n• Eric found art as early as fifth grade as a way he could “go with the grain” of his brain in expressing himself visually.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>THOSE WITH DYSLEXIA OFTEN “GIVE BACK” TO SUPPORT OTHER DYSLEXICS TO REACH THEIR POTENTIAL THROUGH ACTION AND ROLE-MODELING.\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>• Donna has created a non-profit called Blank Canvass which supports parents and trains teachers in the Orton-Gillingham method, which gives learners with dyslexia the one-on-one, intensive attention many have found effective.\u003cbr>\n• Nathan has begun doing academic writing about the relationship between poetry and brains that exhibit neurodiversity, such as those with dyslexia.\u003cbr>\n• Mackenzie intends to get her degree in special education, so that she can support other children who learn differently.\u003cbr>\n• Eric has found success as both an artist and an entrepreneur.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These stories offer a window into the complex inner and outer worlds of people with dyslexia, and each story proves that what Sheryl Rimrodt-Frierson said can indeed be true: \"No one with dyslexia needs to sell themselves short, because there is a world of possibilities.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ADDITIONAL RESOURCES\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zafiGBrFkRM\">“What is dyslexia”\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zafiGBrFkRM\">TED-Ed video by Kelli Sandman-Hurley\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/Big-Picture-Richard-Branson/dp/B00GGESYV6\">HBO The Big Picture: Rethinking Dyslexia\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/series/503544816/unlocking-dyslexia\">Unlocking Dyslexia by NPR\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.understood.org/en\">Understood.org\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://dyslexiaida.org/\">DyslexiaIDA.org\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://learningally.org/\">LearningAlly.org\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.decodingdyslexia.net/\">Decoding Dyslexia\u003c/a> – Grassroots Parent-Led Movement for Dyslexia\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.nessy.com/us/\">Nessy.com\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.dyslegia.com/\">Dyslegia.com\u003c/a> – dyslexia laws from state to state\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.dyslexicadvantage.org/\">Dyslexic Advantage\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"http://literatenation.org/\">Literate Nation\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is chapter six of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54743/the-mindshift-guide-to-understanding-dyslexia\">MindShift Guide to Understanding Dyslexia\u003c/a>. You can find the remaining chapters and a complete \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">printable\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">PDF\u003c/a> of the entire guide by clicking \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This is chapter six of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54743/the-mindshift-guide-to-understanding-dyslexia\">MindShift Guide to Understanding Dyslexia\u003c/a>. You can find the remaining chapters and a complete \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">printable\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">PDF\u003c/a> of the entire guide by clicking \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since the large bulk of schoolwork involves reading and writing, dyslexics often experience anxiety around schooling, especially when called on to read aloud or expected to read or write large amounts of material. Many report feeling low self-esteem and believing that they are unintelligent or will never have the skills to succeed. Even when the proper diagnosis is handed down and intervention works, school life continues to be difficult for dyslexics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Further, discussion of the complex idea of dyslexia’s hidden gifts or special talents can give students the idea that academic work—heavy in reading and writing—simply isn’t for them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s not the case, says Dr. Sheryl Rimrodt-Frierson, who runs the pediatric clinic at the Vanderbilt Kennedy Reading Center.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She says that when she identifies kids as dyslexic, she doesn’t want them to close off their options. “I don’t want kids to sell themselves short about going to college,” she says. “So I will make sure that they know there are plenty of people out there who have done plenty—academic work, medical school, law school. I want them to understand that there’s a world of possibilities.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For many dyslexics, the road to academic and career success isn’t off-limits but more about taking a different path.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>VOICES OF DYSLEXIA: FOUR DIFFERENT PATHS TO SUCCESS\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The spread of information and advocacy is increasing awareness around dyslexia, and many who have experienced reading struggles are beginning to find their way through school—and life beyond it—more easily.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here are the stories of four dyslexic adults who found success in different ways. \u003cstrong>Notice how the themes of this guide have played out in their lives\u003c/strong>—by managing their anxiety and passing on their learning to support others with dyslexia to succeed; by advocating for themselves; by perfecting the art of listening; and by finding creative forms of self-expression.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>DONNA GARGETT, SOCIAL WORKER, HEAD OF A NONPROFIT SUPPORTING DYSLEXICS, AGE 41\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>When Donna Gargett was growing up in California in the 1980s, she remembers watching an episode of the television show “The Cosby Show” where the character Theo realizes he has dyslexia. Gargett thought to herself, “that’s me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now 41, Gargett is a social worker and head of a nonprofit that recruits and trains tutors in the Orton-Gillingham teaching method to help dyslexics in and around Jacksonville, North Carolina, where she lives. But even though she’s learned to manage her dyslexia over time, memories of reading and writing in school bring back anxiety. She often thinks about how she knew she had the same condition that Theo had, even though she wasn’t identified as dyslexic until college.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In grade school and high school, Gargett always felt “less than.” She struggled so much, once she even asked her parents if she was mentally disabled and they were hiding it from her. In elementary school, “I didn’t understand what was going on,” she says. “I was trying as hard as I could and still wasn’t getting it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Years of failure in school caused Gargett extreme anxiety, and she says it made her introverted. She spent most classes trying not to make eye contact with the teacher, hoping she wouldn’t be called on and instead would just “melt away.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Gargett found some relief once she reached college. “I found college to be much easier, knowing there wasn’t any reading out loud anymore was a huge relief for me personally,” she says. In college, she could record lectures and go home and listen to them over and over if she needed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gargett still finds it extremely stressful to read aloud, and avoids it at all costs, even in her work as an adult. Even though she finds it extremely rewarding to work with people who need help, the paperwork involved in social work case management is time-consuming and causes stress. She admits that she still makes a lot of mistakes, spells poorly, and takes a lot of time and energy to make sure documents are legible and correct.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But when both Gargett’s daughters, who are six and eight, were identified as dyslexic (the condition has a genetic component and tends to run in families), she knew she had to do something to try and change the stigma and provide an environment for them that didn’t contain so much anxiety.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s how she got started helping tutors get certified in Orton-Gillingham near her home. The tutors are able to help the students who are just like she once was—afraid that there was something wrong with them. The nonprofit, Blank Canvass, has spread to include Eastern North Carolina. Gargett is hoping that she’s breaking the stigma of dyslexia and dispelling the anxiety that haunted her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Parents come to me now, knowing that something is wrong, but they can’t put their finger on it,” Gargett says. “Because of my own personal story, and now as a parent, I can help guide these parents through the process. Self-esteem is the root of a lot of the problems caused by dyslexia, and [with the nonprofit] we are striving to build students’ individual strengths.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>MACKENZIE FANATICO, SENIOR AT ANGELO STATE UNIVERSITY\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Mackenzie Fanatico remembers her early elementary years as “chaotic,” because all her friends could read, and she couldn’t. She believed there was something wrong with her, that she was “stupid,” until a third grade teacher at her public school in Philadelphia asked her mother whether Mackenzie had ever been tested for dyslexia. She finally got tested and was diagnosed with dyslexia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it wasn’t until the fifth grade, after she’d endured a long illness and her family moved to the suburbs outside of Dallas, Texas, when she finally learned to read. There, an in-home tutor came to her house as she recovered, and Fanatico finally received the one-on-one attention she needed to learn to read.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even as her reading got stronger through middle and high school, Fanatico still required so much extra time to complete the same amount of work as other students, she realized that if she was going to succeed at all, she had to start talking to her teachers about what she needed to complete assignments and take tests.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She’d explain what was happening inside her dyslexic brain, and that she needed help taking notes by using a computer with voice-to-text and recording lectures so she could listen to them later. She needed lenience on hand-written tests, too, because she knew she would “butcher the spelling.” By forming relationships with her teachers, Fanatico did well in high school and made it to college.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now a senior at Angelo State University in the West Texas town San Angelo, she has used the same strategy to succeed in college—by forming relationships with her professors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I still need a whole lot of repetition,” Fanatico says. “My friends might study two hours for a class, but it takes me four or six hours to be able to ‘get’ the same material.” She often arrived an hour early to her college math class to go over work with her professor. Then she’d also spend an additional two or three hours afterward with professors as well, if possible, to go over homework. Teacher relationships, she says, have become a vital part of her learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fanatico also developed a close relationship with the learning disability center staff on campus, who helped her write a list of accommodations she could give to professors. Her college accommodations include permission to record lectures, take notes on a computer, lenience on spelling, and permission to use a special blue overlay on top of papers that helps her see letters and words more clearly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those relationships have helped her succeed: Fanatico earned straight A’s in both fall and spring semesters of her sophomore year of college. She plans to graduate with a degree in special education, hoping to form those special relationships with kids who struggle in school the way she did.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>ERIC MCGEHEARTY, ENTREPRENEUR, AGE 41\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Eric McGehearty says he has never once read a book with his eyes. Though the forty-year-old entrepreneur was identified as dyslexic when he was only five years old, the Dallas, Texas, native says all the books he has ever finished, he read by listening to audiobooks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>McGehearty says he figured out early that, for him, listening was the key to learning. He used audio books and listening techniques to complete his schoolwork, and eventually graduate from high school as class valedictorian.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Audio books were a big piece of my success as a student,” he says. “Through Learning Ally, I’ve been listening to audio books a couple of hours a day, every day, for 35 years. I am a very good ‘ear reader’.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like many dyslexics, elementary school was difficult for McGehearty, and he called himself at that time a “depressed and unhappy little kid.” By middle school, he was beginning to catch on to how to learn, and by high school, he says, everything clicked— he began asking for what he needed from his teachers so he could get the material.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He says that unlike many dyslexics, recording lectures didn’t help his learning nearly as much as focused listening did. Through a lot of trial and error, he developed a ‘listening system’ that ensured he would remember what the teacher was saying. He did it by always participating in the conversation the teacher was having.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If I speak it, I will remember it. In college, when the professor would get to the main idea, about every five to ten minutes I would ask a question, reframing the information in a way so that I would remember it,” he says. “I’d boil it down to the essential point. If the professor agreed, then I knew that I learned it.” McGehearty says that he raised his hand constantly in class so he could ask the questions essential to his learning, and some students teased him, accusing him of showing off. But he didn’t care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’d say, no, I’m actually trying to learn today.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>NATHAN SPOON, POET AND TEACHER, AGE 45\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Poet Nathan Spoon recalls always loving books and has special memories of sitting on his father’s lap in rural Tennessee, listening to his father read the Bible as he followed along.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though he read constantly and loved his books so much he kept them in a special place in his room, he knew that something wasn’t quite right—his reading was slow and “the letters always seem to wiggle on the page.” School was difficult, and he had to repeat fifth grade. According to Spoon, his high school education was ‘saved’ by his high grades in art that pulled up his GPA.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Spoon wasn’t diagnosed with dyslexia, autism, and ADHD until recently, when he was 44 years old. But his reading difficulties had never stopped him from devouring tons of reading material, which he’s not afraid to read slowly and often reads aloud to himself, which seems to help. And the difficulties never kept him from the poetry he’s been writing— he calls it ‘making language collages’—since he was seventeen, publishing in well-heeled journals and anthologies. He classifies his poetry as experimental, and instead of seeing his trouble with phonemes as a hindrance, he uses them like notes in constructing a piece of music.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The poetic form, Spoon says, especially modern and postmodern poetry, are perfect forms for dyslexics to work in, since they’re not bound by the rules of grammar or even syntax. In poetry, expressing emotions and the sound of the words provide the pleasure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Poetry is magical in that kind of way,” he says. “If a person writes two plus two equals green, then two plus two equals blue is a different kind of feeling.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Spoon says his success in writing poetry, a field that requires so much reading and writing, comes from an extreme willingness to fail and defy stereotypes. “I think there are all kinds of ways to approach the learning process. Getting into poetry, there’s this notion that the autistic person can’t understand poetry, that they’re too literal and will miss the nuance. There may be some truth to that—but there’s also truth to the notion that there are all kinds of ways to write poetry.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recently, he also began writing for academia to explore the topics of poetry and neurodiversity, and how slow processing might benefit comprehension.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For both McGehearty and Spoon, there’s a theme having to do with the importance of art education—both say that \u003cstrong>art classes saved their schooling experience in more than one way. \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Spoon, when art became available at his rural Tennessee school, he found something he could excel in, and the A’s he received in art helped to boost his GPA. “My academic performance was always very mixed, and I always did the absolute worst in math,” he says. “I graduated with a C-minus GPA only because I made A-pluses in art.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For McGehearty, his passion for art began with a fifth grade art teacher who he still remembers by name, Ms. Mary Dallas. McGehearty had just broken his right arm and he was unable to write because of the cast, but Dallas told him about artists who had great physical disabilities who learned to paint with their mouths, or their feet. These artists learned to express themselves despite their physical disability, Dallas told him, and he should try it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Every day, I went to that art class and made art with a different part of my body,” he says. “I made some of the coolest stuff. It didn’t look that great, but it was so much fun. And it was the greatest lesson to me, because I couldn’t read. And just because I couldn’t read didn’t mean that I couldn’t be successful in a different way.” That defining moment in McGehearty’s life changed his perspective, and he decided that he would become an artist. He took Ms. Dallas’s art class for the next four years and can’t thank her enough for her willingness to allow the open expression of his creativity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Art was a safe place for me,” he says. “I didn’t have to read.” McGehearty eventually earned a graduate degree in art and worked professionally as an artist for a decade before launching his own startup marketing company.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These four lives bring into high relief the main points of this guide:\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>SCHOOL IS CHALLENGING FOR THOSE WITH DYSLEXIA AND THEIR SELF-ESTEEM SUFFERS\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>• For Nathan, “the letters always seem to wiggle on the page,” and school was so difficult he had to repeat fifth grade.\u003cbr>\n• Donna felt extreme anxiety and became more introverted, trying not to get her teacher’s attention for fear she’d have to read aloud.\u003cbr>\n• Mackenzie believed that she was “stupid” and even with reading support, knew she had to put in a lot of extra time just to keep up.\u003cbr>\n• Eric called himself a “depressed and unhappy little kid” in elementary school.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>EARLY DETECTION OF DYSLEXIA CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>• Eric was diagnosed at five years of age. Although his elementary school years were difficult, he was able to discover ways to help himself learn effectively as early as middle school.\u003cbr>\n• “The Cosby Show” helped Donna recognize that she was not alone in her challenges.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>RELATIONSHIPS ARE IMPORTANT BETWEEN STUDENTS, TEACHERS AND PARENTS\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>• Mackenzie got the one-on-one tutoring she needed as a child to learn to read.\u003cbr>\n• She developed relationships with her teachers and professors, creating a list and explaining what she needed to be successful.\u003cbr>\n• Mackenzie also got personal accommodations, such as lenience on spelling and extra time with her teachers to review her homework.\u003cbr>\n• Eric’s teachers accommodated his need to verbally communicate his understanding of lecture material by asking frequent questions.\u003cbr>\n• Donna’s daughters inherited dyslexia, so she has worked to provide learning environments without the stigma she felt as a child. • Donna now trains teachers and supports parents through the process of getting help for their children.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>FINDING PLEASURE IN BOOKS, STORIES AND INFORMATION IS POSSIBLE FOR DYSLEXICS\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>• Nathan never lost his love for books that he learned from his father, and difficulties didn’t stop him from “devouring tons of reading material” in his own way.\u003cbr>\n• Eric found a way to read by listening all he needed to graduate at the top of his high school class.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>TECHNOLOGY CAN SUPPORT DYSLEXICS IN THEIR LEARNING AND ACADEMIC SUCCESS\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>• Self-advocacy allowed Mackenzie to get the technological accommodations, such as voice-to-text note-taking, lecture recordings, and blue overlays for reading texts.\u003cbr>\n• Eric’s teachers understood that he would be listening to all written material via audiobooks.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>CREATIVE EXPRESSION HELPS DYSLEXICS USE THE POWER OF THEIR RIGHT BRAINS WELL\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>• As a poet, Nathan has found a good match between the way his brain loves to use words and writing poems—his “language collages,” in which he can loosen the rules of grammar and syntax.\u003cbr>\n• Eric found art as early as fifth grade as a way he could “go with the grain” of his brain in expressing himself visually.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>THOSE WITH DYSLEXIA OFTEN “GIVE BACK” TO SUPPORT OTHER DYSLEXICS TO REACH THEIR POTENTIAL THROUGH ACTION AND ROLE-MODELING.\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>• Donna has created a non-profit called Blank Canvass which supports parents and trains teachers in the Orton-Gillingham method, which gives learners with dyslexia the one-on-one, intensive attention many have found effective.\u003cbr>\n• Nathan has begun doing academic writing about the relationship between poetry and brains that exhibit neurodiversity, such as those with dyslexia.\u003cbr>\n• Mackenzie intends to get her degree in special education, so that she can support other children who learn differently.\u003cbr>\n• Eric has found success as both an artist and an entrepreneur.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These stories offer a window into the complex inner and outer worlds of people with dyslexia, and each story proves that what Sheryl Rimrodt-Frierson said can indeed be true: \"No one with dyslexia needs to sell themselves short, because there is a world of possibilities.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ADDITIONAL RESOURCES\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zafiGBrFkRM\">“What is dyslexia”\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zafiGBrFkRM\">TED-Ed video by Kelli Sandman-Hurley\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/Big-Picture-Richard-Branson/dp/B00GGESYV6\">HBO The Big Picture: Rethinking Dyslexia\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/series/503544816/unlocking-dyslexia\">Unlocking Dyslexia by NPR\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.understood.org/en\">Understood.org\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://dyslexiaida.org/\">DyslexiaIDA.org\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://learningally.org/\">LearningAlly.org\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.decodingdyslexia.net/\">Decoding Dyslexia\u003c/a> – Grassroots Parent-Led Movement for Dyslexia\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.nessy.com/us/\">Nessy.com\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.dyslegia.com/\">Dyslegia.com\u003c/a> – dyslexia laws from state to state\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.dyslexicadvantage.org/\">Dyslexic Advantage\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"http://literatenation.org/\">Literate Nation\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is chapter six of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54743/the-mindshift-guide-to-understanding-dyslexia\">MindShift Guide to Understanding Dyslexia\u003c/a>. You can find the remaining chapters and a complete \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">printable\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">PDF\u003c/a> of the entire guide by clicking \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>This is chapter five of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54743/the-mindshift-guide-to-understanding-dyslexia\">MindShift Guide to Understanding Dyslexia\u003c/a>. You can find the remaining chapters and a complete \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">printable\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">PDF\u003c/a> of the entire guide by clicking \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>TECHNOLOGY HELPS—BUT ONLY IF IT CAN BE USED\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Even after years of intensive intervention and tutoring, dyslexic students can continue to struggle with reading and writing. That’s why advances in technology have been invaluable to students who read and write slowly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dyslexic students are finding they can complete assignments faster when they employ special features on a laptop or iPad that help work around their dyslexia-related issues. \u003cstrong>But to fully maximize how technology can help students with learning differences, educators’ expectations may need to be shifted. \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For struggling readers, assistive technology such as reading with \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/46125/listening-isnt-cheating-how-audio-books-can-help-us-learn\">audiobooks\u003c/a> is a way for students to fully participate in assignments instead of just focusing on the laborious task of reading, writing and spelling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham, author of Raising Kids Who Read, listening to books is still \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/46125/listening-isnt-cheating-how-audio-books-can-help-us-learn\">reading and isn’t cheating\u003c/a>. For most books, and for most purposes, he writes, listening to a book and reading it are basically the same thing: “Listening to an audio book might be considered cheating if the act of decoding were the point; audio books allow you to seem to have decoded without doing so.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also, most dyslexic students don’t have a problem understanding information— so allowing them to record a class instead of painstakingly take notes, or to speak an essay into a tablet instead of writing it down can change the game completely.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>TECH TOOLS AND ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY FOR DYSLEXICS: A SAMPLING\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Although the following is not a complete list, it can provide the basis for further discussion and investigation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Speech-to-Text\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nStudents can turn their speech into text using apps like \u003ca href=\"https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dragon-dictation/id341446764\">Dragon Dictation\u003c/a>, Google’s \u003ca href=\"https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/voicenote-ii-speech-to-te/hfknjgplnkgjihghcidajejfmldhibfm?hl=en\">VoiceNote\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.easyspellingaid.com/easy-dyslexia-aid/\">Easy Dyslexia Aid\u003c/a> or just speaking into the microphone of a phone, tablet or laptop. Some speech-to-text devices are sensitive to different kinds of voices and will require some experimentation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Google Chrome Extensions\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nExtensions are small software programs that customize a user’s web browsing experience. Users can tailor functionality and behavior to individual needs or preferences. The programs are built on technologies such as HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. Chrome offers several extensions for free or low cost that can help struggling readers and writers.\u003cbr>\n• \u003ca href=\"https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/readwrite-for-google-chro/inoeonmfapjbbkmdafoankkfajkcphgd?hl=en-US\">Read&Write\u003c/a> offers text-to-speech, speech-to-text, and word prediction\u003cbr>\n• \u003ca href=\"https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/snapread-universal/mloajfnmjckfjbeeofcdaecbelnblden?hl=en\">Snap&Read\u003c/a> will begin reading aloud from a click\u003cbr>\n• \u003ca href=\"https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/speak-it/amcnjejmdfilapnnfgnhnidhkififadk?hl=en\">SpeakIt\u003c/a> lets students highlight a piece of text and have it read to them\u003cbr>\n• \u003ca href=\"https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/read-mode/nagcaahojecfeopbghgihcabgiepploa?hl=en\">Read Mode\u003c/a> removes ads and images from websites so students can focus on the text\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Kurzweil\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nKurzweil educational software offers study skills features and Texthelp Read&Write, plus highlighting, sticky and voice notes. Notes can be compiled into a separate study guide, and files can be imported into sound files for easy listening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>WhisperSync\u003cbr>\n\u003c/em>This \u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/Whispersync-for-Voice-Learn-More-Kindle-Store/b?ie=UTF8&node=12527156011\">Amazon app\u003c/a> allows readers to switch between reading and listening to a book. For those whose slow reading can be exhausting, this app allows them to switch to audio to listen for a while.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Audiobooks with Accompanying Readers\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nAmazon’s Immersion Reading and \u003ca href=\"https://learningally.org/Home/gclid/EAIaIQobChMIo67juMLi4wIV2x-tBh3sNQ7NEAAYASAAEgL9_PD_BwE\">VOICEText\u003c/a> by Learning Ally both allow readers to read and listen to a story at the same time. Each comes with a highlighted text feature that helps dyslexic students follow along, allowing them to read books at the level of their peers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Livescribe Smartpen\u003cbr>\n\u003c/em>Livescribe offers a \u003ca href=\"https://www.livescribe.com/en-us/smartpen/\">computerized pen\u003c/a> that doubles as a recording device, recording what’s being said as well as what the student is are writing. The student can tap the pen on any written note to replay what was said while they were writing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Franklin Speller\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nThese \u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/Franklin-NCS-101-SPELLING-CORRECTOR/dp/1567120709\">mini electronic dictionaries\u003c/a> provide\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>• handy lists of confusable words\u003cbr>\n• context-sensitive help text\u003cbr>\n• spellcheck\u003cbr>\n• print and cursive options for words\u003cbr>\n• an arithmetic tutor Free apps like \u003ca href=\"https://apps.apple.com/us/app/speller-free-spell-checker/id305997247\">Speller\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.grammarly.com/\">Grammarly\u003c/a> also correct spelling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for reading print books, some early research has suggested that certain fonts like Dyslexie and Open Dyslexic make it easier for dyslexics to read by adding extra space between letters and weighting the letters at the bottom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although experts have encouraged caution in using the dyslexic-friendly fonts—studies haven’t been peer-reviewed and there is still much to learn about their effectiveness— some dyslexics say special fonts do help, and experts like Nancy Mather at the University of Arizona say they might be worth a try.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is chapter five of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54743/the-mindshift-guide-to-understanding-dyslexia\">MindShift Guide to Understanding Dyslexia\u003c/a>. You can find the remaining chapters and a complete \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">printable\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">PDF\u003c/a> of the entire guide by clicking \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This is chapter five of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54743/the-mindshift-guide-to-understanding-dyslexia\">MindShift Guide to Understanding Dyslexia\u003c/a>. You can find the remaining chapters and a complete \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">printable\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">PDF\u003c/a> of the entire guide by clicking \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>TECHNOLOGY HELPS—BUT ONLY IF IT CAN BE USED\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Even after years of intensive intervention and tutoring, dyslexic students can continue to struggle with reading and writing. That’s why advances in technology have been invaluable to students who read and write slowly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dyslexic students are finding they can complete assignments faster when they employ special features on a laptop or iPad that help work around their dyslexia-related issues. \u003cstrong>But to fully maximize how technology can help students with learning differences, educators’ expectations may need to be shifted. \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For struggling readers, assistive technology such as reading with \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/46125/listening-isnt-cheating-how-audio-books-can-help-us-learn\">audiobooks\u003c/a> is a way for students to fully participate in assignments instead of just focusing on the laborious task of reading, writing and spelling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham, author of Raising Kids Who Read, listening to books is still \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/46125/listening-isnt-cheating-how-audio-books-can-help-us-learn\">reading and isn’t cheating\u003c/a>. For most books, and for most purposes, he writes, listening to a book and reading it are basically the same thing: “Listening to an audio book might be considered cheating if the act of decoding were the point; audio books allow you to seem to have decoded without doing so.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also, most dyslexic students don’t have a problem understanding information— so allowing them to record a class instead of painstakingly take notes, or to speak an essay into a tablet instead of writing it down can change the game completely.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>TECH TOOLS AND ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY FOR DYSLEXICS: A SAMPLING\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Although the following is not a complete list, it can provide the basis for further discussion and investigation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Speech-to-Text\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nStudents can turn their speech into text using apps like \u003ca href=\"https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dragon-dictation/id341446764\">Dragon Dictation\u003c/a>, Google’s \u003ca href=\"https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/voicenote-ii-speech-to-te/hfknjgplnkgjihghcidajejfmldhibfm?hl=en\">VoiceNote\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.easyspellingaid.com/easy-dyslexia-aid/\">Easy Dyslexia Aid\u003c/a> or just speaking into the microphone of a phone, tablet or laptop. Some speech-to-text devices are sensitive to different kinds of voices and will require some experimentation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Google Chrome Extensions\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nExtensions are small software programs that customize a user’s web browsing experience. Users can tailor functionality and behavior to individual needs or preferences. The programs are built on technologies such as HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. Chrome offers several extensions for free or low cost that can help struggling readers and writers.\u003cbr>\n• \u003ca href=\"https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/readwrite-for-google-chro/inoeonmfapjbbkmdafoankkfajkcphgd?hl=en-US\">Read&Write\u003c/a> offers text-to-speech, speech-to-text, and word prediction\u003cbr>\n• \u003ca href=\"https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/snapread-universal/mloajfnmjckfjbeeofcdaecbelnblden?hl=en\">Snap&Read\u003c/a> will begin reading aloud from a click\u003cbr>\n• \u003ca href=\"https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/speak-it/amcnjejmdfilapnnfgnhnidhkififadk?hl=en\">SpeakIt\u003c/a> lets students highlight a piece of text and have it read to them\u003cbr>\n• \u003ca href=\"https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/read-mode/nagcaahojecfeopbghgihcabgiepploa?hl=en\">Read Mode\u003c/a> removes ads and images from websites so students can focus on the text\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Kurzweil\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nKurzweil educational software offers study skills features and Texthelp Read&Write, plus highlighting, sticky and voice notes. Notes can be compiled into a separate study guide, and files can be imported into sound files for easy listening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>WhisperSync\u003cbr>\n\u003c/em>This \u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/Whispersync-for-Voice-Learn-More-Kindle-Store/b?ie=UTF8&node=12527156011\">Amazon app\u003c/a> allows readers to switch between reading and listening to a book. For those whose slow reading can be exhausting, this app allows them to switch to audio to listen for a while.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Audiobooks with Accompanying Readers\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nAmazon’s Immersion Reading and \u003ca href=\"https://learningally.org/Home/gclid/EAIaIQobChMIo67juMLi4wIV2x-tBh3sNQ7NEAAYASAAEgL9_PD_BwE\">VOICEText\u003c/a> by Learning Ally both allow readers to read and listen to a story at the same time. Each comes with a highlighted text feature that helps dyslexic students follow along, allowing them to read books at the level of their peers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Livescribe Smartpen\u003cbr>\n\u003c/em>Livescribe offers a \u003ca href=\"https://www.livescribe.com/en-us/smartpen/\">computerized pen\u003c/a> that doubles as a recording device, recording what’s being said as well as what the student is are writing. The student can tap the pen on any written note to replay what was said while they were writing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Franklin Speller\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nThese \u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/Franklin-NCS-101-SPELLING-CORRECTOR/dp/1567120709\">mini electronic dictionaries\u003c/a> provide\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>• handy lists of confusable words\u003cbr>\n• context-sensitive help text\u003cbr>\n• spellcheck\u003cbr>\n• print and cursive options for words\u003cbr>\n• an arithmetic tutor Free apps like \u003ca href=\"https://apps.apple.com/us/app/speller-free-spell-checker/id305997247\">Speller\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.grammarly.com/\">Grammarly\u003c/a> also correct spelling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for reading print books, some early research has suggested that certain fonts like Dyslexie and Open Dyslexic make it easier for dyslexics to read by adding extra space between letters and weighting the letters at the bottom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although experts have encouraged caution in using the dyslexic-friendly fonts—studies haven’t been peer-reviewed and there is still much to learn about their effectiveness— some dyslexics say special fonts do help, and experts like Nancy Mather at the University of Arizona say they might be worth a try.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is chapter five of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54743/the-mindshift-guide-to-understanding-dyslexia\">MindShift Guide to Understanding Dyslexia\u003c/a>. You can find the remaining chapters and a complete \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">printable\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">PDF\u003c/a> of the entire guide by clicking \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>This is chapter four of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54743/the-mindshift-guide-to-understanding-dyslexia\">MindShift Guide to Understanding Dyslexia\u003c/a>. You can find the remaining chapters and a complete \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">printable\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">PDF\u003c/a> of the entire guide by clicking \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Experts know that the only effective help for students with dyslexia is targeted, specific intervention that addresses each student’s issues. How students receive that intervention largely depends on where they live.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Federal law guarantees those with dyslexia a free and appropriate education under the \u003ca href=\"https://sites.ed.gov/idea/\">Individuals with Disabilities Education Act\u003c/a> (IDEA). However, the patchwork condition of state laws means there’s a lack of uniformity in defining dyslexia and how students are to be accommodated. As recently as a few years ago, some states had put ‘Say Dyslexia’ or ‘Dyslexia Awareness Week’ laws into effect in order to create consistency around dyslexia accountability in schools—but the laws didn’t have much impact.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s beginning to change, according to dyslexia expert Nancy Mather, as states update existing laws to include language for dyslexia specifically, instead of using more general terms like ‘learning disability,’ ‘reading deficit,’ etc.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-54919\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2019/11/Youman-Dyslexia-Laws.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1163\" height=\"880\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2019/11/Youman-Dyslexia-Laws.png 1163w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2019/11/Youman-Dyslexia-Laws-160x121.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2019/11/Youman-Dyslexia-Laws-800x605.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2019/11/Youman-Dyslexia-Laws-768x581.png 768w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2019/11/Youman-Dyslexia-Laws-1020x772.png 1020w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1163px) 100vw, 1163px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.hsutx.edu/academics/schools-colleges/college-human-sciences-educational-studies/autism-dyslexia-center/\">Texas\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://dese.ade.arkansas.gov/divisions/learning-services/curriculum-and-instruction/dyslexia\">Arkansas\u003c/a> in particular have comprehensive laws, and recently California made headlines as it beefed up its universal screening and issued a high-quality, \u003ca href=\"https://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/se/ac/documents/cadyslexiaguidelines.pdf\">comprehensive guidance guidebook on dyslexia\u003c/a> (Tennessee and a handful of other states have also issued dyslexia guidance).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A comprehensive list of dyslexia laws from state to state can be \u003ca href=\"https://www.dyslegia.com/state-dyslexia-laws/\">found here\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But parents of dyslexic students say that having the laws on the books is just the first step to getting help, according to Mather. Getting schools and districts to pay attention is more important. “Hopefully this increased spotlight on dyslexia will result in many more students getting the kind of help and support that they need to become avid, fluent readers,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>ADVOCATES FOR NECESSARY SUPPORT: THE CRUCIAL ROLE OF PARENTS AND CAREGIVERS\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>After several years of advocating for her dyslexic daughter in school settings, Nashville, Tennessee, parent Anna Thorsen began to realize \u003cstrong>how crucial parents and caregivers were to helping students get the interventions they need.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A former lawyer, Thorsen now spends her days advocating for dyslexic students through the Dyslexia Advisory Council for the state of Tennessee and is a member of Decoding Dyslexia Tennessee. The parent role is complex, Thorsen says, and collaborating with the school requires both strength and understanding, knowing when to push and when to hold back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a parent advocate, you have to be fierce and tireless. Many parents of children with special needs say they feel so much stress because they are their child’s caregiver, IEP case manager, tutor, advocate and lawyer, all wrapped into one. With all of the other demands of work and family life, these roles can be overwhelming and many parents don’t have the luxury of time at the end of a busy work week to dedicate themselves to being the all-around expert on their child’s education. After years of playing all these roles, parents get worn out and really must struggle to work to build collaborative relationships with schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thorson offers the following advice and tips for parents and caregivers of dyslexic children who may be facing the same issues.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>5 TIPS TO BUILD A COLLABORATIVE RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR CHILD’S SCHOOL\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>By Anna Thorsen\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Building a collaborative relationship takes a lot of work, and it is not easy. I certainly do not always do a good job at it myself, especially when I am tired, angry and stressed out. But what I always tell parents is that you are stuck working with your school, your teachers and your school administration for a year or many years. You do not need them to write you off as a crazy parent. Here are my tips to build a strong relationship.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>1. When it comes to your dyslexic child, don’t be one-dimensional \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s crucial to keep communication flowing with your child’s school, so don’t strain communications by only talking about your child’s problems or harass teachers about something that went wrong in class. If you are “that” parent, teachers and administrators will begin to avoid you. Instead, I advise parents to say hello to your child’s teacher when you see them, tell a funny story or ask how they are doing. If possible, try not to make every encounter about your child’s reading problems; it goes a long way in building a trusting relationship with your child’s teacher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>2. Make yourself invaluable \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If possible, become a part of the school in some way, by donating your time. Volunteer, mentor, or do something to show teachers and administration that you want to be part of the school. If it’s not possible to spend more time at school, then ask teachers or administration how you can help. Forming relationships with your school will build trust and only help your student.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>3. Don’t be a bull in a china shop \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead of demanding action, connect with teachers and administrators on an emotional level. After all, they are humans, too, and many have kids of their own. Describe what’s really happening in your family and don’t be afraid to share your emotions–there’s nothing wrong with saying “I am scared for my child,” or “I have been losing sleep worrying.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>4. Bring conversations back to your child \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In meetings, remind people that you are talking about a real, live child, and not a data point. Bring a picture or video of your child. Ask for your child to come by the meeting to tell the school group things are going well and things that are hard. Tell the school about your child’s dreams and abilities outside of school. Once the team connects with you and your child, you will be more successful. We, as humans, help people we know and have a harder time denying someone what we have a connection to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>5. When all else fails, don’t be afraid to be a bull in a china shop \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If nothing is working, then you have to be willing to take it to the next level until you get what your child needs. I always advise parents to use force as an absolute last resort, and try to assume that schools will do the right thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thorsen, along with Eileen Miller, founding member of Decoding Dyslexia, TN, and of Ignite Dyslexia, offer the following hard-won wisdom regarding Individualized Education Program (IEP) meetings:\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>12 Tips to Remember in an IEP Meeting\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>1. Never sign the IEP document in the meeting. You may sign that you were present at the meeting, but don’t sign off on the IEP itself. Go home and read it. Make sure it is what you want before you sign.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>2. Never go to an IEP meeting alone. Bring an advocate, a spouse or a friend.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>3. If possible, record the meeting. It’s difficult to understand everyone at once.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>4. Ask that people in the room at the IEP meeting introduce themselves and what their role is. Write down everyone’s name and position. You may need to follow up with them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>5. Take your time and have the IEP team meeting go at your pace. Don’t feel rushed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>6. Ask for clarification of acronyms and educational terms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>7. Get everything in writing. If it is not in writing — it never happened.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>8. Be prepared and know what you want. Do your homework on your child’s disability, be familiar with the law and know your rights.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>9. It helps to have a binder to keep all the information on your child.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>10. Ask the team to go over documents with you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>11. Consider bringing your child to a portion of the meeting. It helps the team to hear from them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>12. Never give up. You are the parent and you know your child better than anyone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More Parent Resources Can be Found Here:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>• How You Can Help Your Child with Dyslexia, \u003ca href=\"https://www.understood.org/en/learning-thinking-differences/child-learning-disabilities/dyslexia/what-is-dyslexia?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIjfj6iZqE1gIV3UwNCh3iYA4FEAAYAiAAEgJXefD_BwE\">Understood.org\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n• Support and Resources for Parents, \u003ca href=\"https://ldaamerica.org/parents/\">Learning Disabilities Association of America\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n• 10 Things Parents Need to Know to Help a Struggling Reader, \u003ca href=\"http://dyslexia.yale.edu/resources/parents/what-parents-can-do/ten-things-to-help-your-struggling-reader/\">Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n• Dyslexia: Three Strategies for Parents, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/11/29/503766818/raising-a-child-with-dyslexia-3-things-parents-can-do\">NPR\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n• Six Ways Parents Can Help, \u003ca href=\"https://www.nessy.com/us/parents/dyslexia-information/6-ways-parents-can-help-dyslexia/\">Nessy.com\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is chapter four of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54743/the-mindshift-guide-to-understanding-dyslexia\">MindShift Guide to Understanding Dyslexia\u003c/a>. You can find the remaining chapters and a complete \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">printable\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">PDF\u003c/a> of the entire guide by clicking \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This is chapter four of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54743/the-mindshift-guide-to-understanding-dyslexia\">MindShift Guide to Understanding Dyslexia\u003c/a>. You can find the remaining chapters and a complete \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">printable\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">PDF\u003c/a> of the entire guide by clicking \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Experts know that the only effective help for students with dyslexia is targeted, specific intervention that addresses each student’s issues. How students receive that intervention largely depends on where they live.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Federal law guarantees those with dyslexia a free and appropriate education under the \u003ca href=\"https://sites.ed.gov/idea/\">Individuals with Disabilities Education Act\u003c/a> (IDEA). However, the patchwork condition of state laws means there’s a lack of uniformity in defining dyslexia and how students are to be accommodated. As recently as a few years ago, some states had put ‘Say Dyslexia’ or ‘Dyslexia Awareness Week’ laws into effect in order to create consistency around dyslexia accountability in schools—but the laws didn’t have much impact.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s beginning to change, according to dyslexia expert Nancy Mather, as states update existing laws to include language for dyslexia specifically, instead of using more general terms like ‘learning disability,’ ‘reading deficit,’ etc.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-54919\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2019/11/Youman-Dyslexia-Laws.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1163\" height=\"880\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2019/11/Youman-Dyslexia-Laws.png 1163w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2019/11/Youman-Dyslexia-Laws-160x121.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2019/11/Youman-Dyslexia-Laws-800x605.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2019/11/Youman-Dyslexia-Laws-768x581.png 768w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2019/11/Youman-Dyslexia-Laws-1020x772.png 1020w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1163px) 100vw, 1163px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.hsutx.edu/academics/schools-colleges/college-human-sciences-educational-studies/autism-dyslexia-center/\">Texas\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://dese.ade.arkansas.gov/divisions/learning-services/curriculum-and-instruction/dyslexia\">Arkansas\u003c/a> in particular have comprehensive laws, and recently California made headlines as it beefed up its universal screening and issued a high-quality, \u003ca href=\"https://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/se/ac/documents/cadyslexiaguidelines.pdf\">comprehensive guidance guidebook on dyslexia\u003c/a> (Tennessee and a handful of other states have also issued dyslexia guidance).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A comprehensive list of dyslexia laws from state to state can be \u003ca href=\"https://www.dyslegia.com/state-dyslexia-laws/\">found here\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But parents of dyslexic students say that having the laws on the books is just the first step to getting help, according to Mather. Getting schools and districts to pay attention is more important. “Hopefully this increased spotlight on dyslexia will result in many more students getting the kind of help and support that they need to become avid, fluent readers,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>ADVOCATES FOR NECESSARY SUPPORT: THE CRUCIAL ROLE OF PARENTS AND CAREGIVERS\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>After several years of advocating for her dyslexic daughter in school settings, Nashville, Tennessee, parent Anna Thorsen began to realize \u003cstrong>how crucial parents and caregivers were to helping students get the interventions they need.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A former lawyer, Thorsen now spends her days advocating for dyslexic students through the Dyslexia Advisory Council for the state of Tennessee and is a member of Decoding Dyslexia Tennessee. The parent role is complex, Thorsen says, and collaborating with the school requires both strength and understanding, knowing when to push and when to hold back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a parent advocate, you have to be fierce and tireless. Many parents of children with special needs say they feel so much stress because they are their child’s caregiver, IEP case manager, tutor, advocate and lawyer, all wrapped into one. With all of the other demands of work and family life, these roles can be overwhelming and many parents don’t have the luxury of time at the end of a busy work week to dedicate themselves to being the all-around expert on their child’s education. After years of playing all these roles, parents get worn out and really must struggle to work to build collaborative relationships with schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thorson offers the following advice and tips for parents and caregivers of dyslexic children who may be facing the same issues.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>5 TIPS TO BUILD A COLLABORATIVE RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR CHILD’S SCHOOL\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>By Anna Thorsen\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Building a collaborative relationship takes a lot of work, and it is not easy. I certainly do not always do a good job at it myself, especially when I am tired, angry and stressed out. But what I always tell parents is that you are stuck working with your school, your teachers and your school administration for a year or many years. You do not need them to write you off as a crazy parent. Here are my tips to build a strong relationship.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>1. When it comes to your dyslexic child, don’t be one-dimensional \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s crucial to keep communication flowing with your child’s school, so don’t strain communications by only talking about your child’s problems or harass teachers about something that went wrong in class. If you are “that” parent, teachers and administrators will begin to avoid you. Instead, I advise parents to say hello to your child’s teacher when you see them, tell a funny story or ask how they are doing. If possible, try not to make every encounter about your child’s reading problems; it goes a long way in building a trusting relationship with your child’s teacher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>2. Make yourself invaluable \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If possible, become a part of the school in some way, by donating your time. Volunteer, mentor, or do something to show teachers and administration that you want to be part of the school. If it’s not possible to spend more time at school, then ask teachers or administration how you can help. Forming relationships with your school will build trust and only help your student.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>3. Don’t be a bull in a china shop \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead of demanding action, connect with teachers and administrators on an emotional level. After all, they are humans, too, and many have kids of their own. Describe what’s really happening in your family and don’t be afraid to share your emotions–there’s nothing wrong with saying “I am scared for my child,” or “I have been losing sleep worrying.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>4. Bring conversations back to your child \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In meetings, remind people that you are talking about a real, live child, and not a data point. Bring a picture or video of your child. Ask for your child to come by the meeting to tell the school group things are going well and things that are hard. Tell the school about your child’s dreams and abilities outside of school. Once the team connects with you and your child, you will be more successful. We, as humans, help people we know and have a harder time denying someone what we have a connection to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>5. When all else fails, don’t be afraid to be a bull in a china shop \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If nothing is working, then you have to be willing to take it to the next level until you get what your child needs. I always advise parents to use force as an absolute last resort, and try to assume that schools will do the right thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thorsen, along with Eileen Miller, founding member of Decoding Dyslexia, TN, and of Ignite Dyslexia, offer the following hard-won wisdom regarding Individualized Education Program (IEP) meetings:\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>12 Tips to Remember in an IEP Meeting\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>1. Never sign the IEP document in the meeting. You may sign that you were present at the meeting, but don’t sign off on the IEP itself. Go home and read it. Make sure it is what you want before you sign.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>2. Never go to an IEP meeting alone. Bring an advocate, a spouse or a friend.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>3. If possible, record the meeting. It’s difficult to understand everyone at once.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>4. Ask that people in the room at the IEP meeting introduce themselves and what their role is. Write down everyone’s name and position. You may need to follow up with them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>5. Take your time and have the IEP team meeting go at your pace. Don’t feel rushed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>6. Ask for clarification of acronyms and educational terms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>7. Get everything in writing. If it is not in writing — it never happened.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>8. Be prepared and know what you want. Do your homework on your child’s disability, be familiar with the law and know your rights.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>9. It helps to have a binder to keep all the information on your child.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>10. Ask the team to go over documents with you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>11. Consider bringing your child to a portion of the meeting. It helps the team to hear from them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>12. Never give up. You are the parent and you know your child better than anyone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More Parent Resources Can be Found Here:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>• How You Can Help Your Child with Dyslexia, \u003ca href=\"https://www.understood.org/en/learning-thinking-differences/child-learning-disabilities/dyslexia/what-is-dyslexia?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIjfj6iZqE1gIV3UwNCh3iYA4FEAAYAiAAEgJXefD_BwE\">Understood.org\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n• Support and Resources for Parents, \u003ca href=\"https://ldaamerica.org/parents/\">Learning Disabilities Association of America\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n• 10 Things Parents Need to Know to Help a Struggling Reader, \u003ca href=\"http://dyslexia.yale.edu/resources/parents/what-parents-can-do/ten-things-to-help-your-struggling-reader/\">Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n• Dyslexia: Three Strategies for Parents, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/11/29/503766818/raising-a-child-with-dyslexia-3-things-parents-can-do\">NPR\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n• Six Ways Parents Can Help, \u003ca href=\"https://www.nessy.com/us/parents/dyslexia-information/6-ways-parents-can-help-dyslexia/\">Nessy.com\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is chapter four of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54743/the-mindshift-guide-to-understanding-dyslexia\">MindShift Guide to Understanding Dyslexia\u003c/a>. You can find the remaining chapters and a complete \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">printable\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">PDF\u003c/a> of the entire guide by clicking \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>This is chapter three of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54743/the-mindshift-guide-to-understanding-dyslexia\">MindShift Guide to Understanding Dyslexia\u003c/a>. You can find the remaining chapters and a complete \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">printable\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">PDF\u003c/a> of the entire guide by clicking \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Children who cannot read and can’t figure out why can face unbearable difficulty in classrooms. There are students who know something is wrong but can’t say what and may assume that adults might not believe them. When faced with homework, such kids will fidget, distract, cry or rage, or act out when it’s their turn to read in front of the class. Some students decide that it’s better to end up in the principal’s office than face another humiliating failure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sometimes it’s the classroom teacher who recognizes and identifies a student who is struggling. But because some misconceptions about dyslexia persist and often permeate \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/41997/who-helps-kids-with-dyslexia-gain-reading-fluency\">teacher training programs\u003c/a>, it’s not uncommon that highly educated and hard-working teachers haven’t been given the proper training to address the struggles of dyslexic readers.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT DYSLEXIA: THE STUMBLING BLOCK\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>As we’ve seen, dyslexia isn’t a disease. It’s not a visual problem nor is it related to low intelligence. Yet these are persistent misconceptions about dyslexia that often keep students who experience biologically-based reading difficulties—a different brain that requires extra attention and special intervention—from getting the help they need.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reading expert Mark Seidenberg, author of Language at the Speed of Sight, says there’s a large gap between beliefs about how reading works and what research says, and that gap is what works to keep kids from getting the proper interventions in a timely manner. In that gap are two persistent reading misconceptions/myths:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Misconception #1: Kids’ reading problems are connected to vision.\u003c/strong> Dyslexia is a language-based disorder, not a visual one. Vision is involved with reading, but the first signs of trouble for many dyslexics often show up in their speech.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As discussed before, though it seems counterintuitive, reading problems are most often connected to\u003cstrong> matching letters to sounds\u003c/strong>, not “flipping” letters backwards or other vision issues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Misconception #2: Reading is more like a sophisticated guessing game,\u003c/strong> in which students use what they already know about the topic and about language in general to guess at printed words instead of sounding them out. “This theory was sold for decades,” Seidenberg says, “that the best readers are those who spend the least amount of effort on the actual text. That you only have to sample the text and use the things you know to guess most the words. By this theory, good reading is more like skimming.” Research shows otherwise, however: to achieve fluency and understanding, good readers sound out each word individually and then put the words together to form coherent sentences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Correcting these misconceptions about reading can go a long way for teachers in spotting possible struggling readers early.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>NEXT STEPS\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Universal screening for every child does help flag children who may be at risk for developing dyslexia, says Seidenberg. But what happens next is much more important—getting the child the help they need.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After a child has been identified as having a phonological or comprehension challenge, classroom teachers have an opportunity to get the student the help they need—but only if the teacher knows what to do. According to Seidenberg, one of the most important next steps for educators is to \u003cstrong>step outside the classroom to get the at-risk student the intense intervention needed from a trained reading specialist\u003c/strong>— realizing that educators can’t handle serious reading issues alone. It is not realistic for a single classroom teacher to be able to address the needs of an entire class as well as the specialized needs of children who need lots of individualized attention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The end of this section includes a brief overview of a research backed intervention that educators should know about, one that can teach nearly all dyslexics to read.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But one other step teachers can take in the classroom is to learn more about the techniques used to \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2659758/\">minimize reading differences early\u003c/a>. For teachers who have diagnosed dyslexics in class, there are strategies to help students get the most out of class time, even when reading and writing is a struggle. Strategies include\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>• allowing more time for assignments and tests\u003cbr>\n• supporting vocabulary development\u003cbr>\n• avoiding contests or prizes for amount of material read instead of time spent reading\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But these ideas are only the tip of the iceberg, as the needs of dyslexic students change throughout school years. Check out these expert resources for a more robust understanding of teaching strategies for dyslexic students:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>• A Dyslexic Child in the Classroom, \u003ca href=\"https://www.dyslexia.com/about-dyslexia/understanding-dyslexia/guide-for-classroom-teachers/\">Davis Dyslexia Association International\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>• Knowledge and Practice Standards for Teachers of Reading, \u003ca href=\"https://dyslexiaida.org/\">International Dyslexia Association\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>• Dyslexia Strategies for Teachers, \u003ca href=\"http://dyslexiahelp.umich.edu/professionals/dyslexia-school/strategies-for-teachers\">University of Michigan Dyslexia Center\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>• Information on Dyslexia for Teachers, \u003ca href=\"http://dyslexia.yale.edu/resources/educators/\">Yale Center of Dyslexia and Creativity\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>• Eight Things Every Teacher Should Know about Dyslexia, \u003ca href=\"https://www.weareteachers.com/8-things-every-teacher-should-know-about-dyslexia/\">We Are Teachers\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>• Understanding Dyslexia Online Course for Educators, \u003ca href=\"https://mindplay.com/teacher-programs/understanding-dyslexia/\">MindPlay\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>• \u003ca href=\"https://www.understood.org/en\">Understood.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A RESEARCH-BACKED INTERVENTION THAT TEACHES DYSLEXICS TO READ\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Fortunately, scientific research supports a specific kind of reading intervention that can teach nearly all dyslexics to read: \u003cstrong>structured literacy\u003c/strong>. Although it often appears under different brand names, like Orton-Gillingham, Wilson, SPIRE or others, structured literacy is a blanket term for the evidence-based, multisensory and explicit reading instruction that is based on six specific language areas determined by the International Dyslexia Association.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The method is often more repetitive and intensified for students with dyslexia, but the tenets of structured literacy—which have a strong basis in phonics and word structure—benefit all readers. In structured literacy, students\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>• Begin with phonics, learning the most basic units of sound and how those sounds make up words\u003cbr>\n• Learn word structure and how word structure guides spelling and pronunciation\u003cbr>\n• Then learn word syntax (the arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language) and comprehension\u003cbr>\n• And most importantly, students review key concepts many times while also adding new material\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to the International Dyslexia Association, the core of structured literacy instruction, which accounts for its success, is that it is\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>1. Explicit and focused on direct instruction\u003cbr>\n2. Systematic and cumulative, following a logical sequence that builds on previous concepts, and\u003cbr>\n3. Diagnostic and individualized, based on a student’s particular needs\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is chapter three of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54743/the-mindshift-guide-to-understanding-dyslexia\">MindShift Guide to Understanding Dyslexia\u003c/a>. You can find the remaining chapters and a complete \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">printable\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">PDF\u003c/a> of the entire guide by clicking \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This is chapter three of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54743/the-mindshift-guide-to-understanding-dyslexia\">MindShift Guide to Understanding Dyslexia\u003c/a>. You can find the remaining chapters and a complete \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">printable\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">PDF\u003c/a> of the entire guide by clicking \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Children who cannot read and can’t figure out why can face unbearable difficulty in classrooms. There are students who know something is wrong but can’t say what and may assume that adults might not believe them. When faced with homework, such kids will fidget, distract, cry or rage, or act out when it’s their turn to read in front of the class. Some students decide that it’s better to end up in the principal’s office than face another humiliating failure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sometimes it’s the classroom teacher who recognizes and identifies a student who is struggling. But because some misconceptions about dyslexia persist and often permeate \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/41997/who-helps-kids-with-dyslexia-gain-reading-fluency\">teacher training programs\u003c/a>, it’s not uncommon that highly educated and hard-working teachers haven’t been given the proper training to address the struggles of dyslexic readers.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT DYSLEXIA: THE STUMBLING BLOCK\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>As we’ve seen, dyslexia isn’t a disease. It’s not a visual problem nor is it related to low intelligence. Yet these are persistent misconceptions about dyslexia that often keep students who experience biologically-based reading difficulties—a different brain that requires extra attention and special intervention—from getting the help they need.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reading expert Mark Seidenberg, author of Language at the Speed of Sight, says there’s a large gap between beliefs about how reading works and what research says, and that gap is what works to keep kids from getting the proper interventions in a timely manner. In that gap are two persistent reading misconceptions/myths:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Misconception #1: Kids’ reading problems are connected to vision.\u003c/strong> Dyslexia is a language-based disorder, not a visual one. Vision is involved with reading, but the first signs of trouble for many dyslexics often show up in their speech.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As discussed before, though it seems counterintuitive, reading problems are most often connected to\u003cstrong> matching letters to sounds\u003c/strong>, not “flipping” letters backwards or other vision issues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Misconception #2: Reading is more like a sophisticated guessing game,\u003c/strong> in which students use what they already know about the topic and about language in general to guess at printed words instead of sounding them out. “This theory was sold for decades,” Seidenberg says, “that the best readers are those who spend the least amount of effort on the actual text. That you only have to sample the text and use the things you know to guess most the words. By this theory, good reading is more like skimming.” Research shows otherwise, however: to achieve fluency and understanding, good readers sound out each word individually and then put the words together to form coherent sentences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Correcting these misconceptions about reading can go a long way for teachers in spotting possible struggling readers early.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>NEXT STEPS\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Universal screening for every child does help flag children who may be at risk for developing dyslexia, says Seidenberg. But what happens next is much more important—getting the child the help they need.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After a child has been identified as having a phonological or comprehension challenge, classroom teachers have an opportunity to get the student the help they need—but only if the teacher knows what to do. According to Seidenberg, one of the most important next steps for educators is to \u003cstrong>step outside the classroom to get the at-risk student the intense intervention needed from a trained reading specialist\u003c/strong>— realizing that educators can’t handle serious reading issues alone. It is not realistic for a single classroom teacher to be able to address the needs of an entire class as well as the specialized needs of children who need lots of individualized attention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The end of this section includes a brief overview of a research backed intervention that educators should know about, one that can teach nearly all dyslexics to read.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But one other step teachers can take in the classroom is to learn more about the techniques used to \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2659758/\">minimize reading differences early\u003c/a>. For teachers who have diagnosed dyslexics in class, there are strategies to help students get the most out of class time, even when reading and writing is a struggle. Strategies include\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>• allowing more time for assignments and tests\u003cbr>\n• supporting vocabulary development\u003cbr>\n• avoiding contests or prizes for amount of material read instead of time spent reading\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But these ideas are only the tip of the iceberg, as the needs of dyslexic students change throughout school years. Check out these expert resources for a more robust understanding of teaching strategies for dyslexic students:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>• A Dyslexic Child in the Classroom, \u003ca href=\"https://www.dyslexia.com/about-dyslexia/understanding-dyslexia/guide-for-classroom-teachers/\">Davis Dyslexia Association International\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>• Knowledge and Practice Standards for Teachers of Reading, \u003ca href=\"https://dyslexiaida.org/\">International Dyslexia Association\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>• Dyslexia Strategies for Teachers, \u003ca href=\"http://dyslexiahelp.umich.edu/professionals/dyslexia-school/strategies-for-teachers\">University of Michigan Dyslexia Center\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>• Information on Dyslexia for Teachers, \u003ca href=\"http://dyslexia.yale.edu/resources/educators/\">Yale Center of Dyslexia and Creativity\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>• Eight Things Every Teacher Should Know about Dyslexia, \u003ca href=\"https://www.weareteachers.com/8-things-every-teacher-should-know-about-dyslexia/\">We Are Teachers\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>• Understanding Dyslexia Online Course for Educators, \u003ca href=\"https://mindplay.com/teacher-programs/understanding-dyslexia/\">MindPlay\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>• \u003ca href=\"https://www.understood.org/en\">Understood.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A RESEARCH-BACKED INTERVENTION THAT TEACHES DYSLEXICS TO READ\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Fortunately, scientific research supports a specific kind of reading intervention that can teach nearly all dyslexics to read: \u003cstrong>structured literacy\u003c/strong>. Although it often appears under different brand names, like Orton-Gillingham, Wilson, SPIRE or others, structured literacy is a blanket term for the evidence-based, multisensory and explicit reading instruction that is based on six specific language areas determined by the International Dyslexia Association.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The method is often more repetitive and intensified for students with dyslexia, but the tenets of structured literacy—which have a strong basis in phonics and word structure—benefit all readers. In structured literacy, students\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>• Begin with phonics, learning the most basic units of sound and how those sounds make up words\u003cbr>\n• Learn word structure and how word structure guides spelling and pronunciation\u003cbr>\n• Then learn word syntax (the arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language) and comprehension\u003cbr>\n• And most importantly, students review key concepts many times while also adding new material\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to the International Dyslexia Association, the core of structured literacy instruction, which accounts for its success, is that it is\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>1. Explicit and focused on direct instruction\u003cbr>\n2. Systematic and cumulative, following a logical sequence that builds on previous concepts, and\u003cbr>\n3. Diagnostic and individualized, based on a student’s particular needs\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is chapter three of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54743/the-mindshift-guide-to-understanding-dyslexia\">MindShift Guide to Understanding Dyslexia\u003c/a>. You can find the remaining chapters and a complete \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">printable\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">PDF\u003c/a> of the entire guide by clicking \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>This is chapter two of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54743/the-mindshift-guide-to-understanding-dyslexia\">MindShift Guide to Understanding Dyslexia\u003c/a>. You can find the remaining chapters and a complete \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">printable\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">PDF\u003c/a> of the entire guide by clicking \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>THE CHALLENGE OF DETECTION\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>One of the most challenging aspects of properly addressing the different brains of dyslexic children is recognizing them in the first place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dyslexia occurs on a continuum and there is no “\u003ca href=\"http://www.interventionsforliteracy.org.uk/home/schools/use-of-the-term-dyslexia/\">sharp dividing line\u003c/a>” between having dyslexia and not having it. In the early years of elementary school, all children are learning to read, and all are developing their reading skills at different rates. “The behaviors of 4-to-6 year-olds who are at risk for dyslexia are not very different from those of children who are not,” writes professor Mark Seidenberg, cognitive scientist at the University of Wisconsin, in Language at the Speed of Sight. “Typically developing children learn to read at different rates for constitutional and environmental reasons.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Further, because dyslexia’s symptoms and manifestations can change over time, families, teachers, and schools understandably struggle to identify dyslexia in children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the way dyslexia presents itself in young readers is far from the only hurdle: sometimes elementary teachers haven’t been given the proper tools to recognize the early warning signs, and many who recognize the symptoms of reading trouble ahead don’t know how to address those issues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For example, when Dr. Martha Youman \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/41997/who-helps-kids-with-dyslexia-gain-reading-fluency\">first began\u003c/a> her career as a second grade teacher, she knew that some of her students simply couldn’t read but she didn’t know what to do about it: “I kept them busy. Truly, there were interventions they needed, I just didn’t know how to help them,” says Youman, who now treats kids with dyslexia. “I had a master’s in teaching, and didn’t know how to deal with these students.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Often the diagnosis of dyslexia comes after months or years of exhausting frustration and failure for students, parents, and teachers. It’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.ldonline.org/article/19296/\">common\u003c/a> for dyslexic children to avoid reading and become angry or upset in class or when it’s time to do homework or read aloud in front of others. Sometimes these students are seen as smart but lacking motivation or not working hard enough. To make things more complicated, dyslexic children often have \u003ca href=\"https://dyslexiaida.org/attention-deficithyperactivity-disorder-adhd-and-dyslexia/\">another developmental disorder like ADHD\u003c/a> alongside their reading challenges.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The key to preventing reading failure is early detection.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>WHAT DOES DYSLEXIA LOOK LIKE?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Though dyslexia can take on many forms, two common areas where differences can be clearly seen and heard are \u003cstrong>slow reading\u003c/strong> and \u003cstrong>difficulty with handwriting and spelling\u003c/strong>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also, in some cases, certain speech patterns can be an early indicator of dyslexia, like mispronouncing familiar words or using “baby talk.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the following video, a fourth grader with dyslexia reads from Rosie Revere, Engineer, and then writes what she’s looking forward to when she gets to fifth grade (see picture below). At the time when this video was taken, she had already had 1.5 years of targeted \u003ca href=\"https://www.wilsonlanguage.com/dyslexia/\">Wilson dyslexia tutoring\u003c/a>, and her reading had improved significantly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMa2GSE3Afs&feature=youtu.be\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>WHAT’S IT LIKE TO READ WITH DYSLEXIA?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>For kids who are entering school, according to the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity,\u003ca href=\"http://dyslexia.yale.edu/dyslexia/signs-of-dyslexia/\"> signs of dyslexia\u003c/a> in kindergarten and elementary school children include:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>• Difficulty sounding out simple words like cap, map, nap\u003cbr>\n• Difficulty associating letters with sounds, and can’t break words apart\u003cbr>\n• Talks about how hard reading is and/or resists reading\u003cbr>\n• Family history of reading difficulties\u003cbr>\n• Difficulty speaking In second grade and up, signs of dyslexia might include:\u003cbr>\n• Avoids reading out loud\u003cbr>\n• Exhibits slow and awkward reading, and difficulty in acquiring new reading skills\u003cbr>\n• Makes wild guesses when sounding out a word\u003cbr>\n• Has no strategy for sounding out unfamiliar words\u003cbr>\n• Relies on vague language when searching for a word, like “things” or “stuff”\u003cbr>\n• Mispronounces long or unfamiliar words\u003cbr>\n• Uses lots of pauses, hesitation, and “umm’s” when speaking\u003cbr>\n• Seems to need extra time to answer questions\u003cbr>\n• Has extreme difficulty learning a foreign language\u003cbr>\n• Has messy handwriting\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For more signs of dyslexia in younger children and adults, including particular dyslexic strengths, visit the Yale Center’s \u003ca href=\"http://dyslexia.yale.edu/dyslexia/signs-of-dyslexia/\">Signs of Dyslexia\u003c/a> page.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>DYSLEXIA IN ENGLISH LEARNERS: EXTRA HURDLES\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>According to Pew Research Center, there are about \u003ca href=\"https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/10/25/6-facts-about-english-language-learners-in-u-s-public-schools/\">5 million English Language learners\u003c/a> in American public schools, or nearly 10 percent of the school population. While the vast majority (77 percent) of American English learners’ first language is Spanish, the top five are rounded out by Arabic, Chinese, Vietnamese and Somali. Among states, California has the highest number of English learners, with more than 20 percent of school children speaking a different language at home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For schools, teachers and parents, diagnosing dyslexia in English learners can present an extra set of hurdles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dr. Kelli Sandman-Hurley, co-founder of the Dyslexia Training Institute in San Diego, California, says dyslexics learning English can sometimes be overlooked for two reasons: first, there’s not a lot of research on the topic and often educators don’t know what to look for, and second, reading difficulties can often be attributed to learning a new language.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>ENGLISH LEARNERS AND RECOGNIZING DYSLEXIA: INSIGHTS AND SUGGESTIONS FROM TWO EXPERTS\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>According to Sandman-Hurley, students who have trouble with phonemic awareness in their first language will also find learning letters and sounds in English difficult. But if it’s not possible to screen kids’ phonemic awareness in their first language, educators can look for other clues that children are struggling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sandman-Hurley says it’s often important to check and see if English learners are having trouble in other subjects—that is, if a child learns math quickly and relatively easily, then a reading disability might be at play.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sandman-Hurley makes two recommendations to educators trying to spot reading difficulties in English learners:\u003c/p>\n\u003col>\n\u003cli>If possible, provide screening in the child’s native language\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Dig into what’s going on at home—since dyslexia tends to run in families, find out if other family members also had difficulties with reading, or if children had displayed some of the early warning signs, like an inability to rhyme words or learn the alphabet.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ol>\n\u003cp>Speech-language pathologist Dr. Elsa Cardenas-Hagan has spent 25 years working with biliterate and bilingual students at the Valley Speech Language and Learning Center in Brownsville, Texas, and says that educators should look to see if the English learner has trouble learning the English alphabet or has trouble with writing. Even if they’re still learning English as a new language, those should be considered warning signs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We want to give English learners plenty of listening, speaking, reading and writing opportunities. To do any writing you have to be aware of sounds, so if a child is having trouble being able to sound out a word and write it, that should be a red flag.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cardenas-Hagan also agrees that looking into family history can help teachers who don’t speak the child’s first language. Because dyslexia tends to run in families, asking if anyone else in the family had troubles with reading and writing when they were growing up might provide indicators.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She says it’s also helpful to ask about when the child developed language. “Did the child speak on time? Did they start using words on time, did they produce the words with clarity and precision? We watch those kids very carefully, because if you have trouble hearing and speaking sounds in whatever language you learned, you’re going to have that same trouble reading and writing,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>DETECTION/ASSESSMENT TOOLS\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Universal Screening.\u003c/strong> Requirements vary wildly between states and even between districts. Beginning in kindergarten many schools use universal screeners like the RAN/RAS (Rapid Automatized Naming) test and the PAR (Predictive Assessment of Reading/Rapid Alternating Stimulus) to assess children’s knowledge of phonemes, letter recognition, and vocabulary.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, not all screeners are created equal and often do not provide a complete picture of a child’s talents and deficiencies, according to Drs. Brock and Fernette Eide at \u003ca href=\"https://www.dyslexicadvantage.org/best-early-dyslexia-screeners-for-schools-elementary/\">Dyslexic Advantage\u003c/a>. For a more complete picture, students whoaren’t reading at grade level most often need a full evaluation by a school psychologist in order for parents and the school to implement the proper intervention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Find out\u003ca href=\"https://www.dyslexicadvantage.org/50-states-approved-assessment-tools/\"> each state’s approved reading assessment tools\u003c/a>, courtesy of Dyslexic Advantage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To learn more about screening standards and what to look for in high-quality assessments and screeners, read Literate Nation’s white paper on how to select screening instruments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>RTI—Response to Intervention.\u003c/strong> Another way for teachers to recognize reading trouble is through the \u003ca href=\"http://www.rtinetwork.org/learn/what/whatisrti\">Response to Intervention\u003c/a> (RTI), a multi-tier reading program designed in the 1990s to determine whether a child has a Specific Learning Disability (SLD) like dyslexia. RTI has been mandated in 14 states and is widely used among others. The program aims to identify who is at risk for reading failure and to provide targeted instruction to those students through different tiers:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>• Tier 1\u003c/strong> interventions involve a blend of high-quality classroom instruction, adequate screening and group interventions that typically last around 8 weeks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>• Tier 2\u003c/strong> Students who don’t make adequate progress in Tier 1 move to Tier 2, where intervention is more targeted and intensive, where instruction can last up to a grading period.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>• Tier 3\u003c/strong> When students don’t progress in Tier 2 they are moved to Tier 3, where they receive one-on-one targeted and intensive instruction and often a full evaluation to determine whether they qualify for special education services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Curriculum and instruction aren’t uniform but designed by schools or districts individually.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Due to the varying quality of programs, response to RTI has been mixed. A comprehensive \u003ca href=\"https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20164000/\">2015 RTI evaluation\u003c/a> by the National Center of Education Evaluation found that first graders who participated in the RTI program did worse than those who didn’t receive any targeted assistance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“RTI is thoughtful, logical, well-designed program. It has only one flaw: it has to be implemented in real-world environments that are often inhospitable,” Seidenberg writes in Language at the Speed of Sight that “How well the RTI program works depends on how well it’s implemented, which is left to the school districts or system to decide.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Full Evaluation.\u003c/strong> Even when schools provide universal screeners and assessments to identify at-risk students, if reading doesn’t progress, students need more complete evaluations to determine the cause of the reading failure and then a way forward. In most cases, that means an \u003cstrong>Individualized Education Program (IEP)\u003c/strong> for special reading services.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>THE CHALLENGE OF ASSESSMENT: DYSLEXIA TERMINOLOGY\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Most schools offer an evaluation through the school psychologist, but these evaluations can be complicated for several reasons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>First, school psychologists are often overworked and backlogged, so testing and a full evaluation can often involve long wait times. This is often why families with the financial means to do so will take their child to a private psychologist to be evaluated and speed up intervention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next, complete evaluations can be complicated and difficult to understand, because different states, districts and psychologists use more than one term to describe reading difficulties. Terms like ‘Specific Learning Disability’ (SLD), ‘reading deficit,’ or ‘language learning deficit’ are often used interchangeably with other terms, like ‘dyslexia.’\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But according to dyslexia expert Nancy Mather, professor emeritus in the Department of Disability and Psychoeducational Studies at the University of Arizona, the different labels create undue confusion for parents and students, since more than 80 percent of reading disabilities are in fact dyslexia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It creates confusion,” she says. “The parents are told their child has an ‘SLD’ but they don’t realize their child has dyslexia.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But using the right terminology means that the student is much more likely to get the right kind of help, because dyslexics need a very specific kind of reading intervention and a specially trained teacher in order to read.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For that reason, some families have their children evaluated outside the school, like a university or private testing center, where the cost of testing can be very high. Universities sometimes offer free or low-cost testing, but families might spend six to nine months on a waitlist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is chapter two of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54743/the-mindshift-guide-to-understanding-dyslexia\">MindShift Guide to Understanding Dyslexia\u003c/a>. You can find the remaining chapters and a complete \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">printable\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">PDF\u003c/a> of the entire guide by clicking \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This is chapter two of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54743/the-mindshift-guide-to-understanding-dyslexia\">MindShift Guide to Understanding Dyslexia\u003c/a>. You can find the remaining chapters and a complete \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">printable\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">PDF\u003c/a> of the entire guide by clicking \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>THE CHALLENGE OF DETECTION\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>One of the most challenging aspects of properly addressing the different brains of dyslexic children is recognizing them in the first place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dyslexia occurs on a continuum and there is no “\u003ca href=\"http://www.interventionsforliteracy.org.uk/home/schools/use-of-the-term-dyslexia/\">sharp dividing line\u003c/a>” between having dyslexia and not having it. In the early years of elementary school, all children are learning to read, and all are developing their reading skills at different rates. “The behaviors of 4-to-6 year-olds who are at risk for dyslexia are not very different from those of children who are not,” writes professor Mark Seidenberg, cognitive scientist at the University of Wisconsin, in Language at the Speed of Sight. “Typically developing children learn to read at different rates for constitutional and environmental reasons.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Further, because dyslexia’s symptoms and manifestations can change over time, families, teachers, and schools understandably struggle to identify dyslexia in children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the way dyslexia presents itself in young readers is far from the only hurdle: sometimes elementary teachers haven’t been given the proper tools to recognize the early warning signs, and many who recognize the symptoms of reading trouble ahead don’t know how to address those issues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For example, when Dr. Martha Youman \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/41997/who-helps-kids-with-dyslexia-gain-reading-fluency\">first began\u003c/a> her career as a second grade teacher, she knew that some of her students simply couldn’t read but she didn’t know what to do about it: “I kept them busy. Truly, there were interventions they needed, I just didn’t know how to help them,” says Youman, who now treats kids with dyslexia. “I had a master’s in teaching, and didn’t know how to deal with these students.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Often the diagnosis of dyslexia comes after months or years of exhausting frustration and failure for students, parents, and teachers. It’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.ldonline.org/article/19296/\">common\u003c/a> for dyslexic children to avoid reading and become angry or upset in class or when it’s time to do homework or read aloud in front of others. Sometimes these students are seen as smart but lacking motivation or not working hard enough. To make things more complicated, dyslexic children often have \u003ca href=\"https://dyslexiaida.org/attention-deficithyperactivity-disorder-adhd-and-dyslexia/\">another developmental disorder like ADHD\u003c/a> alongside their reading challenges.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The key to preventing reading failure is early detection.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>WHAT DOES DYSLEXIA LOOK LIKE?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Though dyslexia can take on many forms, two common areas where differences can be clearly seen and heard are \u003cstrong>slow reading\u003c/strong> and \u003cstrong>difficulty with handwriting and spelling\u003c/strong>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also, in some cases, certain speech patterns can be an early indicator of dyslexia, like mispronouncing familiar words or using “baby talk.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the following video, a fourth grader with dyslexia reads from Rosie Revere, Engineer, and then writes what she’s looking forward to when she gets to fifth grade (see picture below). At the time when this video was taken, she had already had 1.5 years of targeted \u003ca href=\"https://www.wilsonlanguage.com/dyslexia/\">Wilson dyslexia tutoring\u003c/a>, and her reading had improved significantly.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/WMa2GSE3Afs'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/WMa2GSE3Afs'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003ch2>WHAT’S IT LIKE TO READ WITH DYSLEXIA?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>For kids who are entering school, according to the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity,\u003ca href=\"http://dyslexia.yale.edu/dyslexia/signs-of-dyslexia/\"> signs of dyslexia\u003c/a> in kindergarten and elementary school children include:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>• Difficulty sounding out simple words like cap, map, nap\u003cbr>\n• Difficulty associating letters with sounds, and can’t break words apart\u003cbr>\n• Talks about how hard reading is and/or resists reading\u003cbr>\n• Family history of reading difficulties\u003cbr>\n• Difficulty speaking In second grade and up, signs of dyslexia might include:\u003cbr>\n• Avoids reading out loud\u003cbr>\n• Exhibits slow and awkward reading, and difficulty in acquiring new reading skills\u003cbr>\n• Makes wild guesses when sounding out a word\u003cbr>\n• Has no strategy for sounding out unfamiliar words\u003cbr>\n• Relies on vague language when searching for a word, like “things” or “stuff”\u003cbr>\n• Mispronounces long or unfamiliar words\u003cbr>\n• Uses lots of pauses, hesitation, and “umm’s” when speaking\u003cbr>\n• Seems to need extra time to answer questions\u003cbr>\n• Has extreme difficulty learning a foreign language\u003cbr>\n• Has messy handwriting\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For more signs of dyslexia in younger children and adults, including particular dyslexic strengths, visit the Yale Center’s \u003ca href=\"http://dyslexia.yale.edu/dyslexia/signs-of-dyslexia/\">Signs of Dyslexia\u003c/a> page.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>DYSLEXIA IN ENGLISH LEARNERS: EXTRA HURDLES\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>According to Pew Research Center, there are about \u003ca href=\"https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/10/25/6-facts-about-english-language-learners-in-u-s-public-schools/\">5 million English Language learners\u003c/a> in American public schools, or nearly 10 percent of the school population. While the vast majority (77 percent) of American English learners’ first language is Spanish, the top five are rounded out by Arabic, Chinese, Vietnamese and Somali. Among states, California has the highest number of English learners, with more than 20 percent of school children speaking a different language at home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For schools, teachers and parents, diagnosing dyslexia in English learners can present an extra set of hurdles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dr. Kelli Sandman-Hurley, co-founder of the Dyslexia Training Institute in San Diego, California, says dyslexics learning English can sometimes be overlooked for two reasons: first, there’s not a lot of research on the topic and often educators don’t know what to look for, and second, reading difficulties can often be attributed to learning a new language.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>ENGLISH LEARNERS AND RECOGNIZING DYSLEXIA: INSIGHTS AND SUGGESTIONS FROM TWO EXPERTS\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>According to Sandman-Hurley, students who have trouble with phonemic awareness in their first language will also find learning letters and sounds in English difficult. But if it’s not possible to screen kids’ phonemic awareness in their first language, educators can look for other clues that children are struggling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sandman-Hurley says it’s often important to check and see if English learners are having trouble in other subjects—that is, if a child learns math quickly and relatively easily, then a reading disability might be at play.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sandman-Hurley makes two recommendations to educators trying to spot reading difficulties in English learners:\u003c/p>\n\u003col>\n\u003cli>If possible, provide screening in the child’s native language\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Dig into what’s going on at home—since dyslexia tends to run in families, find out if other family members also had difficulties with reading, or if children had displayed some of the early warning signs, like an inability to rhyme words or learn the alphabet.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ol>\n\u003cp>Speech-language pathologist Dr. Elsa Cardenas-Hagan has spent 25 years working with biliterate and bilingual students at the Valley Speech Language and Learning Center in Brownsville, Texas, and says that educators should look to see if the English learner has trouble learning the English alphabet or has trouble with writing. Even if they’re still learning English as a new language, those should be considered warning signs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We want to give English learners plenty of listening, speaking, reading and writing opportunities. To do any writing you have to be aware of sounds, so if a child is having trouble being able to sound out a word and write it, that should be a red flag.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cardenas-Hagan also agrees that looking into family history can help teachers who don’t speak the child’s first language. Because dyslexia tends to run in families, asking if anyone else in the family had troubles with reading and writing when they were growing up might provide indicators.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She says it’s also helpful to ask about when the child developed language. “Did the child speak on time? Did they start using words on time, did they produce the words with clarity and precision? We watch those kids very carefully, because if you have trouble hearing and speaking sounds in whatever language you learned, you’re going to have that same trouble reading and writing,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>DETECTION/ASSESSMENT TOOLS\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Universal Screening.\u003c/strong> Requirements vary wildly between states and even between districts. Beginning in kindergarten many schools use universal screeners like the RAN/RAS (Rapid Automatized Naming) test and the PAR (Predictive Assessment of Reading/Rapid Alternating Stimulus) to assess children’s knowledge of phonemes, letter recognition, and vocabulary.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, not all screeners are created equal and often do not provide a complete picture of a child’s talents and deficiencies, according to Drs. Brock and Fernette Eide at \u003ca href=\"https://www.dyslexicadvantage.org/best-early-dyslexia-screeners-for-schools-elementary/\">Dyslexic Advantage\u003c/a>. For a more complete picture, students whoaren’t reading at grade level most often need a full evaluation by a school psychologist in order for parents and the school to implement the proper intervention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Find out\u003ca href=\"https://www.dyslexicadvantage.org/50-states-approved-assessment-tools/\"> each state’s approved reading assessment tools\u003c/a>, courtesy of Dyslexic Advantage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To learn more about screening standards and what to look for in high-quality assessments and screeners, read Literate Nation’s white paper on how to select screening instruments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>RTI—Response to Intervention.\u003c/strong> Another way for teachers to recognize reading trouble is through the \u003ca href=\"http://www.rtinetwork.org/learn/what/whatisrti\">Response to Intervention\u003c/a> (RTI), a multi-tier reading program designed in the 1990s to determine whether a child has a Specific Learning Disability (SLD) like dyslexia. RTI has been mandated in 14 states and is widely used among others. The program aims to identify who is at risk for reading failure and to provide targeted instruction to those students through different tiers:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>• Tier 1\u003c/strong> interventions involve a blend of high-quality classroom instruction, adequate screening and group interventions that typically last around 8 weeks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>• Tier 2\u003c/strong> Students who don’t make adequate progress in Tier 1 move to Tier 2, where intervention is more targeted and intensive, where instruction can last up to a grading period.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>• Tier 3\u003c/strong> When students don’t progress in Tier 2 they are moved to Tier 3, where they receive one-on-one targeted and intensive instruction and often a full evaluation to determine whether they qualify for special education services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Curriculum and instruction aren’t uniform but designed by schools or districts individually.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Due to the varying quality of programs, response to RTI has been mixed. A comprehensive \u003ca href=\"https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20164000/\">2015 RTI evaluation\u003c/a> by the National Center of Education Evaluation found that first graders who participated in the RTI program did worse than those who didn’t receive any targeted assistance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“RTI is thoughtful, logical, well-designed program. It has only one flaw: it has to be implemented in real-world environments that are often inhospitable,” Seidenberg writes in Language at the Speed of Sight that “How well the RTI program works depends on how well it’s implemented, which is left to the school districts or system to decide.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Full Evaluation.\u003c/strong> Even when schools provide universal screeners and assessments to identify at-risk students, if reading doesn’t progress, students need more complete evaluations to determine the cause of the reading failure and then a way forward. In most cases, that means an \u003cstrong>Individualized Education Program (IEP)\u003c/strong> for special reading services.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>THE CHALLENGE OF ASSESSMENT: DYSLEXIA TERMINOLOGY\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Most schools offer an evaluation through the school psychologist, but these evaluations can be complicated for several reasons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>First, school psychologists are often overworked and backlogged, so testing and a full evaluation can often involve long wait times. This is often why families with the financial means to do so will take their child to a private psychologist to be evaluated and speed up intervention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next, complete evaluations can be complicated and difficult to understand, because different states, districts and psychologists use more than one term to describe reading difficulties. Terms like ‘Specific Learning Disability’ (SLD), ‘reading deficit,’ or ‘language learning deficit’ are often used interchangeably with other terms, like ‘dyslexia.’\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But according to dyslexia expert Nancy Mather, professor emeritus in the Department of Disability and Psychoeducational Studies at the University of Arizona, the different labels create undue confusion for parents and students, since more than 80 percent of reading disabilities are in fact dyslexia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It creates confusion,” she says. “The parents are told their child has an ‘SLD’ but they don’t realize their child has dyslexia.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But using the right terminology means that the student is much more likely to get the right kind of help, because dyslexics need a very specific kind of reading intervention and a specially trained teacher in order to read.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For that reason, some families have their children evaluated outside the school, like a university or private testing center, where the cost of testing can be very high. Universities sometimes offer free or low-cost testing, but families might spend six to nine months on a waitlist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is chapter two of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54743/the-mindshift-guide-to-understanding-dyslexia\">MindShift Guide to Understanding Dyslexia\u003c/a>. You can find the remaining chapters and a complete \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">printable\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">PDF\u003c/a> of the entire guide by clicking \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "How Dyslexia is a Different Brain, Not a Disease",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>This is chapter one of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54743/the-mindshift-guide-to-understanding-dyslexia\">MindShift Guide to Understanding Dyslexia\u003c/a>. You can find the remaining chapters and a complete \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">printable\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">PDF\u003c/a> of the entire guide by clicking \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a frame of reference, the act of reading is a human invention that’s only a few thousand years old. In Europe and the United States, mass literacy—meaning more than 50 percent of the population knows how to read—has only been around for about 150 years. In other areas of the world, such as most of Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, it’s much more recent.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>THE READING BRAIN\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Because the human brain doesn’t come already wired to read, there is no “reading center” of the brain and there are no “reading genes.” As Proust and the Squid author Maryanne Wolf writes, each individual brain must learn how to read on its own.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In learning to read, the brain performs an amazing feat: it creates a specialized circuit that’s just for reading, forging a new circuit by combining parts of the brain that were originally designed to serve other functions, such as retrieving names. This new “reading circuit” combines processes from different areas of the brain and then runs at a speed so fast it’s nearly automatic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But not all brains forge a flowing reading circuit easily. This is the case with dyslexia. Rather than being a disease or a medical condition (the common misperception), dyslexia is a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/41845/understanding-dyslexia-and-the-reading-brain-in-kids\">different brain organization\u003c/a>—one in which the brain’s reading circuit has been disrupted or re-routed in at least one way, and sometimes in two or three ways. This re-routing slows down critical parts of the reading process:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>attaching the right sound to a letter happens more slowly and\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>forming words or sentences takes longer, then comprehending what was just read also takes longer\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Dyslexia can additionally\u003ca href=\"http://dyslexia.yale.edu/resources/educators/instruction/math-memory-challenges/\"> affect memory\u003c/a>, especially working memory, making it harder for students to remember what they just read, or directions and learning sequences. It’s important to note that dyslexia is NOT caused by visual problems, and it isn’t the flipping of letters, or reading letters backwards, or mispronouncing words—and it’s not related to motivation or intelligence. It’s merely the result of a brain with a different organization that makes reading and writing more difficult.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>READING CIRCUIT ISSUES\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In the dyslexic brain, the reading circuit can be interrupted in several areas and cause problematic development. Because each brain is unique, there isn’t a singular form of dyslexia, but there are common issues:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>ISSUE #1: Phonemic Awareness\u003c/strong> — identifying individual units of sound is a major challenge in the dyslexic brain. There are 44 sounds, or phonemes, in the English language. The main problem for kids with dyslexia is the ability to notice and work with all the sounds, and then be able to match those sounds to the right letters. In younger children, this is why not being able to rhyme words is an important early sign of dyslexia—often dyslexic kids don’t recognize the ways two rhyming words sound alike. English is an irregular language so there are many different combinations of letters that match to phonemes, making reading and spelling really hard for kids with challenges working with and remembering speech sounds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>ISSUE #2: Fluency, or getting the reading circuit to work together quickly\u003c/strong>, is the second-biggest issue. Even when children can process all the phonemes, they can still have trouble associating the sounds with the right letters, perhaps due to the right hemisphere’s control over the left hemisphere-centered language processing. This makes reading even the simplest words very slow, and then automaticity doesn’t develop properly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>ISSUE #3: Comprehension\u003c/strong> is the third (but no less crucial) issue in reading. Once letters and sounds are matched together, some children will have trouble putting the words together to form sentences and meaning. Often, this kind of dyslexia doesn’t show up until children are older, around third grade and up, when there is a switch from learning to read to reading to learn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For dyslexics, the work of reading is slow and laborious, so often otherwise bright and intelligent students who haven’t received proper intervention never become fluent readers. Many dyslexic students can get by for years by memorizing words without actually reading them, but by the third or fourth grade, when learning switches from learning to read to reading to learn, struggling students can’t read fast enough to keep up. They often experience repeated failure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet, with explicit and systematic specialized instruction specifically for the different brain structure, the reading circuit can be re-trained to work toward fluidity. But first, students, parents, and teachers must understand that the dyslexic’s brain isn’t “broken” or deficient, just organized in a different way.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>DO DYSLEXICS HAVE SPECIAL TALENTS?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Special \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/42064/dyslexia-and-the-wider-world-of-creativity-and-talent\">gifts and talents\u003c/a> can emerge from dyslexic brains, and whether this happens because of the unique setup of the dyslexic brain or in spite of it continues to be an ongoing subject of research and discussion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dyslexics quickly learn that very successful people, some considered geniuses in their field, like Pablo Picasso, Thomas Edison, Steven Spielberg, Octavia Spencer, Erin Brockovich and Nobel Prize-winner Elizabeth Blackburn, also struggled to read and write, and it didn’t affect their ability to achieve.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Does the dyslexic brain connote certain talents or even an advantage over a more typical reading brain? Some experts and writers like Malcolm Gladwell even call dyslexia an \u003ca href=\"https://www.dyslexicadvantage.org/\">advantage\u003c/a> or a \u003ca href=\"https://www.forbes.com/sites/knowledgewharton/2013/12/05/272013/#1ea0ee9a470d\">desirable disadvantage\u003c/a>—a disadvantage that ends up being at least partly responsible for a person’s success.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the research behind whether or not dyslexia is an actual advantage, or whether special talents emerge from dyslexic brains, is complex—it’s difficult to tease out causes and correlations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s certainly possible that some dyslexics have special abilities in areas not related to reading, just as other kids could have special abilities in one or two areas but struggle in other areas,” says research scientist and speech-language pathologist Peggy McCardle, former branch chief at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), U.S. National Institutes of Health.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We know that there are gifted children in the world, and that some of them are dyslexic. What we don’t know —and to date there is no real evidence of this—is whether the dyslexia and the giftedness or talent are connected, or just happened to co-occur in that person. People are looking at ways to study that, with good research designs and solid methods, but so far it has not been done.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A FINE LINE\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>For practitioners who work with dyslexic students, it’s often a fine line between encouraging students to use their nonreading talents to succeed, and for not short-changing themselves on what they are able to do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dr. Sheryl Rimrodt-Frierson, who runs the pediatric clinic at the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center Reading Clinic, says that reading and writing are still vital skills that need to be addressed, and she’s cautious about dyslexic kids selling themselves short when it comes to academic work. “I will make sure they know there are plenty of good people out there who have done plenty—academic work, medical school, law school.” Rimrodt-Frierson says that kids need to understand there is a world of possibilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As cognitive neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf writes in her book Proust and the Squid, “The single most important implication of research in dyslexia is not ensuring that we don’t derail the development of a future Leonardo or Edison; it is making sure that we do not miss the potential of any child. Not all children with dyslexia have extraordinary talents, but every one of them has a unique potential that all too often goes unrealized because we don’t know how to tap it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is chapter one of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54743/the-mindshift-guide-to-understanding-dyslexia\">MindShift Guide to Understanding Dyslexia\u003c/a>. You can find the remaining chapters and a complete \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">printable\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">PDF\u003c/a> of the entire guide by clicking \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This is chapter one of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54743/the-mindshift-guide-to-understanding-dyslexia\">MindShift Guide to Understanding Dyslexia\u003c/a>. You can find the remaining chapters and a complete \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">printable\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">PDF\u003c/a> of the entire guide by clicking \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a frame of reference, the act of reading is a human invention that’s only a few thousand years old. In Europe and the United States, mass literacy—meaning more than 50 percent of the population knows how to read—has only been around for about 150 years. In other areas of the world, such as most of Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, it’s much more recent.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>THE READING BRAIN\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Because the human brain doesn’t come already wired to read, there is no “reading center” of the brain and there are no “reading genes.” As Proust and the Squid author Maryanne Wolf writes, each individual brain must learn how to read on its own.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In learning to read, the brain performs an amazing feat: it creates a specialized circuit that’s just for reading, forging a new circuit by combining parts of the brain that were originally designed to serve other functions, such as retrieving names. This new “reading circuit” combines processes from different areas of the brain and then runs at a speed so fast it’s nearly automatic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But not all brains forge a flowing reading circuit easily. This is the case with dyslexia. Rather than being a disease or a medical condition (the common misperception), dyslexia is a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/41845/understanding-dyslexia-and-the-reading-brain-in-kids\">different brain organization\u003c/a>—one in which the brain’s reading circuit has been disrupted or re-routed in at least one way, and sometimes in two or three ways. This re-routing slows down critical parts of the reading process:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>attaching the right sound to a letter happens more slowly and\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>forming words or sentences takes longer, then comprehending what was just read also takes longer\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Dyslexia can additionally\u003ca href=\"http://dyslexia.yale.edu/resources/educators/instruction/math-memory-challenges/\"> affect memory\u003c/a>, especially working memory, making it harder for students to remember what they just read, or directions and learning sequences. It’s important to note that dyslexia is NOT caused by visual problems, and it isn’t the flipping of letters, or reading letters backwards, or mispronouncing words—and it’s not related to motivation or intelligence. It’s merely the result of a brain with a different organization that makes reading and writing more difficult.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>READING CIRCUIT ISSUES\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In the dyslexic brain, the reading circuit can be interrupted in several areas and cause problematic development. Because each brain is unique, there isn’t a singular form of dyslexia, but there are common issues:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>ISSUE #1: Phonemic Awareness\u003c/strong> — identifying individual units of sound is a major challenge in the dyslexic brain. There are 44 sounds, or phonemes, in the English language. The main problem for kids with dyslexia is the ability to notice and work with all the sounds, and then be able to match those sounds to the right letters. In younger children, this is why not being able to rhyme words is an important early sign of dyslexia—often dyslexic kids don’t recognize the ways two rhyming words sound alike. English is an irregular language so there are many different combinations of letters that match to phonemes, making reading and spelling really hard for kids with challenges working with and remembering speech sounds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>ISSUE #2: Fluency, or getting the reading circuit to work together quickly\u003c/strong>, is the second-biggest issue. Even when children can process all the phonemes, they can still have trouble associating the sounds with the right letters, perhaps due to the right hemisphere’s control over the left hemisphere-centered language processing. This makes reading even the simplest words very slow, and then automaticity doesn’t develop properly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>ISSUE #3: Comprehension\u003c/strong> is the third (but no less crucial) issue in reading. Once letters and sounds are matched together, some children will have trouble putting the words together to form sentences and meaning. Often, this kind of dyslexia doesn’t show up until children are older, around third grade and up, when there is a switch from learning to read to reading to learn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For dyslexics, the work of reading is slow and laborious, so often otherwise bright and intelligent students who haven’t received proper intervention never become fluent readers. Many dyslexic students can get by for years by memorizing words without actually reading them, but by the third or fourth grade, when learning switches from learning to read to reading to learn, struggling students can’t read fast enough to keep up. They often experience repeated failure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet, with explicit and systematic specialized instruction specifically for the different brain structure, the reading circuit can be re-trained to work toward fluidity. But first, students, parents, and teachers must understand that the dyslexic’s brain isn’t “broken” or deficient, just organized in a different way.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>DO DYSLEXICS HAVE SPECIAL TALENTS?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Special \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/42064/dyslexia-and-the-wider-world-of-creativity-and-talent\">gifts and talents\u003c/a> can emerge from dyslexic brains, and whether this happens because of the unique setup of the dyslexic brain or in spite of it continues to be an ongoing subject of research and discussion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dyslexics quickly learn that very successful people, some considered geniuses in their field, like Pablo Picasso, Thomas Edison, Steven Spielberg, Octavia Spencer, Erin Brockovich and Nobel Prize-winner Elizabeth Blackburn, also struggled to read and write, and it didn’t affect their ability to achieve.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Does the dyslexic brain connote certain talents or even an advantage over a more typical reading brain? Some experts and writers like Malcolm Gladwell even call dyslexia an \u003ca href=\"https://www.dyslexicadvantage.org/\">advantage\u003c/a> or a \u003ca href=\"https://www.forbes.com/sites/knowledgewharton/2013/12/05/272013/#1ea0ee9a470d\">desirable disadvantage\u003c/a>—a disadvantage that ends up being at least partly responsible for a person’s success.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the research behind whether or not dyslexia is an actual advantage, or whether special talents emerge from dyslexic brains, is complex—it’s difficult to tease out causes and correlations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s certainly possible that some dyslexics have special abilities in areas not related to reading, just as other kids could have special abilities in one or two areas but struggle in other areas,” says research scientist and speech-language pathologist Peggy McCardle, former branch chief at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), U.S. National Institutes of Health.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We know that there are gifted children in the world, and that some of them are dyslexic. What we don’t know —and to date there is no real evidence of this—is whether the dyslexia and the giftedness or talent are connected, or just happened to co-occur in that person. People are looking at ways to study that, with good research designs and solid methods, but so far it has not been done.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A FINE LINE\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>For practitioners who work with dyslexic students, it’s often a fine line between encouraging students to use their nonreading talents to succeed, and for not short-changing themselves on what they are able to do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dr. Sheryl Rimrodt-Frierson, who runs the pediatric clinic at the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center Reading Clinic, says that reading and writing are still vital skills that need to be addressed, and she’s cautious about dyslexic kids selling themselves short when it comes to academic work. “I will make sure they know there are plenty of good people out there who have done plenty—academic work, medical school, law school.” Rimrodt-Frierson says that kids need to understand there is a world of possibilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As cognitive neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf writes in her book Proust and the Squid, “The single most important implication of research in dyslexia is not ensuring that we don’t derail the development of a future Leonardo or Edison; it is making sure that we do not miss the potential of any child. Not all children with dyslexia have extraordinary talents, but every one of them has a unique potential that all too often goes unrealized because we don’t know how to tap it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cem>This is the introduction of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54743/the-mindshift-guide-to-understanding-dyslexia\">MindShift Guide to Understanding Dyslexia\u003c/a>. You can find the remaining chapters and a complete \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">printable\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">PDF\u003c/a> of the entire guide by clicking \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stubborn. Not working to potential. Lazy. Unintelligent. For many students sitting in classrooms right now struggling to read, they have already heard these words, or thought them about themselves. Yet no matter how hard they try, when these same students look at the page of a book or worksheet, the letters seem to move around and shift. Was the word \u003cem>pit\u003c/em> or \u003cem>tap\u003c/em>? \u003cem>Their\u003c/em> or \u003cem>through\u003c/em>? For others, words come together so slowly to form coherent sentences, the first test question is barely answered when the rest of the class is nearly finished.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is the daily given for students with \u003cstrong>dyslexia\u003c/strong>, a biological, brain-based reading condition connected to speech and language that makes reading words and sentences extremely difficult.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Experts estimate that anywhere between 5 and 20 percent of school children have a form of dyslexia. Dyslexia is, in fact, the root of 80 percent of all learning disabilities, and yet in many families, schools, and even businesses, it’s still profoundly misunderstood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dyslexia shows up most often inside schools, where most children learn to read. But because of the complex intersection of individual brains, scientific research, state legislation, district requirements and teacher education, there’s no universal understanding of how to recognize and identify dyslexia, screen for it, and aid students who struggle to read because of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Due to the host of identifying and diagnosing issues, many kids slog through school not knowing they have a learning difference, and an estimated \u003ca href=\"https://www.austinlearningsolutions.com/blog/38-dyslexia-facts-and-statistics.html\">40 million\u003c/a> American adults suffer from dyslexia, though experts guess only 2 million are aware of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet, understanding, recognizing, and providing intervention for students with dyslexia has never been more important than right now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ours is an age of rapid acceleration of technological, demographic, and economic changes that are overturning industries and cultures. And until dyslexia-supportive technologies (discussed in Chapter 5) are fully accepted, embraced, and utilized in workplace environments, being able to read and write will continue to be a crucial skillset for success not only in school but also in life beyond school:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>As more and more jobs rely on computers, workers need basic literacy skills even to do such work as operating and repairing machinery.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>As more \u003ca href=\"https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2017/05/03/the-future-of-jobs-and-jobs-training/\">learning systems migrate online\u003c/a>, workers who must learn new skills to keep their current positions will need sufficient literacy to use systems that may not be dyslexia-supportive.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>CEOs and experts have said that higher-order thinking skills like creativity, problem-solving and critical thinking are now critical to success—and absent supportive technologies. Such higher order skills will still require the involvement of visual reading comprehension.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>And for those who don’t have the benefit of early intervention? Many face a lifetime of debilitating consequences: statistically, students who can’t read at grade level by third grade are \u003ca href=\"https://www.aecf.org/resources/early-warning-why-reading-by-the-end-of-third-grade-matters/\">four times more likely\u003c/a> not to finish high school; one in five students with a learning disability will drop out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dropping out of high school, coupled with reading disability, especially for poorer students, can be a cocktail of negative effects. Nearly half of incarcerated adults don’t have a high school diploma, and 60 percent of the prison population is functionally illiterate. According to a study performed on inmates in Texas, about 48 percent of inmates have dyslexia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And, at the most basic level, dyslexics are more vulnerable to mental illness—an \u003ca href=\"https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15017419.2013.781953\">estimated 60 percent\u003c/a> of dyslexic children and adolescents also have a mental or emotional disorder, most commonly ADHD, depression, and anxiety—and have a higher incidence of \u003ca href=\"https://www.news-medical.net/news/20170621/Study-finds-high-prevalence-of-suicide-attempts-among-women-with-learning-disabilities.aspx\">suicide attempts\u003c/a>. Understanding dyslexia can enable people to find the help and support they need. You can learn more about how some individuals learned about their dyslexia and how they successfully advocated for help in Chapter 6, “Possibilities.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>WHAT YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW ABOUT DYSLEXIA \u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>We’ve discussed the overarching and compelling WHY, now let’s discuss some broad strokes of WHAT:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>Dyslexia occurs in every language and in children from every background, regardless of race or socioeconomic status.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Many dyslexics become successful adults, whether it’s because of their different brain, or in spite of it. Having a learning difference doesn’t doom a student to failure. Dyslexics are doctors, lawyers, professors and business people as well as artists, musicians, nurses and firefighters.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>For years, state special education laws refused to use the word “dyslexia,” though it’s not entirely clear why.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Experts have pointed out that dyslexia was once thought (wrongly) to be a medical condition, and others have said that dyslexia was often left out of laws because the “treatment” is both expensive and needs a specially trained teacher to administer correctly.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Dyslexia awareness and understanding is growing, thanks in large part to passionate activism on the part of frustrated parents and teachers who are moving schools and districts toward change.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>The awareness and activism is slowly changing the omission of dyslexia from law: \u003ca href=\"https://www.dyslexicadvantage.org/dyslexia-laws-2018/\">thirty-nine states\u003c/a> have passed dyslexia laws surrounding learning disabilities in the past few years, slowly making their way down into districts.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>The state of California, along with Tennessee and a few others, have in the past couple of years issued first-ever specific guidance for schools and educators on how to assess and provide resources for those diagnosed with dyslexia.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>There is no “cure” for dyslexia. But when reliable, research based interventions are methodically applied, students can go on to read, they can be academically successful, and they can go on to live fulfilling lives doing whatever they choose.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>But the earlier parents and teachers can recognize the signs of dyslexia and get help, the faster those students can halt feelings of failure and begin on the path to success.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is the introduction of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54743/the-mindshift-guide-to-understanding-dyslexia\">MindShift Guide to Understanding Dyslexia\u003c/a>. You can find the remaining chapters and a complete \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">printable\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">PDF\u003c/a> of the entire guide by clicking \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cem>This is the introduction of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54743/the-mindshift-guide-to-understanding-dyslexia\">MindShift Guide to Understanding Dyslexia\u003c/a>. You can find the remaining chapters and a complete \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">printable\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">PDF\u003c/a> of the entire guide by clicking \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stubborn. Not working to potential. Lazy. Unintelligent. For many students sitting in classrooms right now struggling to read, they have already heard these words, or thought them about themselves. Yet no matter how hard they try, when these same students look at the page of a book or worksheet, the letters seem to move around and shift. Was the word \u003cem>pit\u003c/em> or \u003cem>tap\u003c/em>? \u003cem>Their\u003c/em> or \u003cem>through\u003c/em>? For others, words come together so slowly to form coherent sentences, the first test question is barely answered when the rest of the class is nearly finished.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is the daily given for students with \u003cstrong>dyslexia\u003c/strong>, a biological, brain-based reading condition connected to speech and language that makes reading words and sentences extremely difficult.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Experts estimate that anywhere between 5 and 20 percent of school children have a form of dyslexia. Dyslexia is, in fact, the root of 80 percent of all learning disabilities, and yet in many families, schools, and even businesses, it’s still profoundly misunderstood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dyslexia shows up most often inside schools, where most children learn to read. But because of the complex intersection of individual brains, scientific research, state legislation, district requirements and teacher education, there’s no universal understanding of how to recognize and identify dyslexia, screen for it, and aid students who struggle to read because of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Due to the host of identifying and diagnosing issues, many kids slog through school not knowing they have a learning difference, and an estimated \u003ca href=\"https://www.austinlearningsolutions.com/blog/38-dyslexia-facts-and-statistics.html\">40 million\u003c/a> American adults suffer from dyslexia, though experts guess only 2 million are aware of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet, understanding, recognizing, and providing intervention for students with dyslexia has never been more important than right now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ours is an age of rapid acceleration of technological, demographic, and economic changes that are overturning industries and cultures. And until dyslexia-supportive technologies (discussed in Chapter 5) are fully accepted, embraced, and utilized in workplace environments, being able to read and write will continue to be a crucial skillset for success not only in school but also in life beyond school:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>As more and more jobs rely on computers, workers need basic literacy skills even to do such work as operating and repairing machinery.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>As more \u003ca href=\"https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2017/05/03/the-future-of-jobs-and-jobs-training/\">learning systems migrate online\u003c/a>, workers who must learn new skills to keep their current positions will need sufficient literacy to use systems that may not be dyslexia-supportive.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>CEOs and experts have said that higher-order thinking skills like creativity, problem-solving and critical thinking are now critical to success—and absent supportive technologies. Such higher order skills will still require the involvement of visual reading comprehension.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>And for those who don’t have the benefit of early intervention? Many face a lifetime of debilitating consequences: statistically, students who can’t read at grade level by third grade are \u003ca href=\"https://www.aecf.org/resources/early-warning-why-reading-by-the-end-of-third-grade-matters/\">four times more likely\u003c/a> not to finish high school; one in five students with a learning disability will drop out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dropping out of high school, coupled with reading disability, especially for poorer students, can be a cocktail of negative effects. Nearly half of incarcerated adults don’t have a high school diploma, and 60 percent of the prison population is functionally illiterate. According to a study performed on inmates in Texas, about 48 percent of inmates have dyslexia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And, at the most basic level, dyslexics are more vulnerable to mental illness—an \u003ca href=\"https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15017419.2013.781953\">estimated 60 percent\u003c/a> of dyslexic children and adolescents also have a mental or emotional disorder, most commonly ADHD, depression, and anxiety—and have a higher incidence of \u003ca href=\"https://www.news-medical.net/news/20170621/Study-finds-high-prevalence-of-suicide-attempts-among-women-with-learning-disabilities.aspx\">suicide attempts\u003c/a>. Understanding dyslexia can enable people to find the help and support they need. You can learn more about how some individuals learned about their dyslexia and how they successfully advocated for help in Chapter 6, “Possibilities.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>WHAT YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW ABOUT DYSLEXIA \u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>We’ve discussed the overarching and compelling WHY, now let’s discuss some broad strokes of WHAT:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>Dyslexia occurs in every language and in children from every background, regardless of race or socioeconomic status.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Many dyslexics become successful adults, whether it’s because of their different brain, or in spite of it. Having a learning difference doesn’t doom a student to failure. Dyslexics are doctors, lawyers, professors and business people as well as artists, musicians, nurses and firefighters.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>For years, state special education laws refused to use the word “dyslexia,” though it’s not entirely clear why.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Experts have pointed out that dyslexia was once thought (wrongly) to be a medical condition, and others have said that dyslexia was often left out of laws because the “treatment” is both expensive and needs a specially trained teacher to administer correctly.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Dyslexia awareness and understanding is growing, thanks in large part to passionate activism on the part of frustrated parents and teachers who are moving schools and districts toward change.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>The awareness and activism is slowly changing the omission of dyslexia from law: \u003ca href=\"https://www.dyslexicadvantage.org/dyslexia-laws-2018/\">thirty-nine states\u003c/a> have passed dyslexia laws surrounding learning disabilities in the past few years, slowly making their way down into districts.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>The state of California, along with Tennessee and a few others, have in the past couple of years issued first-ever specific guidance for schools and educators on how to assess and provide resources for those diagnosed with dyslexia.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>There is no “cure” for dyslexia. But when reliable, research based interventions are methodically applied, students can go on to read, they can be academically successful, and they can go on to live fulfilling lives doing whatever they choose.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>But the earlier parents and teachers can recognize the signs of dyslexia and get help, the faster those students can halt feelings of failure and begin on the path to success.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is the introduction of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54743/the-mindshift-guide-to-understanding-dyslexia\">MindShift Guide to Understanding Dyslexia\u003c/a>. You can find the remaining chapters and a complete \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">printable\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">PDF\u003c/a> of the entire guide by clicking \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp class=\"p1\">The act of reading and decoding text is a complex feat of the human brain. Mass literacy is a recent phenomenon, but so much of a person’s chances for academic and professional success depend on their ability to read.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">But millions of Americans struggle to read and it’s often because they have dyslexia. An estimated five to 20 percent of kids are dyslexic but some don’t realize it. These students’ dyslexia go unnoticed and they struggle in school with feelings of inadequacy. Others fight to get basic services required by federal law. There are countless stories of dyslexic students who feel frustrated by their struggles with reading and act out in schools. It’s so important for parents, educators and students to understand the signs of dyslexia and find ways to help.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">That’s why we published the \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">\u003cstrong>MindShift Guide to Understanding Dyslexia\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>. Reporter \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/HKorbey\">Holly Korbey\u003c/a> has written extensively on dyslexia for MindShift and she’s created this guide to help deepen your understanding. It’s readily available as a \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">41-page PDF\u003c/a> that's easy to print and make notes in the margins.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">In this guide, you’ll learn about:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli class=\"p1\">How to recognize dyslexia in children, including multilingual English Language Learners\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Teaching techniques for educators\u003c/li>\n\u003cli class=\"p1\">Helpful technology aids\u003c/li>\n\u003cli class=\"p1\">How parents can prepare for an Individualized Education Program (IEP) meeting\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli class=\"p1\">How adults with dyslexia managed their education experience\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>You can read each section separately as a web article by chapter:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54869/why-understanding-dyslexia-matters\">Intro: Why Understanding Dyslexia Matters\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54872/how-dyslexia-is-a-different-brain-not-a-disease\">Chapter 1: How Dyslexia is a Different Brain, Not a Disease\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54900/how-to-recognize-dyslexia-in-children-including-english-language-learners\">Chapter 2: \u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54900/how-to-recognize-dyslexia-in-children-including-english-language-learners\">How to Recognize Dyslexia in Children, Including English Language Learners\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54904/how-schools-can-help-dyslexic-students-with-reading\">Chapter 3: How Schools Can Help Dyslexic Students with Reading \u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54917/how-parents-can-help-their-dyslexic-child-get-needed-support\">Chapter 4: How Parents Can Help Their Dyslexic Child Get Needed Support\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54921/technology-tools-that-can-help-dyslexic-students\">Chapter 5: Technology Tools That Can Help Dyslexic Students\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54924/learning-with-dyslexia-and-creating-a-path-to-success\">Chapter 6: Learning with Dyslexia and Creating a Path to Success\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Click on this link for a \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">\u003cstrong>printable PDF\u003c/strong>\u003c/a> of the \u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">MindShift Guide to Understanding Dyslexia\u003c/a>.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">We hope you find this guide helpful. If you have questions or want to talk with us about the guide, please send us \u003ca href=\"mindshift@kqed.org\">an email. \u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp class=\"p1\">The act of reading and decoding text is a complex feat of the human brain. Mass literacy is a recent phenomenon, but so much of a person’s chances for academic and professional success depend on their ability to read.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">But millions of Americans struggle to read and it’s often because they have dyslexia. An estimated five to 20 percent of kids are dyslexic but some don’t realize it. These students’ dyslexia go unnoticed and they struggle in school with feelings of inadequacy. Others fight to get basic services required by federal law. There are countless stories of dyslexic students who feel frustrated by their struggles with reading and act out in schools. It’s so important for parents, educators and students to understand the signs of dyslexia and find ways to help.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">That’s why we published the \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">\u003cstrong>MindShift Guide to Understanding Dyslexia\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>. Reporter \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/HKorbey\">Holly Korbey\u003c/a> has written extensively on dyslexia for MindShift and she’s created this guide to help deepen your understanding. It’s readily available as a \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">41-page PDF\u003c/a> that's easy to print and make notes in the margins.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">In this guide, you’ll learn about:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli class=\"p1\">How to recognize dyslexia in children, including multilingual English Language Learners\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Teaching techniques for educators\u003c/li>\n\u003cli class=\"p1\">Helpful technology aids\u003c/li>\n\u003cli class=\"p1\">How parents can prepare for an Individualized Education Program (IEP) meeting\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli class=\"p1\">How adults with dyslexia managed their education experience\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>You can read each section separately as a web article by chapter:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54869/why-understanding-dyslexia-matters\">Intro: Why Understanding Dyslexia Matters\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54872/how-dyslexia-is-a-different-brain-not-a-disease\">Chapter 1: How Dyslexia is a Different Brain, Not a Disease\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54900/how-to-recognize-dyslexia-in-children-including-english-language-learners\">Chapter 2: \u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54900/how-to-recognize-dyslexia-in-children-including-english-language-learners\">How to Recognize Dyslexia in Children, Including English Language Learners\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54904/how-schools-can-help-dyslexic-students-with-reading\">Chapter 3: How Schools Can Help Dyslexic Students with Reading \u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54917/how-parents-can-help-their-dyslexic-child-get-needed-support\">Chapter 4: How Parents Can Help Their Dyslexic Child Get Needed Support\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54921/technology-tools-that-can-help-dyslexic-students\">Chapter 5: Technology Tools That Can Help Dyslexic Students\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54924/learning-with-dyslexia-and-creating-a-path-to-success\">Chapter 6: Learning with Dyslexia and Creating a Path to Success\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Click on this link for a \u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">\u003cstrong>printable PDF\u003c/strong>\u003c/a> of the \u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"https://kqed-org-assets.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Mindshift-Guide-to-Understanding-Dyslexia.pdf\">MindShift Guide to Understanding Dyslexia\u003c/a>.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">We hope you find this guide helpful. If you have questions or want to talk with us about the guide, please send us \u003ca href=\"mindshift@kqed.org\">an email. \u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "Rethinking How Students With Dyslexia Are Taught To Read",
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"content": "\u003cp>Dyslexia is the most common learning disability, affecting tens of millions of people in the United States. But getting help for children who have it in public school can be a nightmare.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"They wouldn't acknowledge that he had a problem,\" says Christine Beattie about her son Neil. \"They wouldn't say the word 'dyslexia.' \"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other parents, she says, in the Upper Arlington, Ohio, schools were having the same problem. The district in a suburb of Columbus wasn't identifying their children's dyslexia or giving them appropriate help.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, in 2011, the parents pooled their resources and hired a lawyer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I was not surprised there was a group of students with dyslexia who were not getting the kind of instruction that they really needed,\" says Kerry Agins, an Ohio special education attorney who represented the Upper Arlington parents. She says the issue of public schools failing to address the needs of students with dyslexia is widespread, in Ohio and across the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Agins advised the parents to file a group complaint against the district.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Parents typically fight special education cases alone, seeking remedies one by one. But a group complaint, Agins told them, could force the school system to make broader change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nineteen people signed the complaint, including parents, students and graduates of the Upper Arlington public schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In August 2011, the Ohio Department of Education found the Upper Arlington Schools in violation of the law when it came to promptly and properly identifying students with learning disabilities and finding them eligible for special education services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We felt vindicated,\" Christine Beattie recalls. \"Like, we aren't crazy. We know what we're talking about.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In its decision, the state ordered the Upper Arlington Schools to train teachers and staff on how to identify and evaluate students with learning disabilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the parents said this was more than a special ed problem. They say it was a problem with the way kids were being taught to read.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_50768\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 200px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-50768\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2018/03/ehanford-dyslexia_custom-85f07c25d65fbc1a55d544e19b668219d28b22da.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"143\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/03/ehanford-dyslexia_custom-85f07c25d65fbc1a55d544e19b668219d28b22da.jpg 200w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/03/ehanford-dyslexia_custom-85f07c25d65fbc1a55d544e19b668219d28b22da-160x114.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In response to a formal complaint filed by parents, children in Upper Arlington, Ohio, are now taught to read using a phonics-based approach. \u003ccite>(Emily Hanford/APM)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How kids learn to read\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Upper Arlington Schools were using what's referred to as a \"whole language\" approach to reading instruction. It's an approach that became popular in the 1980s and continues to guide reading instruction in many public schools today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whole language holds that learning to read is a natural process. Children don't need much direct instruction. Instead, surround them with books, and they will become readers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But decades of research shows that reading is not a natural skill. Unlike speaking, which humans learn automatically by being surrounded with speech, we have to be taught to read.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People with dyslexia have an especially hard time learning to read because their brains are wired in a way that makes understanding the relationship between sounds and letters difficult.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Research shows that they learn to read better when they are explicitly taught the ways that sounds and letters correspond. And research shows that even students without dyslexia learn better this way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Upper Arlington had to retrain its teachers, who had, for the most part, learned whole language-based methods in their teacher-preparation programs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, students in Upper Arlington are taught to read using a phonics-based approach that explicitly and systematically teaches them how letters represent sounds to form words on the page.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"O Octopus ah!\" the kids yell in a first- and second-grade classroom at Barrington Elementary School in Upper Arlington.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their teacher, Ashley Stechschulte, is holding up a series of cards with words on them, and the children repeat after her as she sounds out the first letter sound.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then they move to more complex letter-sound combinations. They discuss the word \"sock.\" Stechshulte asks what the letter combination \"ck\" is called.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"A digraph,\" answers a student. A digraph is one sound created when two letters appear together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stechshulte then asks the class to consider the difference between the digraph \"ck\" and the digraph \"wh,\" as in the word \"whistle.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Who can tell me what's the big difference between these two digraphs?\" Stechshulte asks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A little hand shoots up. It's a boy named Jacob.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"The 'ck' can only go at the end (of a word) and the 'wh' can only go at the beginning,\" says Jacob.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The teacher was using \"Fundations,\" a program based on the Wilson Reading System, a structured, phonics-based approach. Fundations is typically used with children who are struggling to learn to read but it can also be used for whole class instruction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For students in Upper Arlington who show signs of dyslexia on a screening test, there is more intensive, one-on-one tutoring available.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brett Tingley, one of the Upper Arlington parents who signed the group complaint, says if all kids get effective reading instruction, fewer children should need special ed services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I have started to call it not dyslexia but 'dysteachia,'\" Tingley says. \"It's the teachers who are not giving the right kind of instruction.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Emily Hanford is senior education correspondent for \u003ca href=\"https://www.apmreports.org/story/2017/09/11/hard-to-read\">APM Reports\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Rethinking+How+Students+With+Dyslexia+Are+Taught+To+Read&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Dyslexia is the most common learning disability, affecting tens of millions of people in the United States. But getting help for children who have it in public school can be a nightmare.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"They wouldn't acknowledge that he had a problem,\" says Christine Beattie about her son Neil. \"They wouldn't say the word 'dyslexia.' \"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other parents, she says, in the Upper Arlington, Ohio, schools were having the same problem. The district in a suburb of Columbus wasn't identifying their children's dyslexia or giving them appropriate help.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, in 2011, the parents pooled their resources and hired a lawyer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I was not surprised there was a group of students with dyslexia who were not getting the kind of instruction that they really needed,\" says Kerry Agins, an Ohio special education attorney who represented the Upper Arlington parents. She says the issue of public schools failing to address the needs of students with dyslexia is widespread, in Ohio and across the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Agins advised the parents to file a group complaint against the district.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Parents typically fight special education cases alone, seeking remedies one by one. But a group complaint, Agins told them, could force the school system to make broader change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nineteen people signed the complaint, including parents, students and graduates of the Upper Arlington public schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In August 2011, the Ohio Department of Education found the Upper Arlington Schools in violation of the law when it came to promptly and properly identifying students with learning disabilities and finding them eligible for special education services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We felt vindicated,\" Christine Beattie recalls. \"Like, we aren't crazy. We know what we're talking about.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In its decision, the state ordered the Upper Arlington Schools to train teachers and staff on how to identify and evaluate students with learning disabilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the parents said this was more than a special ed problem. They say it was a problem with the way kids were being taught to read.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_50768\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 200px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-50768\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2018/03/ehanford-dyslexia_custom-85f07c25d65fbc1a55d544e19b668219d28b22da.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"143\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/03/ehanford-dyslexia_custom-85f07c25d65fbc1a55d544e19b668219d28b22da.jpg 200w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/03/ehanford-dyslexia_custom-85f07c25d65fbc1a55d544e19b668219d28b22da-160x114.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In response to a formal complaint filed by parents, children in Upper Arlington, Ohio, are now taught to read using a phonics-based approach. \u003ccite>(Emily Hanford/APM)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How kids learn to read\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Upper Arlington Schools were using what's referred to as a \"whole language\" approach to reading instruction. It's an approach that became popular in the 1980s and continues to guide reading instruction in many public schools today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whole language holds that learning to read is a natural process. Children don't need much direct instruction. Instead, surround them with books, and they will become readers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But decades of research shows that reading is not a natural skill. Unlike speaking, which humans learn automatically by being surrounded with speech, we have to be taught to read.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People with dyslexia have an especially hard time learning to read because their brains are wired in a way that makes understanding the relationship between sounds and letters difficult.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Research shows that they learn to read better when they are explicitly taught the ways that sounds and letters correspond. And research shows that even students without dyslexia learn better this way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Upper Arlington had to retrain its teachers, who had, for the most part, learned whole language-based methods in their teacher-preparation programs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, students in Upper Arlington are taught to read using a phonics-based approach that explicitly and systematically teaches them how letters represent sounds to form words on the page.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"O Octopus ah!\" the kids yell in a first- and second-grade classroom at Barrington Elementary School in Upper Arlington.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their teacher, Ashley Stechschulte, is holding up a series of cards with words on them, and the children repeat after her as she sounds out the first letter sound.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then they move to more complex letter-sound combinations. They discuss the word \"sock.\" Stechshulte asks what the letter combination \"ck\" is called.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"A digraph,\" answers a student. A digraph is one sound created when two letters appear together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stechshulte then asks the class to consider the difference between the digraph \"ck\" and the digraph \"wh,\" as in the word \"whistle.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Who can tell me what's the big difference between these two digraphs?\" Stechshulte asks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A little hand shoots up. It's a boy named Jacob.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"The 'ck' can only go at the end (of a word) and the 'wh' can only go at the beginning,\" says Jacob.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The teacher was using \"Fundations,\" a program based on the Wilson Reading System, a structured, phonics-based approach. Fundations is typically used with children who are struggling to learn to read but it can also be used for whole class instruction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For students in Upper Arlington who show signs of dyslexia on a screening test, there is more intensive, one-on-one tutoring available.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brett Tingley, one of the Upper Arlington parents who signed the group complaint, says if all kids get effective reading instruction, fewer children should need special ed services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I have started to call it not dyslexia but 'dysteachia,'\" Tingley says. \"It's the teachers who are not giving the right kind of instruction.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Emily Hanford is senior education correspondent for \u003ca href=\"https://www.apmreports.org/story/2017/09/11/hard-to-read\">APM Reports\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Rethinking+How+Students+With+Dyslexia+Are+Taught+To+Read&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "Why Getting Help for Kids with Dyslexia is Difficult",
"title": "Why Getting Help for Kids with Dyslexia is Difficult",
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"content": "\u003cp>Dayne Guest graduated from high school in 2016. He had been working construction but quit, knowing that wasn't what he wanted do with his life. Today Guest's options are limited because he struggles to read. When he opens a book, he sees \"just a whole bunch of words, a whole bunch of letters lined up.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His mom, Pam Guest, knew something wasn't right when Dayne was in kindergarten. \"In the mornings when students came into the classroom, they would write that they'd brought their lunch or that they were going to purchase lunch in the cafeteria,\" she said. \"And Dayne always walked right past that board and sat down.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teachers said Dayne would catch up, but by the end of first grade, he still wasn't reading.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pam thought her son might have \u003ca href=\"https://www.apmreports.org/story/2017/09/11/what-is-dyslexia-guinevere-eden\">dyslexia\u003c/a>. But the teachers said no. It went on like this for years: Pam suspecting Dayne was dyslexic, the schools saying no, and Pam believing them because they were the education experts.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">Listen to families talk about their struggles to get reading helping for their dyslexic kids in the podcast version of this story available on\u003ca href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id81914987\"> Apple Podcasts\u003c/a> or \u003ca href=\"https://play.radiopublic.com/educate-6Nk1y8\">RadioPublic\u003c/a>.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>At the end of Dayne's senior year in high school, Pam learned she had a legal right to an evaluation. The school tested him, and the report said Dayne had weaknesses \"often seen in students diagnosed with reading disabilities including dyslexia.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"But they would not say that he was dyslexic,\" said Pam. \"And I asked the psychologist why, and she said we would never say that a student is dyslexic. And I said, 'What do you mean?' She said, 'It is not in our realm of professionalism to say that a student is dyslexic.'\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe src=\"https://embed.radiopublic.com/e?if=educate-6Nk1y8&ge=s1!4dd3fcfa683d6b9ab5d10a4cfdac1e74032d3256\" scrolling=\"no\" width=\"100%\" height=\"185\" frameborder=\"0\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The reluctance to confirm that a child is \"dyslexic\" goes beyond avoiding a label that could harm kids. Public schools nationwide have long refused to use the word, allowing many of them to avoid providing special education services as required by federal law. According to dozens of interviews with parents, students, researchers, lawyers and teachers across the country, many public schools are not identifying students with dyslexia and are ignoring their needs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While scientists estimate that \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11702896\">between 5 and 12 percent\u003c/a> of children in the United States have dyslexia, just 4.5 percent of students in public schools are diagnosed with a \"specific learning disability,\" a category that includes dyslexia and other learning disabilities, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. In addition, while schools routinely screen children for hearing impairment, a problem that occurs much less frequently than dyslexia, screening for dyslexia is rare.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Moreover, most students who are diagnosed with dyslexia aren't identified until at least third grade, according to Dr. Sally Shaywitz, co-director of the Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity, and author of \u003cem>Overcoming Dyslexia\u003c/em>. She says it is not unusual for dyslexics to go unrecognized until adolescence and beyond, a systemic shortcoming that effectively abandons struggling young readers during the most critical years of learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When children are identified with dyslexia, public schools often lack staff with the appropriate training to help, according to several studies and reports.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And yet, there are proven ways to teach people with dyslexia how to read that are not new or controversial. Research suggests that if all children were taught to read using approaches that work for students with dyslexia, reading achievement would improve overall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to the most recent federal data, more than 60 percent of fourth-graders in the United States are not proficient readers. Students who struggle to read are more likely to drop out of high school, to end up in the criminal justice system, and to live in poverty.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv>\u003cstrong>Students at or above proficient reading level\u003c/strong>\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv>\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv>\u003ca href=\"//www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading_math_2015/#reading?grade=4>The%20Nation%E2%80%99s%20Report%20Card</a>\">\u003cimg class=\"alignnone wp-image-49686 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/5e420d-20170906-reading-proficiency-800x432.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"432\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/5e420d-20170906-reading-proficiency-800x432.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/5e420d-20170906-reading-proficiency-160x86.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/5e420d-20170906-reading-proficiency-768x415.png 768w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/5e420d-20170906-reading-proficiency-1020x551.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/5e420d-20170906-reading-proficiency-1180x638.png 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/5e420d-20170906-reading-proficiency-960x519.png 960w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/5e420d-20170906-reading-proficiency-240x130.png 240w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/5e420d-20170906-reading-proficiency-375x203.png 375w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/5e420d-20170906-reading-proficiency-520x281.png 520w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/5e420d-20170906-reading-proficiency.png 1182w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003c/div>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Disagreements Over Reality \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Billy Gibson, 18, was in elementary school, he couldn't spell his own name. \"I would get all the letters backwards,\" he said. \"The worst thing for me was figuring out between lower case 'b' and 'd.' I would always get those mixed up.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He bombed all his spelling tests. He says his teacher would respond by sending him to the hall with the kid who did best on the test. \"I remember her saying, like, 'See if you can teach this kid how to spell these words.' The teacher just didn't have the time for me.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Billy says he came to think of himself as the dumb kid who spent a lot of time in the hall. He didn't know he was dyslexic. Neither did his parents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We knew something wasn't right,\" said Billy's mom, Maggie Gibson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"You can tell things are off, but you don't know specifically what,\" said Rob, Billy's father.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_49721\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1000px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-49721\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/4b6e95-20170907-upper-arlington-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1000\" height=\"662\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/4b6e95-20170907-upper-arlington-1.jpg 1000w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/4b6e95-20170907-upper-arlington-1-160x106.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/4b6e95-20170907-upper-arlington-1-800x530.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/4b6e95-20170907-upper-arlington-1-768x508.jpg 768w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/4b6e95-20170907-upper-arlington-1-960x636.jpg 960w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/4b6e95-20170907-upper-arlington-1-240x159.jpg 240w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/4b6e95-20170907-upper-arlington-1-375x248.jpg 375w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/4b6e95-20170907-upper-arlington-1-520x344.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In response to a formal complaint filed by parents, children in Upper Arlington, Ohio are now taught to read using a phonics-based approach. \u003ccite>(APM Reports/Emily Hanford)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The Gibsons, from Baltimore County, Maryland, have five kids. All of them have dyslexia. They know, because they paid thousands of dollars for private testing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But when the Gibsons showed the test results to their children's schools, administrators didn't buy it, says Rob. \"The schools essentially said, 'Yeah, we understand this is a test showing abnormalities from a reputed institution that recommends a child with dyslexia have this, that and the other. And, oh, we don't agree with it.' And when we got to that disagreement it was almost like we were disagreeing over reality.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Gibsons gave APM Reports an audio recording of the meeting where they discussed the test results with staff at their son Eddie's school. In the recording, a staff member says, \"We do not suspect a learning disability.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Gibsons wanted their children to have Individualized Education Plans, or IEPs. Those are the specialized education plans that students with disabilities who are behind in school are entitled to by federal law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in the recording, the school staff says Eddie can't have a disability because he has passing grades and average standardized test scores.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than a dozen families across the country interviewed by APM Reports reported getting into similar fights with their child's school. Parents say their children figure out ways to compensate for their dyslexia and get by in school, but they aren't being taught to read. Children with dyslexia need specialized reading instruction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But specialized instruction is expensive. The average cost to educate a student in public school is about $12,500, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. The cost to educate a child receiving special education services can be more than twice that. When the federal special education law first went into effect in 1975, Congress committed to covering 40 percent of the extra cost of educating children with disabilities. But the federal government is only covering slightly more than 15 percent. States and local districts pay for the rest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That's one reason schools have avoided using the word dyslexia, according to Fran Bowman, a former special education teacher who now runs an educational services company that works with school districts to train teachers. \"They would say, 'We don't use the word dyslexia.' Because once you open Pandora's box, you have to serve those children.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In other words, if schools acknowledge a student has dyslexia, they may be legally obligated to provide special education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Six special education directors from around the country interviewed by APM Reports denied their schools were refusing to use the word dyslexia to keep students out of special ed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kevin Gorman, director of special education in Upper Arlington, Ohio, and a former school principal in another Ohio district, said schools were avoiding the word because it wasn't a term used by the state on IEP forms. Instead, the state used the umbrella term \"specific learning disability.\" Gorman explained that schools are so concerned about adhering to the letter of the law that they are reluctant to use terms that do not appear on official paperwork.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Avoiding the word was such a problem in schools across the country that in 2015 the U.S. Department of Education issued a special letter reminding schools that not only can they use the word dyslexia, they \u003cem>should\u003c/em> use the word if it can help them tailor an appropriate education plan for a student.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It's a legal requirement for schools to identify all children who have disabilities and provide them an \"appropriate\" education. But many schools have resisted the approaches to reading instruction that students with dyslexia need — and that would help all children read better — because of a long-running dispute about how to teach children to read.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>The reading wars\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>You can trace the debate in the United States about how to teach kids to read all the way back to Horace Mann, the father of the public schools movement. In the 1800s, Mann railed against the idea of teaching kids that letters represent sounds. He believed children would better understand what they were reading if they first learned to read whole words.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This came to be known as the \"whole language\" approach. On the other side of the debate are people who say children must be explicitly taught how sounds correlate with letters. This is commonly referred to as the \"phonics\" approach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The argument over which approach is best has been intense and political, with phonics cast as a traditional, conservative approach. Think of children sitting in front of a blackboard, sounding out words as a teacher points to the letters that represent each sound.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whole language, on the other hand, holds that learning to read is a natural process and that kids don't need explicit instruction. Expose them to lots of good books and they will learn to read. That approach is seen as the more liberal, progressive way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As with many ideas in education, there have been big pendulum shifts over the decades. Whole language was big in the 1920s, for example, as progressive education became influential. The pendulum swung back toward phonics in the 1960s. By the 1980s, whole language was popular again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bowman, the former special education teacher, got extensive training in phonics in the 1970s and used that approach early in her teaching career. But she says she soon got a supervisor who told her she wasn't allowed to teach phonics. \"You should be teaching by the entire word, instead of these little sounds,\" she recalls the supervisor telling her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bowman says it's easier to train teachers to use the whole language method than to train them to use phonics. She thinks that's one reason whole language has been so attractive. \"School districts were like 'Wow! We can just give you a bunch of books!'\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Proponents of whole language say the approach is more than that. They promote a set of strategies that emphasize comprehension, engagement, and helping children to develop a love of literature.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But by the late 1990s, there was rising panic in the United States that too many kids were not reading well. Scores on the National Assessment for Educational Progress showed most students were not reading proficiently.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1997, Congress called for a National Reading Panel to determine how best to teach reading. It reviewed more than 100,000 studies and in 2000, the panel published a \u003ca href=\"https://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/pubs/nrp/Documents/report.pdf\">449-page report\u003c/a> that was a crushing blow to the whole language movement. There was no evidence to show whole language worked and lots of evidence that teaching children the relationship among sounds, letters and spelling patterns improves reading achievement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is for all kids, not just those with dyslexia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Andrea Rowson was teaching in a public school in Ohio when the report was released, but she says she didn't learn about the findings until years later. \"What happens in public education is a lot of initiatives come through, a lot of information gets thrown at schools. New regulations, new this, new that,\" she said. \"And I think it was just one of those things where (schools) said 'OK' and didn't really realize how huge it was.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_49688\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1000px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-49688\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/aa98c8-20170907-maggie-gibson.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1000\" height=\"662\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/aa98c8-20170907-maggie-gibson.jpg 1000w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/aa98c8-20170907-maggie-gibson-160x106.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/aa98c8-20170907-maggie-gibson-800x530.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/aa98c8-20170907-maggie-gibson-768x508.jpg 768w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/aa98c8-20170907-maggie-gibson-960x636.jpg 960w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/aa98c8-20170907-maggie-gibson-240x159.jpg 240w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/aa98c8-20170907-maggie-gibson-375x248.jpg 375w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/aa98c8-20170907-maggie-gibson-520x344.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Maggie Gibson going through paperwork related to her children's education. Getting proper help for a kid with dyslexia takes a lot of time and money, she says. \u003ccite>(Emily Hanford, APM Reports)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In 2012 when the public schools in Baltimore County refused to give the Gibson children IEPs, Rob and Maggie decided to hire a lawyer. \"All we wanted was to secure their right to learn in public school,\" said Maggie.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their son Billy was in middle school and struggling. \"It just got so overwhelming,\" he said. \"I would just constantly have these anxiety attacks and it got to a point where I refused to go to school.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Trying to get him the help he needed for his dyslexia was turning into a long and contentious process. Maggie and Rob felt that for Billy and his older sister, time was running out. They decided to send them to the Jemicy School, a private school for students with language-based learning differences in Owings Mills, Maryland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jemicy has about 380 students in grades one through 12. The hallways are covered in student artwork and there's a woodworking shop where students can take geometry. For students who struggle with written language, learning by doing is especially helpful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Class sizes at Jemicy are capped at 12. The school also provides intensive reading remediation in small-group tutoring sessions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a recent tutoring session, Josie and Christopher — fifth-graders in their first year at Jemicy — were seated at a table with a teacher. They were working on the letter combination double vowel \"oo.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"What are the two sounds that 'oo' make?\" the teacher asked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Christopher responded confidently with the long vowel sound that \"oo\" makes in the word \"school.\" But there's another sound \"oo\" makes. Josie and Christopher didn't catch on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"'Uh' as in 'book,'\" said the teacher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This tutoring is based on an approach known as Orton-Gillingham, named after Samuel Orton and Anna Gillingham, early 20th century pioneers in dyslexia research and remediation. They figured out that children with dyslexia struggle to understand how sounds and letters correspond. To teach them to read, they need to be explicitly taught the rules of the way written language works. Orton and Gillingham developed a systematic approach for doing this. Their ideas form the basis for a number of effective instructional approaches in use today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Billy Gibson started at Jemicy as a ninth grader, he wasn't sure he would finish high school. His dream was to be an artist, but his middle school art teacher gave him C's because he didn't follow written directions. Billy went into Jemicy thinking, \"I'm not going to be anything. I don't have any dreams.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Jemicy's small classes and intensive reading instruction helped him catch up and gave him confidence he'd never felt in school. On his first day, he says an art teacher noticed him doodling and told him she thought he could be a great artist. \"You should take my class,\" Billy remembers her saying to him. \"I won't give up on you.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Billy graduated from Jemicy in 2017. He's now studying 3D computer animation at the Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida. His goal is to work in the film industry. \"Hopefully someday you'll be in the movie theater and see my name on the credits of the big screen,\" he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">Listen to families talk about their struggles to get reading helping for their dyslexic kids in the podcast version of this story available on\u003ca href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id81914987\"> Apple Podcasts\u003c/a> or \u003ca href=\"https://play.radiopublic.com/educate-6Nk1y8\">RadioPublic\u003c/a>.\u003c/aside>\n\u003ch3>More than $60,000 a year\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Billy's mom Maggie noticed a difference at Jemicy right away. As the parent of kids with dyslexia in public school, she says you get used to being in fight mode. \"You're fighting for it to be recognized that your kid needs X, Y and Z,\" she said. \"And then you go into Jemicy and you have a teacher conference and the teachers sit down and say, 'You know, we think your child would benefit from this, this and this. And we notice that your child needs' — whatever it is. And you're like, 'Oh my gosh! We're speaking the same language. We're all noticing the same thing.'\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But to send two kids to Jemicy cost more than $60,000 a year. Maggie and Rob are fortunate: He's a physician and they got financial help from their children's grandparents. But five private school tuitions weren't in their budget. So, with their lawyer, the Gibsons kept fighting with the Baltimore County Public Schools to try to get their three other kids better help.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Gibsons eventually got the school system to pay for two of their children to go to Baltimore Lab School, a private school for students with learning disabilities. The Gibsons don't think they would have gotten that if they hadn't hired an attorney. Getting what you need for a kid with dyslexia is a rich man's game, says Maggie. The Gibsons estimate their family has spent more than $350,000 — including legal fees, private tutoring and tuition — to get their five dyslexic kids what they needed to be successful in school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without help from grandparents, Maggie says she and Rob probably couldn't have made private school work. \"What does a person do that doesn't have the luxury of other people to help them?\" she said. \"What do you do?\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pam Guest, for example, did not have the financial means to send her son Dayne to private school. \"I talk to a lot of upper-class white families who were able to take their kids out and send them to private school. Those kids are doing well now, and they're able to go to college,\" she said. \"And we didn't have that opportunity.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_49690\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1000px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-49690\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/b8e1e5-20170907-dayne-and-pam-guest.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1000\" height=\"662\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/b8e1e5-20170907-dayne-and-pam-guest.jpg 1000w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/b8e1e5-20170907-dayne-and-pam-guest-160x106.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/b8e1e5-20170907-dayne-and-pam-guest-800x530.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/b8e1e5-20170907-dayne-and-pam-guest-768x508.jpg 768w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/b8e1e5-20170907-dayne-and-pam-guest-960x636.jpg 960w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/b8e1e5-20170907-dayne-and-pam-guest-240x159.jpg 240w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/b8e1e5-20170907-dayne-and-pam-guest-375x248.jpg 375w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/b8e1e5-20170907-dayne-and-pam-guest-520x344.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dayne and Pam Guest \u003ccite>(APM Reports/Emily Hanford)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Dayne went to the Baltimore County Public Schools, too. There's no evidence that Baltimore County has more of a problem than other public school systems when it comes to identifying and providing proper instruction to students with dyslexia. But officials with the Baltimore County Schools are now admitting they have a problem. \"We need to do better,\" said Rebecca Rider, who's been director of special education for the Baltimore County Public Schools since 2014. Under her leadership, the school system has begun to train teachers in Orton-Gillingham. Before this effort began in 2016, the county schools did not have anyone trained to provide this instruction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stephen Cowles, a lawyer for BCPS, said the school system is making more of an effort to identify students with dyslexia. As a result, he says the county is paying for more students to go to private schools. In the 2016 fiscal year, the county paid nearly $40 million dollars for students with disabilities who could not be appropriately served in public schools to go to specialized private schools. BCPS couldn't say how much of that money is being spent on students with dyslexia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But helping students with dyslexia is not just about expanding special education services. Research suggests that if students with dyslexia got effective early reading instruction in their regular classrooms, some of them may not need intensive, specialized instruction. The problem is that many teachers do not know how to teach reading effectively.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Thousands of teacher preparation programs\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>In 2000, the National Reading Panel identified five key components of effective reading instruction. Ten years later, the U.S. Department of Education decided to find out whether people coming out of teacher preparation programs had learned those five components.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>New teachers could correctly answer only about half the questions on a multiple-choice test. They rated their own preparation in how to teach reading as below \"moderate.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2016, the National Council on Teacher Quality, a think tank in Washington, D.C., analyzed syllabi from undergraduate elementary teacher preparation programs and found that fewer than 40 percent covered all the components of effective reading instruction. And that was a big improvement from 2014 when NCTQ found just 17 percent of teacher preparation programs taught all five components.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What are teachers learning about how to teach children to read?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We learned a lot about creating a literature-rich environment,\" said Rowson, the Ohio teacher. She got her initial training in the 1980s and says she learned nothing about phonics; in fact, she says her professors were against the idea of explicitly teaching children the relationship between sounds and letters. She learned the whole language approach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rowson says she didn't learn how to teach children to read until she was trained in Orton-Gillingham. She now trains teachers in Upper Arlington, Ohio, \u003ca href=\"https://www.apmreports.org/story/2017/09/11/ohio-upper-arlington-dyslexic-kids\">a school district that has significantly changed\u003c/a> how it teaches reading in response to a formal complaint filed by a group of parents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Amelia Smith, a teacher in Upper Arlington who got her degree in elementary and special education in 2012, says by then there was recognition that phonics was important. \"We knew what it was but we weren't taught how to teach it,\" she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One reason teachers are not being better prepared to teach reading is there's still an ideological fight going on about whole language versus phonics, according to Jule McCombes-Tolis, chief academic officer for educator training initiatives at the International Dyslexia Association. She spent more than two decades as a professor in teacher preparation programs. \"The division in higher ed in reading is alive and well,\" she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>McCombes-Tolis says in the wake of the National Reading Panel report, many teacher educators who believed in the whole language approach promoted the idea of \"balanced literacy\" instead.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But balanced literacy is basically whole language with some phonics mixed in, says Tim Shanahan, a literacy expert who served on the National Reading Panel. \"Balanced literacy began as the notion of a different attempt to try to settle the reading wars. It's supposed to be the best of both worlds.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shanahan says what's wrong with balanced literacy is that it combines a whole bunch of things that don't work with a little bit of what does work, and that's not good reading instruction. He thinks a big problem with teacher preparation programs is that many of the people who are teaching the reading instruction courses don't know the science of reading that well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"The folks who teach these courses range in their knowledge dramatically,\" he said. Enroll in a teacher preparation program and your instructor might have a Ph.D. and be familiar with the latest research, says Shanahan. But \"you could have somebody who — this person teaches four other things for us and we'll give them an extra course in reading instruction. They have last year's syllabus and they do their best,\" he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are thousands of teacher preparation programs in the United States and there's very little oversight of them. In higher education, the faculty typically controls the curriculum. There is no one authority to hold accountable for how teachers in America are trained.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>States do have some power and many are trying to exert more control over what gets taught in teacher preparation programs as well as what is happening in public schools when it comes to students with dyslexia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As of October, \u003ca href=\"https://www.apmreports.org/story/2017/10/24/dyslexia-laws-by-state\">41 states have some sort of dyslexia law\u003c/a>, regulation or resolution. The laws and regulations vary widely. Some require graduates of teacher preparation programs to pass science of reading tests; others encourage public schools to provide teacher training on how to identify dyslexia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most of these laws have passed in the past few years partly due to parent advocacy groups pushing for change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pam Guest is a leader of one of these groups, Decoding Dyslexia-Maryland. Decoding Dyslexia has chapters in all 50 states. In Maryland, the group succeeded in getting a bill through the legislature to establish a \u003ca href=\"http://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc5300/sc5339/000113/021600/021654/20170046e.pdf\">task force that reviewed\u003c/a> how students in the state are identified and treated for dyslexia. Now the group wants funding for a pilot program to demonstrate best practices when it comes to not only helping students with dyslexia, but to teaching all children how to read.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even though it's too late for her son, Guest says she's determined to change things so what happened to Dayne won't happen to other kids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It's simple,\" she said. \"Teachers must be able to teach children how to read.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Emily Hanford is senior education correspondent for APM Reports, the documentary and investigative journalism group at American Public Media. \u003c/em>\u003cem>The fall season of four education documentaries can be heard via the Educate podcast. Subscribe now on \u003ca href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id81914987\">Apple Podcasts\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe src=\"https://embed.radiopublic.com/e?if=educate-6Nk1y8&ge=s1!4dd3fcfa683d6b9ab5d10a4cfdac1e74032d3256\" scrolling=\"no\" width=\"100%\" height=\"185\" frameborder=\"0\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "There are proven ways to help people with dyslexia learn to read, and a federal law that's supposed to ensure schools provide kids with help. But across the country, public schools are denying children proper treatment and often failing to identify them with dyslexia in the first place.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Dayne Guest graduated from high school in 2016. He had been working construction but quit, knowing that wasn't what he wanted do with his life. Today Guest's options are limited because he struggles to read. When he opens a book, he sees \"just a whole bunch of words, a whole bunch of letters lined up.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His mom, Pam Guest, knew something wasn't right when Dayne was in kindergarten. \"In the mornings when students came into the classroom, they would write that they'd brought their lunch or that they were going to purchase lunch in the cafeteria,\" she said. \"And Dayne always walked right past that board and sat down.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teachers said Dayne would catch up, but by the end of first grade, he still wasn't reading.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pam thought her son might have \u003ca href=\"https://www.apmreports.org/story/2017/09/11/what-is-dyslexia-guinevere-eden\">dyslexia\u003c/a>. But the teachers said no. It went on like this for years: Pam suspecting Dayne was dyslexic, the schools saying no, and Pam believing them because they were the education experts.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">Listen to families talk about their struggles to get reading helping for their dyslexic kids in the podcast version of this story available on\u003ca href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id81914987\"> Apple Podcasts\u003c/a> or \u003ca href=\"https://play.radiopublic.com/educate-6Nk1y8\">RadioPublic\u003c/a>.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>At the end of Dayne's senior year in high school, Pam learned she had a legal right to an evaluation. The school tested him, and the report said Dayne had weaknesses \"often seen in students diagnosed with reading disabilities including dyslexia.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"But they would not say that he was dyslexic,\" said Pam. \"And I asked the psychologist why, and she said we would never say that a student is dyslexic. And I said, 'What do you mean?' She said, 'It is not in our realm of professionalism to say that a student is dyslexic.'\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe src=\"https://embed.radiopublic.com/e?if=educate-6Nk1y8&ge=s1!4dd3fcfa683d6b9ab5d10a4cfdac1e74032d3256\" scrolling=\"no\" width=\"100%\" height=\"185\" frameborder=\"0\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The reluctance to confirm that a child is \"dyslexic\" goes beyond avoiding a label that could harm kids. Public schools nationwide have long refused to use the word, allowing many of them to avoid providing special education services as required by federal law. According to dozens of interviews with parents, students, researchers, lawyers and teachers across the country, many public schools are not identifying students with dyslexia and are ignoring their needs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While scientists estimate that \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11702896\">between 5 and 12 percent\u003c/a> of children in the United States have dyslexia, just 4.5 percent of students in public schools are diagnosed with a \"specific learning disability,\" a category that includes dyslexia and other learning disabilities, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. In addition, while schools routinely screen children for hearing impairment, a problem that occurs much less frequently than dyslexia, screening for dyslexia is rare.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Moreover, most students who are diagnosed with dyslexia aren't identified until at least third grade, according to Dr. Sally Shaywitz, co-director of the Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity, and author of \u003cem>Overcoming Dyslexia\u003c/em>. She says it is not unusual for dyslexics to go unrecognized until adolescence and beyond, a systemic shortcoming that effectively abandons struggling young readers during the most critical years of learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When children are identified with dyslexia, public schools often lack staff with the appropriate training to help, according to several studies and reports.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And yet, there are proven ways to teach people with dyslexia how to read that are not new or controversial. Research suggests that if all children were taught to read using approaches that work for students with dyslexia, reading achievement would improve overall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to the most recent federal data, more than 60 percent of fourth-graders in the United States are not proficient readers. Students who struggle to read are more likely to drop out of high school, to end up in the criminal justice system, and to live in poverty.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv>\u003cstrong>Students at or above proficient reading level\u003c/strong>\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv>\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv>\u003ca href=\"//www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading_math_2015/#reading?grade=4>The%20Nation%E2%80%99s%20Report%20Card</a>\">\u003cimg class=\"alignnone wp-image-49686 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/5e420d-20170906-reading-proficiency-800x432.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"432\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/5e420d-20170906-reading-proficiency-800x432.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/5e420d-20170906-reading-proficiency-160x86.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/5e420d-20170906-reading-proficiency-768x415.png 768w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/5e420d-20170906-reading-proficiency-1020x551.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/5e420d-20170906-reading-proficiency-1180x638.png 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/5e420d-20170906-reading-proficiency-960x519.png 960w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/5e420d-20170906-reading-proficiency-240x130.png 240w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/5e420d-20170906-reading-proficiency-375x203.png 375w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/5e420d-20170906-reading-proficiency-520x281.png 520w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/5e420d-20170906-reading-proficiency.png 1182w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003c/div>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Disagreements Over Reality \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Billy Gibson, 18, was in elementary school, he couldn't spell his own name. \"I would get all the letters backwards,\" he said. \"The worst thing for me was figuring out between lower case 'b' and 'd.' I would always get those mixed up.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He bombed all his spelling tests. He says his teacher would respond by sending him to the hall with the kid who did best on the test. \"I remember her saying, like, 'See if you can teach this kid how to spell these words.' The teacher just didn't have the time for me.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Billy says he came to think of himself as the dumb kid who spent a lot of time in the hall. He didn't know he was dyslexic. Neither did his parents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We knew something wasn't right,\" said Billy's mom, Maggie Gibson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"You can tell things are off, but you don't know specifically what,\" said Rob, Billy's father.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_49721\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1000px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-49721\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/4b6e95-20170907-upper-arlington-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1000\" height=\"662\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/4b6e95-20170907-upper-arlington-1.jpg 1000w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/4b6e95-20170907-upper-arlington-1-160x106.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/4b6e95-20170907-upper-arlington-1-800x530.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/4b6e95-20170907-upper-arlington-1-768x508.jpg 768w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/4b6e95-20170907-upper-arlington-1-960x636.jpg 960w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/4b6e95-20170907-upper-arlington-1-240x159.jpg 240w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/4b6e95-20170907-upper-arlington-1-375x248.jpg 375w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/4b6e95-20170907-upper-arlington-1-520x344.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In response to a formal complaint filed by parents, children in Upper Arlington, Ohio are now taught to read using a phonics-based approach. \u003ccite>(APM Reports/Emily Hanford)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The Gibsons, from Baltimore County, Maryland, have five kids. All of them have dyslexia. They know, because they paid thousands of dollars for private testing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But when the Gibsons showed the test results to their children's schools, administrators didn't buy it, says Rob. \"The schools essentially said, 'Yeah, we understand this is a test showing abnormalities from a reputed institution that recommends a child with dyslexia have this, that and the other. And, oh, we don't agree with it.' And when we got to that disagreement it was almost like we were disagreeing over reality.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Gibsons gave APM Reports an audio recording of the meeting where they discussed the test results with staff at their son Eddie's school. In the recording, a staff member says, \"We do not suspect a learning disability.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Gibsons wanted their children to have Individualized Education Plans, or IEPs. Those are the specialized education plans that students with disabilities who are behind in school are entitled to by federal law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in the recording, the school staff says Eddie can't have a disability because he has passing grades and average standardized test scores.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than a dozen families across the country interviewed by APM Reports reported getting into similar fights with their child's school. Parents say their children figure out ways to compensate for their dyslexia and get by in school, but they aren't being taught to read. Children with dyslexia need specialized reading instruction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But specialized instruction is expensive. The average cost to educate a student in public school is about $12,500, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. The cost to educate a child receiving special education services can be more than twice that. When the federal special education law first went into effect in 1975, Congress committed to covering 40 percent of the extra cost of educating children with disabilities. But the federal government is only covering slightly more than 15 percent. States and local districts pay for the rest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That's one reason schools have avoided using the word dyslexia, according to Fran Bowman, a former special education teacher who now runs an educational services company that works with school districts to train teachers. \"They would say, 'We don't use the word dyslexia.' Because once you open Pandora's box, you have to serve those children.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In other words, if schools acknowledge a student has dyslexia, they may be legally obligated to provide special education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Six special education directors from around the country interviewed by APM Reports denied their schools were refusing to use the word dyslexia to keep students out of special ed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kevin Gorman, director of special education in Upper Arlington, Ohio, and a former school principal in another Ohio district, said schools were avoiding the word because it wasn't a term used by the state on IEP forms. Instead, the state used the umbrella term \"specific learning disability.\" Gorman explained that schools are so concerned about adhering to the letter of the law that they are reluctant to use terms that do not appear on official paperwork.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Avoiding the word was such a problem in schools across the country that in 2015 the U.S. Department of Education issued a special letter reminding schools that not only can they use the word dyslexia, they \u003cem>should\u003c/em> use the word if it can help them tailor an appropriate education plan for a student.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It's a legal requirement for schools to identify all children who have disabilities and provide them an \"appropriate\" education. But many schools have resisted the approaches to reading instruction that students with dyslexia need — and that would help all children read better — because of a long-running dispute about how to teach children to read.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>The reading wars\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>You can trace the debate in the United States about how to teach kids to read all the way back to Horace Mann, the father of the public schools movement. In the 1800s, Mann railed against the idea of teaching kids that letters represent sounds. He believed children would better understand what they were reading if they first learned to read whole words.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This came to be known as the \"whole language\" approach. On the other side of the debate are people who say children must be explicitly taught how sounds correlate with letters. This is commonly referred to as the \"phonics\" approach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The argument over which approach is best has been intense and political, with phonics cast as a traditional, conservative approach. Think of children sitting in front of a blackboard, sounding out words as a teacher points to the letters that represent each sound.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whole language, on the other hand, holds that learning to read is a natural process and that kids don't need explicit instruction. Expose them to lots of good books and they will learn to read. That approach is seen as the more liberal, progressive way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As with many ideas in education, there have been big pendulum shifts over the decades. Whole language was big in the 1920s, for example, as progressive education became influential. The pendulum swung back toward phonics in the 1960s. By the 1980s, whole language was popular again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bowman, the former special education teacher, got extensive training in phonics in the 1970s and used that approach early in her teaching career. But she says she soon got a supervisor who told her she wasn't allowed to teach phonics. \"You should be teaching by the entire word, instead of these little sounds,\" she recalls the supervisor telling her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bowman says it's easier to train teachers to use the whole language method than to train them to use phonics. She thinks that's one reason whole language has been so attractive. \"School districts were like 'Wow! We can just give you a bunch of books!'\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Proponents of whole language say the approach is more than that. They promote a set of strategies that emphasize comprehension, engagement, and helping children to develop a love of literature.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But by the late 1990s, there was rising panic in the United States that too many kids were not reading well. Scores on the National Assessment for Educational Progress showed most students were not reading proficiently.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1997, Congress called for a National Reading Panel to determine how best to teach reading. It reviewed more than 100,000 studies and in 2000, the panel published a \u003ca href=\"https://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/pubs/nrp/Documents/report.pdf\">449-page report\u003c/a> that was a crushing blow to the whole language movement. There was no evidence to show whole language worked and lots of evidence that teaching children the relationship among sounds, letters and spelling patterns improves reading achievement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is for all kids, not just those with dyslexia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Andrea Rowson was teaching in a public school in Ohio when the report was released, but she says she didn't learn about the findings until years later. \"What happens in public education is a lot of initiatives come through, a lot of information gets thrown at schools. New regulations, new this, new that,\" she said. \"And I think it was just one of those things where (schools) said 'OK' and didn't really realize how huge it was.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_49688\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1000px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-49688\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/aa98c8-20170907-maggie-gibson.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1000\" height=\"662\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/aa98c8-20170907-maggie-gibson.jpg 1000w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/aa98c8-20170907-maggie-gibson-160x106.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/aa98c8-20170907-maggie-gibson-800x530.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/aa98c8-20170907-maggie-gibson-768x508.jpg 768w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/aa98c8-20170907-maggie-gibson-960x636.jpg 960w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/aa98c8-20170907-maggie-gibson-240x159.jpg 240w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/aa98c8-20170907-maggie-gibson-375x248.jpg 375w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/aa98c8-20170907-maggie-gibson-520x344.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Maggie Gibson going through paperwork related to her children's education. Getting proper help for a kid with dyslexia takes a lot of time and money, she says. \u003ccite>(Emily Hanford, APM Reports)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In 2012 when the public schools in Baltimore County refused to give the Gibson children IEPs, Rob and Maggie decided to hire a lawyer. \"All we wanted was to secure their right to learn in public school,\" said Maggie.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their son Billy was in middle school and struggling. \"It just got so overwhelming,\" he said. \"I would just constantly have these anxiety attacks and it got to a point where I refused to go to school.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Trying to get him the help he needed for his dyslexia was turning into a long and contentious process. Maggie and Rob felt that for Billy and his older sister, time was running out. They decided to send them to the Jemicy School, a private school for students with language-based learning differences in Owings Mills, Maryland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jemicy has about 380 students in grades one through 12. The hallways are covered in student artwork and there's a woodworking shop where students can take geometry. For students who struggle with written language, learning by doing is especially helpful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Class sizes at Jemicy are capped at 12. The school also provides intensive reading remediation in small-group tutoring sessions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a recent tutoring session, Josie and Christopher — fifth-graders in their first year at Jemicy — were seated at a table with a teacher. They were working on the letter combination double vowel \"oo.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"What are the two sounds that 'oo' make?\" the teacher asked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Christopher responded confidently with the long vowel sound that \"oo\" makes in the word \"school.\" But there's another sound \"oo\" makes. Josie and Christopher didn't catch on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"'Uh' as in 'book,'\" said the teacher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This tutoring is based on an approach known as Orton-Gillingham, named after Samuel Orton and Anna Gillingham, early 20th century pioneers in dyslexia research and remediation. They figured out that children with dyslexia struggle to understand how sounds and letters correspond. To teach them to read, they need to be explicitly taught the rules of the way written language works. Orton and Gillingham developed a systematic approach for doing this. Their ideas form the basis for a number of effective instructional approaches in use today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Billy Gibson started at Jemicy as a ninth grader, he wasn't sure he would finish high school. His dream was to be an artist, but his middle school art teacher gave him C's because he didn't follow written directions. Billy went into Jemicy thinking, \"I'm not going to be anything. I don't have any dreams.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Jemicy's small classes and intensive reading instruction helped him catch up and gave him confidence he'd never felt in school. On his first day, he says an art teacher noticed him doodling and told him she thought he could be a great artist. \"You should take my class,\" Billy remembers her saying to him. \"I won't give up on you.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Billy graduated from Jemicy in 2017. He's now studying 3D computer animation at the Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida. His goal is to work in the film industry. \"Hopefully someday you'll be in the movie theater and see my name on the credits of the big screen,\" he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">Listen to families talk about their struggles to get reading helping for their dyslexic kids in the podcast version of this story available on\u003ca href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id81914987\"> Apple Podcasts\u003c/a> or \u003ca href=\"https://play.radiopublic.com/educate-6Nk1y8\">RadioPublic\u003c/a>.\u003c/aside>\n\u003ch3>More than $60,000 a year\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Billy's mom Maggie noticed a difference at Jemicy right away. As the parent of kids with dyslexia in public school, she says you get used to being in fight mode. \"You're fighting for it to be recognized that your kid needs X, Y and Z,\" she said. \"And then you go into Jemicy and you have a teacher conference and the teachers sit down and say, 'You know, we think your child would benefit from this, this and this. And we notice that your child needs' — whatever it is. And you're like, 'Oh my gosh! We're speaking the same language. We're all noticing the same thing.'\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But to send two kids to Jemicy cost more than $60,000 a year. Maggie and Rob are fortunate: He's a physician and they got financial help from their children's grandparents. But five private school tuitions weren't in their budget. So, with their lawyer, the Gibsons kept fighting with the Baltimore County Public Schools to try to get their three other kids better help.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Gibsons eventually got the school system to pay for two of their children to go to Baltimore Lab School, a private school for students with learning disabilities. The Gibsons don't think they would have gotten that if they hadn't hired an attorney. Getting what you need for a kid with dyslexia is a rich man's game, says Maggie. The Gibsons estimate their family has spent more than $350,000 — including legal fees, private tutoring and tuition — to get their five dyslexic kids what they needed to be successful in school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without help from grandparents, Maggie says she and Rob probably couldn't have made private school work. \"What does a person do that doesn't have the luxury of other people to help them?\" she said. \"What do you do?\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pam Guest, for example, did not have the financial means to send her son Dayne to private school. \"I talk to a lot of upper-class white families who were able to take their kids out and send them to private school. Those kids are doing well now, and they're able to go to college,\" she said. \"And we didn't have that opportunity.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_49690\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1000px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-49690\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/b8e1e5-20170907-dayne-and-pam-guest.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1000\" height=\"662\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/b8e1e5-20170907-dayne-and-pam-guest.jpg 1000w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/b8e1e5-20170907-dayne-and-pam-guest-160x106.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/b8e1e5-20170907-dayne-and-pam-guest-800x530.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/b8e1e5-20170907-dayne-and-pam-guest-768x508.jpg 768w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/b8e1e5-20170907-dayne-and-pam-guest-960x636.jpg 960w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/b8e1e5-20170907-dayne-and-pam-guest-240x159.jpg 240w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/b8e1e5-20170907-dayne-and-pam-guest-375x248.jpg 375w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/b8e1e5-20170907-dayne-and-pam-guest-520x344.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dayne and Pam Guest \u003ccite>(APM Reports/Emily Hanford)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Dayne went to the Baltimore County Public Schools, too. There's no evidence that Baltimore County has more of a problem than other public school systems when it comes to identifying and providing proper instruction to students with dyslexia. But officials with the Baltimore County Schools are now admitting they have a problem. \"We need to do better,\" said Rebecca Rider, who's been director of special education for the Baltimore County Public Schools since 2014. Under her leadership, the school system has begun to train teachers in Orton-Gillingham. Before this effort began in 2016, the county schools did not have anyone trained to provide this instruction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stephen Cowles, a lawyer for BCPS, said the school system is making more of an effort to identify students with dyslexia. As a result, he says the county is paying for more students to go to private schools. In the 2016 fiscal year, the county paid nearly $40 million dollars for students with disabilities who could not be appropriately served in public schools to go to specialized private schools. BCPS couldn't say how much of that money is being spent on students with dyslexia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But helping students with dyslexia is not just about expanding special education services. Research suggests that if students with dyslexia got effective early reading instruction in their regular classrooms, some of them may not need intensive, specialized instruction. The problem is that many teachers do not know how to teach reading effectively.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Thousands of teacher preparation programs\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>In 2000, the National Reading Panel identified five key components of effective reading instruction. Ten years later, the U.S. Department of Education decided to find out whether people coming out of teacher preparation programs had learned those five components.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>New teachers could correctly answer only about half the questions on a multiple-choice test. They rated their own preparation in how to teach reading as below \"moderate.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2016, the National Council on Teacher Quality, a think tank in Washington, D.C., analyzed syllabi from undergraduate elementary teacher preparation programs and found that fewer than 40 percent covered all the components of effective reading instruction. And that was a big improvement from 2014 when NCTQ found just 17 percent of teacher preparation programs taught all five components.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What are teachers learning about how to teach children to read?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We learned a lot about creating a literature-rich environment,\" said Rowson, the Ohio teacher. She got her initial training in the 1980s and says she learned nothing about phonics; in fact, she says her professors were against the idea of explicitly teaching children the relationship between sounds and letters. She learned the whole language approach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rowson says she didn't learn how to teach children to read until she was trained in Orton-Gillingham. She now trains teachers in Upper Arlington, Ohio, \u003ca href=\"https://www.apmreports.org/story/2017/09/11/ohio-upper-arlington-dyslexic-kids\">a school district that has significantly changed\u003c/a> how it teaches reading in response to a formal complaint filed by a group of parents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Amelia Smith, a teacher in Upper Arlington who got her degree in elementary and special education in 2012, says by then there was recognition that phonics was important. \"We knew what it was but we weren't taught how to teach it,\" she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One reason teachers are not being better prepared to teach reading is there's still an ideological fight going on about whole language versus phonics, according to Jule McCombes-Tolis, chief academic officer for educator training initiatives at the International Dyslexia Association. She spent more than two decades as a professor in teacher preparation programs. \"The division in higher ed in reading is alive and well,\" she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>McCombes-Tolis says in the wake of the National Reading Panel report, many teacher educators who believed in the whole language approach promoted the idea of \"balanced literacy\" instead.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But balanced literacy is basically whole language with some phonics mixed in, says Tim Shanahan, a literacy expert who served on the National Reading Panel. \"Balanced literacy began as the notion of a different attempt to try to settle the reading wars. It's supposed to be the best of both worlds.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shanahan says what's wrong with balanced literacy is that it combines a whole bunch of things that don't work with a little bit of what does work, and that's not good reading instruction. He thinks a big problem with teacher preparation programs is that many of the people who are teaching the reading instruction courses don't know the science of reading that well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"The folks who teach these courses range in their knowledge dramatically,\" he said. Enroll in a teacher preparation program and your instructor might have a Ph.D. and be familiar with the latest research, says Shanahan. But \"you could have somebody who — this person teaches four other things for us and we'll give them an extra course in reading instruction. They have last year's syllabus and they do their best,\" he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are thousands of teacher preparation programs in the United States and there's very little oversight of them. In higher education, the faculty typically controls the curriculum. There is no one authority to hold accountable for how teachers in America are trained.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>States do have some power and many are trying to exert more control over what gets taught in teacher preparation programs as well as what is happening in public schools when it comes to students with dyslexia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As of October, \u003ca href=\"https://www.apmreports.org/story/2017/10/24/dyslexia-laws-by-state\">41 states have some sort of dyslexia law\u003c/a>, regulation or resolution. The laws and regulations vary widely. Some require graduates of teacher preparation programs to pass science of reading tests; others encourage public schools to provide teacher training on how to identify dyslexia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most of these laws have passed in the past few years partly due to parent advocacy groups pushing for change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pam Guest is a leader of one of these groups, Decoding Dyslexia-Maryland. Decoding Dyslexia has chapters in all 50 states. In Maryland, the group succeeded in getting a bill through the legislature to establish a \u003ca href=\"http://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc5300/sc5339/000113/021600/021654/20170046e.pdf\">task force that reviewed\u003c/a> how students in the state are identified and treated for dyslexia. Now the group wants funding for a pilot program to demonstrate best practices when it comes to not only helping students with dyslexia, but to teaching all children how to read.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even though it's too late for her son, Guest says she's determined to change things so what happened to Dayne won't happen to other kids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It's simple,\" she said. \"Teachers must be able to teach children how to read.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Emily Hanford is senior education correspondent for APM Reports, the documentary and investigative journalism group at American Public Media. \u003c/em>\u003cem>The fall season of four education documentaries can be heard via the Educate podcast. Subscribe now on \u003ca href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id81914987\">Apple Podcasts\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
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"marketplace": {
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"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
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"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
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"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
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"possible": {
"id": "possible",
"title": "Possible",
"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
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"pri-the-world": {
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"info": "Each weekday, host Marco Werman and his team of producers bring you the world's most interesting stories in an hour of radio that reminds us just how small our planet really is.",
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-World-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"radiolab": {
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"reveal": {
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},
"rightnowish": {
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"title": "Rightnowish",
"tagline": "Art is where you find it",
"info": "Rightnowish digs into life in the Bay Area right now… ish. Journalist Pendarvis Harshaw takes us to galleries painted on the sides of liquor stores in West Oakland. We'll dance in warehouses in the Bayview, make smoothies with kids in South Berkeley, and listen to classical music in a 1984 Cutlass Supreme in Richmond. Every week, Pen talks to movers and shakers about how the Bay Area shapes what they create, and how they shape the place we call home.",
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},
"science-friday": {
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"info": "Science Friday is a weekly science talk show, broadcast live over public radio stations nationwide. Each week, the show focuses on science topics that are in the news and tries to bring an educated, balanced discussion to bear on the scientific issues at hand. Panels of expert guests join host Ira Flatow, a veteran science journalist, to discuss science and to take questions from listeners during the call-in portion of the program.",
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"snap-judgment": {
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"title": "Snap Judgment",
"tagline": "Real stories with killer beats",
"info": "The Snap Judgment radio show and podcast mixes real stories with killer beats to produce cinematic, dramatic radio. Snap's musical brand of storytelling dares listeners to see the world through the eyes of another. This is storytelling... with a BEAT!! Snap first aired on public radio stations nationwide in July 2010. Today, Snap Judgment airs on over 450 public radio stations and is brought to the airwaves by KQED & PRX.",
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},
"soldout": {
"id": "soldout",
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