Educating Education Writers: Excellent Story from Texas

In January of 2005, Jennifer Radcliffe wrote an excellent story on dyslexia in Texas: Part I Left Behind
Part II War of Words
Part III Breaking Through
Part IV What Parents Should Do

A Texas law passed in 1985 aims to break that cycle by requiring schools to identify and help dyslexic children as early as possible. But many schools do not comply with the law, which requires them to provide early intervention, training for teachers and proven phonics programs to help struggling dyslexics learn to read. Most of the 16 North Texas schools surveyed by the Star-Telegram provide phonics instruction to less than 1 percent of students, even though experts say as many as 20 percent -- or 840,000 of Texas' 4.2 million school- children -- have dyslexia.

What follows are important quotes from the story.

People who read poorly often wind up in low-paying jobs, on welfare rolls or in jail, at a cost to the country of $224 billion a year, according to the National Right to Read Foundation. Yet, many public school districts in North Texas have not fully complied with the law, the Star-Telegram has found. Schools aren't identifying students early enough, and they're not providing them with the required help. As many as 20 percent of children have dyslexia or a related disorder, but a Star-Telegram survey of 16 area districts found that nine of them are providing the state-mandated help to less than 1 percent of their students. Six others are helping 1 percent to 3 percent. One -- the Greenville school district -- provides help to 7.7 percent. Several other districts declined to provide the number of students in their dyslexia programs. Public school educators said that their dyslexia programs comply with the law but that providing the tutoring -- which requires additional materials, training and teachers -- can be a financial burden. They also said that the disability is sometimes hard to identify.

Parents can make changes in the school district:

 

The issue came to a head this summer in the Hurst-Euless-Bedford school district, which enrolled only 29 of its 20,000 students, or 0.15 percent, in a dyslexia program last school year. A persistent group of parents forced the school board to take notice of deficiencies, and officials overhauled the program this fall to include more students and to provide better instruction. Such grassroots efforts are one of the few ways that parents can force districts to comply with the law, especially after the Legislature gutted the state's oversight in the spring.

The percentage of students with dyslexia is open to discussion, but nearly 10% of children have some form of specific learning disability

 

A school district that provides dyslexia instruction to fewer than 2 percent or 3 percent of its students is not doing its job, according to Dr. Jeffrey Black at Scottish Rite Hospital. Ideally, about 10 percent of students should be attending the programs, his colleagues say. More children than that have dyslexia, but some will be able to succeed without extra help, and others may require special education classes, experts say. But most area districts fall short of Black's target and don't even come close to 10 percent.

Why are school districts so reluctant:

 

Schools either don't know what they're looking for or are trying to avoid diagnosing dyslexia, experts say. Public schools usually wait too long to diagnose dyslexia in elementary students and then provide no dyslexia instruction to teen-agers, they say. But some school officials say the experts' estimates are too high. "I personally don't think it's 10 percent," said Arthur, who oversees Grapevine-Colleyville's dyslexia program. "I have a hard time thinking that 1,300 children in the district would have dyslexia."

The cost of waiting to failure:

 

Some administrators defend the practice of delaying dyslexia instruction, saying it is almost impossible to tell whether a child has dyslexia until the third grade. Younger children might show some symptoms of dyslexia that they will outgrow, they said. Other educators said they do not want to label children. "We want to do that as a last intervention," said Cindy Brown, director of special services for the Northwest school district. "Dyslexia is a lifelong condition. Labels are a lifelong thing. You want to be sure they're right." Miller said she's tired of what she calls districts' excuses. Third grade is not early enough, she said. "That just makes me sick," she said. "That just flies in the face of all the new research. It's the old-fashioned approach: wait until they fail."

A Texas law passed in 1985 aims to break that cycle by requiring schools to identify and help dyslexic children as early as possible. But many schools do not comply with the law, which requires them to provide early intervention, training for teachers and proven phonics programs to help struggling dyslexics learn to read. Most of the 16 North Texas schools surveyed by the Star-Telegram provide phonics instruction to less than 1 percent of students, even though experts say as many as 20 percent -- or 840,000 of Texas' 4.2 million school- children -- have dyslexia.

Special education classes arent' the answer:

 

But in many cases, schools don't provide students with that empowerment. Instead, they place students with dyslexia in special-education classes, which parents and experts say may be inappropriate. National statistics show that 80 percent of special-education students have dyslexia. Many area school officials said they cannot calculate how many of their special-education students are dyslexic because children in those programs are labeled simply as having a learning disability. That's what happened to Christopher Trott, who spent a large portion of his days in the Plano school district's special-education classes. "I was put in there with kids with Down syndrome," said Trott, 24, who has mild dyslexia and severe attention-deficit (hyperactivity) disorder. "I slept through it."

Debbie Easom shudders when she remembers all the children she stared down, shaking her finger and scolding them for not concentrating. She was sure they were smart, but she thought they weren't trying hard enough to read. That was before Easom understood that her teaching techniques didn't work for children with dyslexia. "Quite often, I ask God to forgive me for all those children who were probably dyslexic and I didn't know it. It just breaks my heart," said Easom, a former Texas Education Agency regional dyslexia coordinator who now works as a private consultant. Easom learned about dyslexia at a training seminar, which opened her eyes to the serious needs of students with the learning disability. She became part of a grassroots movement to create strong dyslexia programs in Texas schools.

Teacher training is part of the problem:

 

If all schools are to provide top-notch educations to dyslexic students, teacher training must increase dramatically, Pickering said. It will have to start with training for college students studying to be teachers and include professional development for those already in the classroom, she said. Many college classes only touch on phonics. "The villain in this piece for me has always been the teacher education," Pickering said. "The way most teachers are trained is to make reading fun, to make it creative, to make it rewarding and to keep it moving." But to help dyslexics, teachers must understand how to be scientific about teaching reading. They need to be trained on specific curriculums, such as MTA or Alphabetic Phonics, Pickering said.

Parents need to apply pressure to schools:

 

Parents who believe their children are not receiving the proper instruction must demand answers from their school districts, said Elizabeth Cantrell, director of dyslexia outreach for Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children in Dallas, which specializes in helping children with dyslexia. "Communicate with the school. Ask them about the program. Please do not assume that everything is all right at school," she advised parents of dyslexic children during a recent seminar at the hospital.

Sue Cantrell knew she had to act quickly when she moved from the Keller school district to the Carroll district seven years ago. She wanted to make sure the new schools could educate her three children, who have learning disabilities. She joined a district improvement committee and began making her case. To help explain dyslexia, she brought in experts from The Shelton School in Dallas, which serves students with learning disabilities. "We quoted the law and said, 'You're not meeting the criteria,' " said Cantrell, who works at The Shelton School.

After much persuading, Carroll decided in the late 1990s to pay for four teachers to be trained as certified academic language therapists at Southern Methodist University. The district began offering the Multisensory Teaching Approach, a curriculum for dyslexic students. "The dyslexia program I don't think would be here except for the parents," said Cathy Friar, head of Carroll's special-education department. This year, Carroll began teaching all first-graders using a classroom phonics program. District leaders decided that it is such an effective way to teach reading that every student should receive such instruction. Experts consider it one of the strongest programs in the Metroplex. Dr. Jeffrey Black of Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children said parents must know the law. They must be persistent and keep extensive written records, he said.

Part I Left Behind
Part II War of Words
Part III Breaking Through
Part IV What Parents Should Do

Links within this blog:
What I wish Every Teacher and Parent Knew About Dyslexia
Outline of Effective Teaching for Dyslexics

What Works: Is there solid evidence that multisensory teaching is effective for children with dyslexia?

There is a growing body of evidence supporting multisensory teaching. Current research, much of it supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), converges on the efficacy of explicit structured language teaching for children with dyslexia. Young children in structured, sequential, multisensory intervention programs, who were also trained in phonemic awareness, made significant gains in decoding skills. These multisensory approaches used direct, explicit teaching of letter-sound relationships, syllable patterns, and meaning word parts. Studies in clinical settings showed similar results for a wide range of ages and abilities.

What should parents of poor readers do?  Don't waste time on twaddle such as colored lenses or overlays, balance training, vision training, molding letters out of clay, or patterning.

Here's what works:  multisensory, methodical  instruction in phonemic awareness, grapheme-phoneme correspondence, and further training in the structure of the English language.

  If there isn't a Masonic Children's Learning Center near you,  an independent  Orton-Gillingham-based remedial program (see list below),  or you can't find other help, go to Susan Barton's website and learn to tutor your child.

A list of  good solid programs follows.

• Orton-Gillingham       The pure, unchanged, original method.
• Barton Reading & Spelling System Designed for one-on-one tutoring of children, teenagers and adults by parents, volunteer tutors, resource or reading specialists, and professional tutors. This simplified Orton-Gillingham approach is easy to learn. Tutor training is provided on videotape, along with fully scripted lesson plans.
• Slingerland       Designed for classroom settings of young children in the first, second, and third grades.
• Herman Method    Recently acquired by Lexia.  The Herman Method can be used by both parents and teachers.
  
• MTA (Multi-sensory Teaching Approach) as developed by Margaret Taylor Smith.
  
• Alphabetic Phonics       Designed for one-on-one tutoring of children.       This is the method developed at the Texas Scottish Rite Hospital.
• Wilson Reading System       Initially designed for one-on-one tutoring of adults, their new version can be used with children in third grade or higher.
• Project Read   is designed to  be delivered in the regular classroom or by special education, chapter  one, and reading teachers who work with children or adolescents with language learning problems.
• Recipe for Reading    This is a book with associated workbooks that teachers and parents may use to help a child slow to read progress.   It is the least complete of all the systems listed here.
• Preventing Academic Failure (PAF)   "a program for teaching reading, spelling, and handwriting in grades K-3. It has been proven successful in over 25 years of use in public and private schools. Thousands of children, many with learning disabilities, have learned to read thanks to PAF."
• Lindamood Instruction in Phonemic Segmentation (LiPS)

There's also the Institute for Multi-Sensory Teaching.

Comments

[Jeb Breithaupt]

My daughter is graduating from high school in two weeks. She has audio-processing problems and severe dyslexia.
Do you know of any summer programs we could send her too?
m318-218-0075