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Struggling Black and Latino readers often get left on their own

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Black and Latino children with dyslexia have a much harder time than their white peers accessing two key tools to literacy.

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IEP vs 504: comparison chart and 3 minute video

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IEP vs 504: comparison chart and 3 minute video

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Both Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) and 504 plans can offer formal help for K-12 students who are struggling in school. They're similar in some ways but very different in others. This chart compares them side by side to help you understand the differences.

A blueprint or plan for a child's special education experience at school.

A blueprint or plan for how the school will provide support and remove barriers for a student with a disability.

To get an IEP, there are two requirements: A child has one or more of the 13 disabilities listed in IDEA. The law lists specific challenges, like learning disabilities, ADHD, autism, and others. And the disability must affect the child's educational performance and/or ability to learn and benefit from the general education curriculum. The child must need specialized instruction to make progress in school.

To get a 504 plan, there are two requirements: A child has any disability. Section 504 covers a wide range of different struggles in school. And the disability must interfere with the child's ability to learn in a general education classroom. Section 504 has a broader definition of a disability than IDEA. (It says a disability must substantially limit one or more basic life activities. This can include learning, reading, communicating, and thinking.) That's why a child who doesn't qualify for an IEP might still be able to get a 504 plan.

There are strict legal requirements about who participates. With a few exceptions, the entire IEP team must be present for IEP meetings. The team must include:

The rules about who's on the 504 team are less specific than they are for an IEP. A 504 plan is created by a team of people who are familiar with the child and who understand the evaluation data and special services options. This might include:

* The child's parent or caregiver

* General and special education teachers

* The school principal

* The child's parent or caregiver

* At least one of the child's general education teachers

* At least one special education teacher

* A school psychologist or other specialist who can interpret evaluation results

* A district representative with authority over special education services

The IEP sets learning goals and describes the services the school will provide. It's a written document. Here are some of the most important things the IEP must include:

There is no standard 504 plan. Unlike an IEP, a 504 plan doesn't have to be a written document. A 504 plan generally includes the following:

* Specific accommodations, supports, or services for the child

* Names of who will provide each service

* Name of the person responsible for ensuring the plan is implemented

* The child's present levels of academic and functional performance - how the child is currently doing in school

* Annual education goals for the child and how the school will track progress

* The services the child will get - this may include special education, related, supplementary, and extended school year services

* The timing of services - when they start, how often they occur, and how long they last

* Any accommodations - changes to the child's learning environment

* Any modifications - changes to what the child is expected to learn or know

* How the child will participate in standardized tests

* How the child will be included in general education classes and school activities

When the school wants to change a child's services or placement, it has to tell families in writing before the change. This is called prior written notice. Notice is also required for any IEP meetings and evaluations. Families also have "stay put" rights to keep services in place while there's a disagreement about the IEP.

The school must notify families about an evaluation or a "significant change" in placement. Notice doesn't have to be in writing, but most schools do so anyway.

How to resolve disputes

IDEA gives families several ways to resolve disputes (usually in this order):

Section 504 gives families several options for resolving disagreements with the school:

* Mediation

* Alternative dispute resolution

* Impartial hearing

* Complaint to the Office for Civil Rights (OCR)

* Lawsuit

* Mediation

* Due process complaint

* Resolution session

* Civil lawsuit

* State complaint

* Lawsuit

And if you need help navigating special education law in your state, consider reaching out to your local Parent Training and Information Center. The people there can answer questions and give practical advice on issues specific to your area.

Do you want to learn more about how IEPs and 504 plans compare? Watch as an expert explains the differences between them.

About the author

About the author

The Understood Team is made up of passionate writers and editors. Many of them have kids who learn and think differently.

Reviewed by

Reviewed by

Andrew M.I. Lee, JD is an editor and attorney who strives to help people understand complex legal, education, and parenting issues.

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The difference between IEPs and 504 plans

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Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) and 504 plans are similar but different. See how they compare in what they provide and the processes and laws involved.

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Americans with Disabilities Act in Special Education

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Colorado College Nano-Block: 3.5 Minutes on Literacy, Dyslexia and Equity

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Colorado College Nano-Block: 3.5 Minutes on Literacy, Dyslexia and Equity

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Nano Block: Literacy, Dyslexia, Equity with Debbie Meyer P'27

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Decoding Dyslexia is a network of parent-led grassroots movements across the country concerned with the limited access to educational interventions for dyslexia within the public education system. They aim to raise dyslexia awareness, empower families to support their children and inform policy-makers on best practices to identify, remediate and support students with dyslexia.

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Individuals with Disabilities Education Act

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The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is a law that makes available a free appropriate public education to eligible children with disabilities throughout the nation and ensures special education and related services to those children.

The IDEA governs how states and public agencies provide early intervention, special education, and related services to more than 8 million (as of school year 2022-23) eligible infants, toddlers, children, and youth with disabilities.

Infants and toddlers, birth through age 2, with disabilities and their families receive early intervention services under IDEA Part C. Children and youth ages 3 through 21 receive special education and related services under IDEA Part B.

Additionally, the IDEA authorizes:

Formula grants to states to support special education and related services and early intervention services.

Discretionary grants to state educational agencies, institutions of higher education, and other nonprofit organizations to support research, demonstrations, technical assistance and dissemination, technology development, personnel preparation and development, and parent-training and -information centers.

Congress reauthorized the IDEA in 2004 and most recently amended the IDEA through Public Law 114-95, the Every Student Succeeds Act, in December 2015.

In the law, Congress states:

Disability is a natural part of the human experience and in no way diminishes the right of individuals to participate in or contribute to society. Improving educational results for children with disabilities is an essential element of our national policy of ensuring equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency for individuals with disabilities.

Other Laws for Children with Disabilities

The U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) provides additional resources of interest for individuals with disabilities and their families.

OCR does not enforce the IDEA; however, OCR does enforce the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Section 504 and Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, Title II rights of IDEA-eligible students with disabilities.

To learn more, visit the OCR's Frequently Asked Questions About Section 504 and the Education of Children with Disabilities.

Visit OCR's website for additional resources.

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About IDEA - Individuals with Disabilities Education Act

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The IDEA is a law that makes available a free appropriate public education to eligible children with disabilities throughout the nation and ensures special education and related services to those children.

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Too Many Schools are Misdiagnosing Dyslexia

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Too Many Schools are Misdiagnosing Dyslexia

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Changing how dyslexia is diagnosed could help many more children learn to read

By Sarah Carr

It pains Tim Odegard that four decades after a misguided approach to diagnosing dyslexia kept him from getting help in school, thousands of children across the U.S. are needlessly suffering for the same reason.

During the initial weeks of first grade Odegard's struggles with reading went undetected as he memorized words that classmates read aloud before him. The strategy worked so well that his teacher moved him to the position of "first reader." It then became apparent that the six-year-old not only wasn't the strongest reader in the class-he couldn't read at all. The teacher dispatched him to a low-skill group. "It just kind of went downhill from there," Odegard, now 47, recalls.

Through sheer determination and reliance on his prodigious memory, Odegard eventually memorized enough words to get by and earned decent grades, although they would never come easily. "I compensated for my reading and spelling problems by staying up until 1 or 2 a.m. to get things done," he says. He never received extra help or special education services from his Houston-area school district. Instead a couple of teachers seemed to doubt his intelligence. When Odegard was the first student in his school to solve a complex murder mystery puzzle, one of them said he must have guessed.

It wasn't until he was in his late 20s that Odegard came to understand why his teachers thought so poorly of his abilities. In 2004, as a new Ph.D., he told his mother that the National Institutes of Health had awarded him a postdoctoral fellowship to study dyslexia, a condition he'd long suspected he had. She shared that when he was in third grade, school officials had used a so-called discrepancy model that compared intelligence quotient (IQ) with reading performance to rule that he didn't have a learning disability.

"I was thought to be too stupid to be dyslexic," says Odegard, now editor in chief of the Annals of Dyslexia and chair of excellence in dyslexic studies at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tenn.

Up to around 20 percent of the U.S. population has dyslexia, a neurological condition that makes it difficult to decipher and spell written words. Someone with the disability might omit short words such as "and" and "the" while reading aloud, for example, or read "dog" as "god"-even if they speak normally in conversation. The condition impedes a person's ability to process written information and can negatively impact their career and well-being. Yet only a fraction of affected students get a dyslexia diagnosis or the specialized assistance that can help them manage their difficulty reading.

One reason so many diagnoses are missed is that thousands of schools in the U.S. continue to use an iteration of the discrepancy model to test children for learning disabilities. Moreover, for a multitude of reasons, including biases in IQ tests, a disproportionate number of those diagnosed -and helped-have been white and middle- to upper-class. "It's unfair, it's discriminatory, and it disadvantages already economically disadvantaged kids," says Jack Fletcher, co-founder of the Texas Center for Learning Disabilities in Houston and one of the first scientists to question the discrepancy model's validity.

The model has shaped decades of policy regarding whose literacy is considered vital and worthy of extra help and investment-and whose is not. It is rooted in long-standing misconceptions about dyslexia. Reforming how the condition is defined and diagnosed could help many more children learn to read.

Speaking comes naturally to most children, being a gift of human evolution, but reading and writing are inventions that must be consciously and painstakingly learned. No one is born with neural circuits for connecting the sounds of speech to squiggles on paper. Instead when someone learns to read, their brain improvises, splicing and joining sections of preexisting circuits for processing vision and speech to form a new "reading circuit." To read the (written) word "dog," for example, a typical brain will disaggregate the word into its constituent letters, "d," "o" and "g," and then summon from memory the sound fragments, or phonemes, associated with each letter. It aggregates these phonemes into the sound "dog" and retrieves the meaning of the word that matches that sound. Most brains eventually learn to do all these steps so fast that the action seems automatic. Some written words become so familiar that the speech circuit eventually gets bypassed, so that there is a direct association between the word as seen on paper or on a screen and its meaning.

Because human brains are organized in diverse ways, some people's reading circuits end up being inefficient. Dyslexia is the most common reading disability. People with the condition, which is partly linked to genetics, often have less gray matter and brain activity in the parietotemporal region of the brain's left hemisphere, associated with connecting the sounds of speech to the shapes of printed text.

The severity and manifestations of dyslexia can vary from person to person, but children with the learning disability benefit most from early help with explications of the sound structures underlying words. For those who continue to struggle in school, the ideal instruction is one-on-one or in a small group with a trained teacher who provides intensive and systematic assistance in making connections between written words and sounds. Learning the rules-and the many, many exceptions-of the English language is particularly important because children with dyslexia are typically unable to pick them up through mere exposure to text. The letter "a" can be pronounced five different ways in English, whereas in Spanish, for instance, vowels almost always have the same pronunciation.

With the right kind of instruction, most children with dyslexia can learn how to read. In part because of an accident of scientific history, however, this essential assistance has been far more available to kids who score higher on IQ and other cognitive tests. An early case report of dyslexia, published in the British Medical Journal in 1896, helped to define the disorder as an unexpected deficit in otherwise "bright" children. The study described a 14-year-old referred to as Percy F. "He has always been a bright and intelligent boy, quick at games, and in no way inferior to others," wrote the doctor who examined Percy, "yet in writing from dictation he comes to grief over any but the simplest words."

That incipient definition characterized a lot of early thinking about dyslexia. It was inadvertently codified in school systems through influential studies led by British psychiatrists Michael Rutter and William Yule on the Isle of Wight in the 1960s and early 1970s. Rutter and Yule are well regarded for being among the first in the field to focus deeply on children and for their groundbreaking work in autism and post-traumatic stress disorder. When devising a definition of "reading disability" based on the population of nine- to 11-year-olds on the island, the researchers distinguished between poor readers who read at levels predicted by their IQs and those who did not, looking for evidence of dyslexia only in those in the latter group. The studies came just as the U.S. was creating its own special education categories and definitions to prepare for the passage of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EAHCA) in 1975. When it came to learning disabilities, experts relied heavily on the idea that for a learning disability to be present, reading performance had to fall short of IQ.

Guidelines put out by the U.S. government in 1977 asked that schools look for a "severe discrepancy between levels of ability and achievement" when screening children for learning disabilities. Thus, a child's IQ scores, which rank cognitive abilities such as reasoning, began to play an outsize role in determining countless students' educational fates. Specifically, if the IQ score wasn't high enough and, in consequence, the gap wasn't big enough, the child wasn't diagnosed with a reading disability. Despite the fact that most youngsters can learn to read regardless of their IQ score, those with lower scores were often assumed to lack the "smarts" to read well.

An IQ test kept Sandra Chittenden's daughter from getting the right help for years. The girl learned new words slowly and struggled to pronounce them correctly, mixing up similar-sounding words. In kindergarten she had no interest in letters and sounds, and she couldn't easily see the similarities and differences across words on a page. Having a mild form of dyslexia herself and with an older son who is severely dyslexic, Chittenden, who is a special education advocate, asked the school district to evaluate the girl for a reading disability.

The five-year-old was promptly given an IQ test. She posted an average overall score and a below-average score on a reading achievement test. But the gap between the two scores didn't meet the cutoff of 15 points, so the girl was not given appropriate reading services in her Vermont school. The same thing happened when Chittenden requested another evaluation when her daughter was in first grade.

For the child, the results were wounding. During her first couple of years of elementary school "her nervous system was like a pressure cooker because she wasn't being given appropriate help," Chittenden says. "She held it together all day at school and then would explode." In third grade the girl was diagnosed with a learning disability in math, and the school added a dyslexia diagnosis because of her continued struggles with both arithmetic and reading. But for years, Chittenden says, "I remember it being really frustrating knowing my child had dyslexia and not being able to get the right help."

As of this year, partly in response to parental concerns, Vermont is no longer using the discrepancy model to diagnose learning disabilities.

Researchers pointed out problems with the discrepancy model even before its use became prevalent in the U.S. Fletcher, an early critic, noted a methodological issue in the Isle of Wight studies: they did not exclude children with intellectual disabilities or brain injuries. Yet by some accounts there was an unusually large number of neurologically impaired subjects on the island at the time, resulting in a skewed sample.

It has also long been clear that IQ tests can be biased against Black or low-income students, as well as many others, because they contain language and content that is more familiar to white middle- and upper-income students. Researchers began to observe inequitable results in the late 1970s as American public schools began evaluating more children to comply with the mandates for the EAHCA, since renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. As a research assistant at the University of Minnesota, Mark Shinn saw how the discrepancy model disproportionately prevented children from low-income families, first-time English learners and students of color from getting help. "You had all these kids in high-poverty schools with [below average] cognitive ability of 90 and 80, and the schools could throw up their hands and say, 'They are too "slow" to benefit [from services],'" recalls Shinn, now a professor emeritus of school psychology at National Louis University in Chicago. Yet "it was well known that poor kids ... earned low scores on cognitive tests largely because of a lack of opportunities and experiences."

In the 1980s educational psychologist Linda Siegel, now an emeritus professor at the University of British Columbia, began investigating some of these anecdotal suspicions. In an influential 1994 publication, she noted that the main distinction between children with a reading disability and those without was not their IQs but the way their minds processed written words. "The basic assumption that underlies decades of classification in research and educational practice regarding reading disabilities is becoming increasingly untenable," she and her co-author wrote. In the same issue of the Journal of Educational Psychology, Fletcher and his colleagues observed that the "cognitive profiles" of poor readers who met the discrepancy definition and of those who didn't were more similar than different. The key to diagnosing reading disabilities, they wrote, would be to instead measure "deficiencies in phonological awareness," the ability to recognize and work with phonemes in spoken language.

Since then, the scientific consensus against the discrepancy model has grown. One study found that regardless of their IQ, poor readers benefit from specialized reading instruction and support at statistically identical levels. Another used magnetic resonance imaging to show the same reduced brain-activation patterns in the left hemisphere (compared with those of typical readers) in weak school-age readers who were asked whether two written words rhymed-regardless of whether the weak readers met discrepancy criteria. Neuroscientist Fumiko Hoeft, who supervised the study at Stanford University's Center for Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Research, says it bolsters the idea that the discrepancy method makes an arbitrary distinction among different groups of poor readers. In fact, "dyslexia can occur in people of high, middle and low cognitive abilities," notes Nadine Gaab, an associate professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

By the 2000s ample scientific evidence indicated the arbitrariness of IQ's use as a basis for a dyslexia diagnosis. And there were mounting concerns that the discrepancy model was fundamentally racist and classist: it disproportionately prevented low-income children and children of color from getting help with learning disabilities. In 2004 the federal government reversed course on its 1970s guidance, strongly recommending that states consider alternatives. "I would ... encourage this commission to drive a stake through the heart of this overreliance on the discrepancy model for determining the kinds of children that need services," psychologist Wade Horn, then U.S. assistant secretary for children and families, told a panel of experts tasked with revising special education law in the early 2000s. "I've wondered for 25 years why it is that we continue to use it."

But a 2018 study found that about one third of school psychologists were still using the discrepancy model to screen students for learning disabilities. And although most contemporary specialists concur that dyslexia is unrelated to intelligence, many of the most widely used definitions still refer to it as an "unexpected" disorder. "These definitional issues are not trivial, because they drive research, they drive funding, they drive assessment, they drive everything," says Julie Washington, a professor in the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine, whose research focuses on the intersection of language, literacy and poverty in African American children.

Even as more states and school districts move away from the discrepancy model, many researchers are concerned that they too often are replacing it with an equally problematic system. Often referred to as patterns of strengths and weaknesses or by Odegard as "discrepancy 2.0," this method continues to rely heavily on cognitive tests and still calls for significant gaps between ability and performance for a student to qualify as having a learning disability. "Schools still want simple formulas and put way too much emphasis on the testing," Fletcher says.

Twice in elementary school, Texas student Marcelo Ruiz, who lives just north of Houston, was denied a dyslexia diagnosis because of "discrepancy 2.0." He had high cognitive scores, but evaluators said he did not show skill gaps in the areas he needed to qualify as dyslexic. School got harder and harder for Ruiz, and in high school he was still inverting letters and having trouble with reading. In the fall of 2022, his senior year, the teenager finally got a dyslexia diagnosis, but by then it was far too late to give him the help he had long craved. Because of his mediocre grades, Ruiz says, he had difficulty getting admitted into four-year colleges; he is currently at a community college and hoping to transfer. "Growing up, I felt stupid," the 18-year-old says. "My grades kept going down, and I didn't know what was wrong with me. It was really demotivating not knowing what I had and what you could do for it, not being able to get help."

According to several researchers, a better-though hardly perfect-approach to assessing children for learning disabilities is "response to intervention," or RTI. In this method, teachers intervene early with struggling readers and monitor how they respond to help, making a referral for special education services after what one research paper dubbed a "student's failure to respond to treatment." Some states already require exclusive use of RTI, although it can be hard to implement because teachers have to be well trained in what interventions to administer and how to determine whether they are working. When teachers do make a referral for special education services, there's often still a question of how-and whether-to make a learning disability determination.

For this reason, some experts in the field say they would like to see more no-cost or low-cost access to the kind of testing that qualified neuropsychologists do: assessing a child's capacity for and speed at the many components that make up successful reading. (One bill pending in New York State would mandate that private health-care plans pay for neuropsychological exams focused on dyslexia.) The specifics can look quite different for a seven-year-old than for a high school student, Gaab explains. But generally, experts say testing should be used to gauge such skills as a child's ability to recognize "sight words" (common words that often come up in reading), to detect "nonsense" words that follow the rules of the English language but are not actual words, and to read under timed conditions and spell words correctly in their writing.

It isn't out of the question for school districts to do this type of testing on their own-and some of the best-resourced ones already do, or they contract with an outside neuropsychologist. But for most school psychologists, it would represent a departure from decades of training and practice focused on the administration of IQ and cognitive tests. The discrepancy model is "easier" because a child either meets the cutoff or doesn't. "It reminds me of leeching blood," says Tiffany Hogan, a professor and director of the Speech & Language Literacy Lab at the MGH Institute of Health Professions in Boston. "They did that for a long time knowing it wasn't the best way, but there was no replacement."

Another, largely overlooked reason for the continued prevalence of discrepancy-based testing may be that the families most hurt by it are the least powerful in terms of their influence over public school practice and policy. Many schools feel pressure, both covert and overt, to not identify children with dyslexia because there aren't enough specialists or teachers trained to work with them. Families with money, power and privilege can negotiate with the district more effectively to meet their child's needs or hire an advocate or lawyer to lobby on their behalf. If diagnosis and help still remain elusive, they can pay for private neuropsychological exams, which can cost thousands of dollars. They also can, and often do, circumvent the public system entirely by hiring private reading tutors or sending their children to private schools focused on reading remediation. (Often these schools also use the discrepancy model to determine whom to admit.) For all these reasons, as well as the discrepancy model's bias favoring high IQ scores, dyslexia has long had a reputation as a "privileged" diagnosis.

The dyslexia advocacy community has in some states also been predominantly white and financially privileged, with low-income families and parents of color more likely to fear the stigma of a disability diagnosis. "Historically, we don't talk about learning disabilities and mental health in the Black community because there's a stigma and shame attached to it," says Winifred Winston, a Baltimore mother who hosts the Black and Dyslexic podcast. "Enslaved people could not show any sign of weakness or perceived weakness. So we have a history of being 'okay' ... when we are in fact not okay or do require assistance."

Partly through the leadership of parents such as Winston, that's changing as more families learn about reading disabilities and the extra support a diagnosis can bring.

Now 71 and 81, respectively, Jack Fletcher and Linda Siegel are still fighting to get children equal access to essential help in learning how to read. They are part of a broad-based effort seeking to strengthen access to general reading instruction for all so that fewer students get held back by learning disabilities or need intensive reading remediation. Many states are doing just that, with a growing number passing legislation promoting the "science of reading," which emphasizes explicit and systematic instruction in phonics. Early screening for language challenges in the youngest grades is also key.

Still, Tim Odegard says he regularly hears from families frustrated that their kids were disqualified from reading services for the same reason he was: testing determined that they are not "smart" enough to be dyslexic. Odegard isn't surprised that his own IQ score was below average, given the correlation to socioeconomic status: his parents had modest-paying jobs in retail and neither had a college education.

The idea of distributing the limited quantity of extra help available among students with high cognitive scores has deep roots in an American psyche "built off a mindset that somehow there are people who are chosen to move forward and some that are not," he adds. Such policies give early, accruing opportunities to some children but not others and are based on a limited notion of human potential.

Over the years, Odegard says, some colleagues and friends have remarked that, given his success, the experience must have made him stronger-a characterization he resents. "It wasn't a gift," he says. "I don't see any of those challenges of having to stay up later and work five times harder as helpful." Growing up, "I had a huge chip on my shoulder."

On reflection, though, Odegard says there was perhaps one benefit to his early educational struggles. "If there was any gift I got from dyslexia, it was to have a lot of compassion and empathy," he asserts, "because I could never hide in school that I couldn't read and spell." That early feeling of powerlessness fueled his interest in studying child psychology in college and graduate school, he says: "My own loss of agency and helplessness led me to want to find a way to give children a voice."

This story was produced with the Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.

Sarah Carr is a New York-based journalist who covers education. She is author of Hope against Hope (Bloomsbury Press, 2013), about the New Orleans schools after Hurricane Katrina.

More by Sarah Carr

This article was originally published with the title "Misdiagnosing Dyslexia" in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 329 No. 5 (), p. 56
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1223-56

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Too Many Schools Are Misdiagnosing Dyslexia

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Changing how dyslexia is diagnosed could help many more children learn to read

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There are many myths about dyslexia. Here you can find many of the most common ones. you can also find these on dr. gaab's twitter (@GaabLab)

Myth #3: First signs of dyslexia or Reading impairments can only be seen after 2-3 years of reading instruction

Myth #8: Dyslexia-friendly fonts help individuals with dyslexia & reading impairments read better

Myth #9: Struggling with learning to read is only affecting your academic outcome, and has no influence on your mental health

Difficulty with reading at grade-level can lead to low self-esteem, feelings of shame, inadequacy

Difficulty with learning to read can lead to helplessness, frustration often leading to a variety of mental health problems and individuals with dyslexia, reading impairments or other learning disabilities show higher rates of depression and anxiety

Individuals with dyslexia/reading impairments are often perceived by others as being 'lazy' or as those who 'do not try enough'. Teachers/parents/peers often misinterpret the 'dyslexic' child's struggle as negative attitude or poor behavior[Saracoglu, 1989; Riddick,1999]

Negative experiences leave children with learning disabilities vulnerable to feelings of shame failure, inadequacy, helplessness, depression & loneliness [e.g.; Valas et al., 1999] which can lead to possible anti-social behavior with long-standing consequences [Baker, 2007].

Without proper remediation, it's less likely that children with learning disabilities such as dyslexia will complete high school [Marder, 1992], join programs of higher education [Quinn, 2001], and increased probability they will enter the juvenile justice system [Wagner, 1993]

Want to read more about the relationship between dyslexia & reading impairments & mental health? Take a look at https://u.org/2AMJRrv by Understood.Org featuring Fumiko Hoeft and also the article in the NY Times, "At Risk in the Culture of 'Normal'"

Myth #10: All individuals with dyslexia share a similar strength & weakness profile

Every person with dyslexia is unique and has their own individual strengths and weaknesses. It's important to provide role models that showcase this variety.

Falsely promoting a certain strength that ALL individuals with dyslexia share (e.g. visual-spatial skills or thinking out of the box) is not empowering and simply incorrect. It can lead to disappointment and more frustration such as "I am not even good at being 'dyslexic'".

Providing role models that are super successful can motivate some children with dyslexia, but others may get even more overwhelmed and experience more pressure to fit a certain mold. Instead, let's point out a variety of role models with dyslexia in the child's own community

Let's find every child's own strength and foster it so they can reach their OWN full potential. Also, not all children with dyslexia have the same profiles! Its a continuum and research points to a multiple deficit model (Pennington, 2006) with variety of risk & protective factors.

Myth #15: All children with Dyslexia have average or above-average IQ OR all children with dyslexia/reading impairments are 'stupid' and have very low IQ

Children who struggle with reading including dyslexia are on a wide IQ spectrum.

There is ample evidence from educational, psychological, and neuroimaging studies showing that a link between IQ and dyslexia or reading impairment is not supported. Most importantly, the evidence suggested that the still-used diagnostic criteria of IQ discrepancy is not warranted.

Tanaka et al. reported that "a number of behavioral studies indicate that underlying phonological deficits are similar in poor readers regardless of discrepant or non-discrepant IQ (O'Malley, 2002 Stanovich, 1994; Stuebing,2002; Tunmer & Greaney, 2010) https://bit.ly/2OPCNlh

Interested in more science between IQ and dyslexia/reading impairment? See https://bit.ly/32jR8KG, https://bit.ly/32kKl3c, https://bit.ly/35HsSEv, https://bit.ly/2Mi3HQX, https://bit.ly/2Bbopvw, https://bit.ly/2oMaf1d, https://bit.ly/35BEmJx

Myth #24: Individuals with dyslexia or reading impairments primarily use their right hemisphere of the brain to process text which makes them interpret written language in a visual-spatial way, like pictures

The idea that some people are left-brain learners, while others are right-brain learners, is a MYTH and tools assessing whether a child primarily processes text with their left/right brain are misleading, false, and should not be used.

This neuromyth most likely originates from an over-generalization of empirical brain research.

Research has shown that language and reading are predominately processed in the left-hemisphere, but right-hemispheric regions are also involved and important.

The fact that empirical findings have been misunderstood/simplified make it hard to dispel them

Many studies have shown structural and functional brain differences between people with dyslexia/reading impairments and their peers.

Myth #25: If you are a 2nd language learner, you cannot be diagnosed with dyslexia/reading impairment in that language until you are proficient

Myth #27: Early screening for dyslexia/reading impairments gives students a diagnosis at age 5 before they can read

The purpose of early screenings is not to diagnose, but to identify children AT RISK for developing a reading impairment.

Dr. Gaab explains this in this article written for the BOLD blog: https://bit.ly/349VNzp :

"An analogy from medicine may be helpful in this context: Adults are advised to undergo screening for high cholesterol levels, which can indicate an increased risk of developing heart disease. Those diagnosed with high cholesterol don't automatically receive a diagnosis of heart disease. They are provided with an evidence-based "response to screening," generally a combination of prescribed exercise, dietary changes, and/or medication. This may prevent the development of the disease, or at least lessen its severity. The goal is to reduce the prevalence of heart disease, by encouraging people to take preventive action and to improve outcomes of those who will develop it by implementing lifestyle changes earlier, prior to a diagnosis."

In the case of reading impairments, we need to make a similar shift from a deficit-driven to a prevention model. With the help of high-quality screening programs, we can identify AT-RISK children early, but refrain from diagnosing them while they are still in preschool/K.

Myth #29: Children with an older sibling or parent with dyslexia will always develop dyslexia themselves

Research has suggested that approximately 40-60% of people with a first degree relative with dyslexia will struggle with reading themselves.

Several genes have been reported to be candidates for dyslexia susceptibility and it has been suggested that the majority of these genes plays a role in early brain development. [e.g.; Galaburda et al., 2006; Hannula-Jouppi et al., 2005; Meng et al., 2005; Skiba et al., 2011]

Please read the work of these wonderful genetic researchers here: Bruce Pennington at the University of Delaware, Elena Grigorenko Haskins Laboratories, Anthony Monaco at Tufts University Sara Hart, Florina Erbeli, and Dr. Elsje van Bergen, and many more

Here is one helpful summary for a lay-audience https://bit.ly/2BUgoLV by Dorothy Bishop

Myth #31: Dyslexia/reading impairment is rare

While the exact prevalence of dyslexia/reading impairments depends on many factors (e.g., the definition, the language, diagnostic practices), we can say with great certainty that dyslexia/reading impairments are not rare.

Let's take a look at the numbers: The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) released a new report showing that 65% of 4th graders are not reading proficiently.

We know that the estimates of dyslexia range from 3-12% but vary across countries and prevalence rates for dyslexia are difficult to estimate due to differences in the definitions used, how and at what ages individuals are identified, criteria for diagnosis, and orthographic transparency (the degree of consistency between spelling and sound) plays a role as well!

Current estimates in English-speaking countries typically range between 5-10%, with greater variance in US than UK estimates. Estimates as high as 10% of individuals in some Chinese societies, about 7% of individuals in Japan when examining reading of Kanji

In addition to 5-10% in English/Asian countries, prevalence estimates are about 5% in Germany, 3-4% in Italy and Spain.

Most importantly, all of these individuals benefit from early identification & evidence-based interventions regardless of the cause of their reading problems

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There are many myths about dyslexia. Here you can find many of the most common ones. you can also find these on dr. gaab’s twitter (@GaabLab)

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Information on this page is organized by topic or key word. ( Tips)

More Services & Products from Wrightslaw

TIP: If you have a question about IEPs, check the pages about IEPs.

Also check related subjects, including Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE), Assessment, Related Services, Least Restrictive Environment/Inclusion, etc.

If you still cannot find articles or information that answer your question, don't despair. Use the search box at the top of every page. We do!

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Last revised: 09/28/18

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individuals with disabilities education act

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Information on this page is organized by topic or key word. ( Tips) More Services & Products from Wrightslaw TIP: If you have a question about IEPs, check the pages about IEPs. Also check related subjects, including Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE), Assessment, Related Services, Least Restrictive Environment/Inclusion, etc.

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Dyslexia Training Institute - Resource Page

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Dyslexia Training Institute - Resource Page

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At the Dyslexia Training Institute our mission is to provide education about dyslexia, interventions for dyslexia (Orton-Gillingham and Structured Word Inquiry) as well as how to navigate the educational system by understanding Special Education Law. Our courses were created for parents, teachers, educational professionals and anyone interested in the topic. We believe information about dyslexia should not be limited by geography and we have created an online space where everyone has access to this information. Our instruction is provided by highly-qualified and very experienced instructors in an interactive online environment.

Trouble playing? Visit
our BlogTalkRadio page to listen.

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At the Dyslexia Training Institute our mission is to provide education about dyslexia, interventions for dyslexia (Orton-Gillingham and Structured Word Inquiry) as well as how to navigate the educational system by understanding Special Education Law. Our courses were created for parents, teachers, e…

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These infographics and infosheets provide useful information about reading, reading instruction, and reading disabilities. They were developed by staff at the Center for Dyslexia to aid parents, educators, administrators, and others to get information about a specific topic at a glance.

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Center Publications | Middle Tennessee State University

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These infographics and infosheets provide useful information about reading, reading instruction, and reading disabilities. They were developed by staff at the Center for Dyslexia to aid parents, educators, administrators, and others to get information about a specific topic at a glance.

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Fall 2023 | American Federation of Teachers

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The AFT is a union of professionals that champions fairness; democracy; economic opportunity; and high-quality public education, healthcare and public services for our students, their families and our communities. We are committed to advancing these principles through community engagement, organizing, collective bargaining and political activism, and especially through the work our members do.

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Advocates - Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, Inc.

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The Random House dictionary defines advocate in part as someone who speaks, writes in favor of, supports, advises or urges by argument in support of another person. In other words, an advocate is someone who actively negotiates for the needs of another. Advocacy specialties include consumer protection, patient rights, and education. COPAA’s focus is on special education advocacy.

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Want to know how your child is doing with grade-level math?

Like a game, your child answers 3-5 short questions and you see their progress with key math and reading skills needed for this year. At the end, get videos and activities to support grade-level learning at home.

Get Started Fill 1 Copy

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Readiness Check Fall 2022 " Be A Learning Hero

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Want to know how your child is doing with grade-level math? Like a game, your child answers 3-5 short questions and you see their progress with key math and reading skills needed for this year. At the end, get videos and activities to support grade-level learning at home.

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Reading Reform Across America: July 2023

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Reading Reform Across America: July 2023

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Download: Full Report || Policy Recommendations |​| ​​​​​​ News Release || Executive Summary

In recent years, a scientific approach to reading education has gained traction due to the joint efforts of educators, parents, and state leaders. This movement for better reading instruction has helped to fuel a wave of legislation to address widespread and persistent reading deficits of American students. While reading difficulties cut across socioeconomic lines, they disproportionately affect students living in poverty as well as those from black, brown, and indigenous communities.

Reading Reform Across America documents how state legislatures nationwide have responded to these challenges. Specifically, the report examines reading-related legislation enacted between 2019 and 2022. We analyzed a total of 223 bills enacted in 45 states and the District of Columbia, examining over 40 features, such as teacher preparation, professional development, and curriculum, to name a few.

Our objective is to provide a robust and granular description of states' efforts to enhance reading instruction, with the following goals:

1. Foster constructive discussions that support states in developing effective roadmaps for advancing reading reform.

2. Encourage states to devise supplementary policies (e.g., guidance, additional legislation) to address the areas needing improvement identified in this review.

3. Appeal to the research community for assistance in filling legislative gaps, not only to align with current evidence-based principles and practices, but also to adapt to the evolving nature of scientific research.

First, the good news about our findings:

Bills pay attention to the five pillars of reading, not just phonics. In most states (34), laws reference the pillars identified by the National Reading Panel report, namely phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension.

Laws are targeting more students than previous legislation. Forty-two states passed laws covering students from kindergarten to beyond 3rd grade, with 31 of these also including pre-K, and 37 charter schools. Only 12 states enacted laws exclusively targeting Title I schools.

Legislation is bipartisan and state driven. Comprehensive reading laws have been enacted in both traditionally conservative and traditionally progressive states. This report features exemplar legislation from states across the political spectrum.

Focus on evidence. A commitment to evidence-based practices and materials underpins the legislation, with all but four states explicitly articulating this objective.

Pre-service preparation and professional development are a main focus of this legislation.

Family involvement in literacy - the active engagement of family members in supporting and enhancing a child's reading skills and habits at home and in collaboration with schools - is significantly addressed in the laws of 38 states, with 21 giving it thorough consideration.

Our analysis also revealed limitations that could affect the success of these laws:

Oral language and writing receive less attention than the Five Pillars although many studies have established their crucial role in reading. Background knowledge, another critical pillar, is mentioned in legislation from only six states.

Assessment is prioritized, yet comprehensive supports for students receive limited attention. Only two states, Florida and Michigan, enacted bills extensively discussing all these supports.

Teachers take center stage, but additional supports are crucial. Only about one-third of states enacted legislation that delves deeply into curriculum or school leadership, with a mere 11 states extensively addressing both areas simultaneously in their laws.

Unequal attention to student groups. Dyslexia gets a lot of attention, with laws in 33 states thoroughly addressing students with dyslexia. However, English learners are less emphasized; laws in only 10 states discuss this population in-depth.

Community engagement receives limited focus. While 26 mention community initiatives in their legislation; only 14 of these discuss community engagement in more detail.

Fragmentation and missing links. Most bills pay limited attention to alignment and coherence across different aspects of reading education, suggesting an insufficient focus on how various components of the system interact.

Go to Data Dashboard

We have featured nine states for their legislation's leadership in specific domains:

Alaska gives families a voice in their children's literacy education.

Arizona uses a holistic approach to defining reading.

California is considering the needs of English learners and emergent bilinguals.

Colorado demonstrates a commitment to community engagement around reading.

Delaware provides an example curriculum aligned with professional development.

Kentucky's legislation recognizes writing instruction as a key component of literacy.

Michigan offers a comprehensive set of supports for students.

Texas has legislation that outlines professional development across grade levels.

Utah's legislation focuses on developing capacity-building leadership.

The report's companion website features an outline of our policy recommendations, a succinct factsheet, and tools to download and explore the legislative data.

Collectively this legislation represents the boldest, broadest and most scientifically grounded effort our nation has put forward to strengthen reading instruction for all children. Still, our report identifies opportunities for states to pursue more systemic and coherent laws that lay a solid foundation for literacy improvement. Specifically, what raises concern is the unequal focus on different student groups by states, paired with an emphasis on screening and assessment that isn't balanced with a corresponding commitment to comprehensive student supports. Similarly, teachers' knowledge about scientifically based reading instruction isn't enough; additional supports like effective school leadership and high quality curriculum are indispensable for educators to apply their knowledge and achieve results with students.

The voices of educators and families should be integral to the legislative process shaping reading instruction. A collaborative approach is more likely to result in stronger policies, and to garner support from those who are closest to students and who will lead the way in putting these policies into action. By contrast, excessive rigidity, such as banning specific practices or curricula - a feature that appears to be increasingly common - can undermine this collaboration and prove impractical. Positive interactions rooted in respect for educators and families will be pivotal to the success of reading policy. Mississippi, a state that championed reading reform well ahead of the legislative wave analyzed in this report, has seen significant improvements in reading. These gains are tied not only to the technical aspects of the reforms, but especially to the collective endeavor of teachers, leaders, and communities in implementing them. Mississippi's experience illustrates that the path to improvement is a continuous, collaborative journey.

Finally, we hope that this report does more than just provide an update on state initiatives. Our analysis and recommendations are intended to be a catalyst for a more unified approach to reading reform, one that enhances our capacity to support every student.

Authors: Susan B. Neuman, Esther Quintero, and Kayla Reist

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Reading Reform Across America: A Survey of State Legislation

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This report authored by Susan B. Neuman (New York University), Esther Quintero (Albert Shanker Institute), and Kayla Reist (University of Virginia), examines reading-related state legislation enacted between 2019 and 2022.

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You can find these Decoding Dyslexia Chapters on Facebook.  Some have city or regional local chapters!

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You can find these Decoding Dyslexia Chapters on Facebook.  Some have city or regional local chapters!

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DD -- Alaska

DD -- Arkansas

DD -- Colorado

DD -- Delaware

DD -- Florida

DD -- Georgia

DD -- Iowa

DD -- Kentucky

DD -- Louisiana

DD -- Maryland

DD -- Massachusetts

DD -- Military

DD -- Minnesota

DD -- Missouri

DD -- Nebraska

DD -- New Hampshire

DD -- New York

DD -- North Dakota

DD -- Ohio

DD -- Oklahoma

DD -- Ontario, Canada

DD -- Oregon

DD -- Rhode Island

DD -- South Carolina

DD -- Texas

DD -- Utah

DD -- Vermont

DD -- Virginia

DD -- Washington

DD -- Washington, DC

DD -- West Virginia

DD -- Wyoming WY Lit (Wyoming)

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Every Student Succeeds Act: Evidence of Effectiveness

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Every Student Succeeds Act: Evidence of Effectiveness

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Using the WWC to Identify ESSA Evidence Ratings

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3/7/2023

Due to disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, more students are experiencing the effects of unfinished learning- especially students of color and students in low-income areas. Additionally, the teacher shortage has been exacerbated following the pandemic, and it has become even more difficult to get insight into student performance and standards due to disruptions in testing and assessment.

One of the best ways for educators (and students) to get the support they need-without compounding the amount of work they already do-is by ensuring funding is put toward evidence-based, high-quality intervention programs. At Lexia®, we have more than 20 externally reviewed research studies that meet the standards of Evidence for ESSA, allowing us to not only enhance teacher effectiveness, but also support students struggling after the pandemic.

Understanding ESSA Ratings: What Does Evidence-Based Mean?

One clear shift in thinking between the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and its predecessor, No Child Left Behind, is: ESSA prompts schools to use evidence-based interventions with students, particularly if those students qualify for Title I funding (intended to provide extra support to students living in poverty, according to federal guidelines). While the No Child Left Behind federal law first enacted in 2001 asked schools to use "scientifically based" interventions, ESSA has taken it a step further by encouraging schools and districts to put money and effort into programs and strategies backed by evidence, not just theory.

This may seem like a fine point of distinction, but it comes down to a newly expressed hope that anyone affiliated with students-including schools, educators, districts, and partner organizations-will adopt proven strategies for providing academic support or interventions. (The government, even under ESSA, does not mandate any specific approach or program.) To explain this, the Department of Education has provided a detailed, four-tiered evaluation guide designed to inform evidence-based decision-making.

Overview of the ESSA Rating System

So, what exactly do "evidence-based" and "proven" results mean when it comes to ESSA? Here is a brief overview, according to ESSA ratings: A four-tiered method of evaluation as outlined in the Department of Education's 2016 guide:
1. Strong Evidence
This is the highest ranking for any intervention, product, or program, and is dependent upon the inclusion of "at least one well-designed and well-implemented experimental study." This rigorous framework includes the use of a "random control trial," meaning the results will not be driven solely by a pre-selected sample group. The Department of Education also emphasizes any intervention or strategy that meets this standard should have "statistically significant and positive" outcomes for students.
2. Moderate Evidence
This is the second-highest bar for any intervention, product, or program, according to the government's ESSA guide. This evaluation category requires any intervention be subject first to "at least one well-designed and well-implemented quasi-experimental study." Quasi-experimental means there is no random control group, unlike the "strong evidence" category.
3. Promising evidence
This is an evaluation framework that requires the use of "at least one well-designed and well-implemented correlational study with statistical controls for selection bias." The requirements for this standard are less rigorous and do not mandate the use of a large sample group, although the expectation is still that any study will result in "statistically significant and positive" outcomes for students.
4. Demonstrates a rationale
This category applies to theories of action or "well-defined logic models" that education professionals are in the process of supporting with further research. The root of this category is that any theory of action or intervention will be supported by "promising evidence" at some point.

How to Meet ESSA's Preference for Proven Interventions

For educators hoping to abide by ESSA's framework, this four-tiered evaluation system may be just a starting point. Although there are websites-such as the Evidence for ESSA site run by Johns Hopkins University's Center for Research and Reform in Education-that attempt to walk school leaders through the evaluation process, the Evidence for ESSA guide uses evaluation standards that differ from those provided by the federal government. This means some studies that meet ESSA's rigorous guidelines do not meet Johns Hopkins' criteria.

There are other comprehensive guides, such as Florida State University's Center for Reading Research. This extensive document is geared toward local education agencies (LEAs) and state education agencies (SEAs), the two central decision-making bodies that tend to control what programs and strategies get recommended for schools. Although the guide is long, it includes five clear categories to consider when trying to meet ESSA's preference for proven interventions.
Here is a quick look at Florida State's approach:

Identify local needs. This is a reminder to conduct a needs-assessment (as advised by ESAA) first to determine the most pressing needs or issues on a local level.

Select relevant, evidence-based interventions. Once local needs have been identified, it's time to find the right interventions. Using ESSA's guidelines, the strongest interventions will have been tested through "at least one well-designed and well-implemented" study that results in overwhelmingly positive outcomes for students.

Plan for intervention. This involves identifying how progress will be measured after an intervention has been selected. Of course, states do have to adhere to standardized test-based accountability systems, but these should be paired with frequent, site-specific assessments. On a basic level, it comes down to this: Is the intervention working? Why or why not?

Implement. The plan for intervention should also include implementation specifics such as whether a school's infrastructure is adequate or whether technology needs are up to date. Then, guided questions surrounding how well the intervention is working are necessary to provide that "local" look at whether the strategies or programs are a good fit for the targeted need or audience.

Examine and reflect. This step is part of the continuous improvement and evaluation process that composes any strong professional development program. Making time to stop and assess, to ask questions and revisit goals, or perhaps to readjust goals, should be part of any intervention plan.

While it is encouraging to know ESSA has put a new emphasis on the importance of using evidence-based strategies, it is largely up to individual states, schools, and districts to decide which interventions meet ESSA criteria and which do not.

Take a look at this 2020 study about Lexia® PowerUp Literacy®, which provides students in grades 6-12 with high-quality literacy support. Lexia® Core5® Reading has achieved similar recognition, with studies on both programs receiving "strong" ESSA ratings. At Lexia, we work directly with teachers to help them become more effective in their literacy instruction, while also supporting students through the obstacles that come with receiving a post-pandemic education.

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ESSA Ratings: Evidence-Based Reading Intervention Programs | Lexia

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ESSA ratings are a reliable way for districts to determine if a reading intervention program is evidence-based. After learning loss caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, now more than ever it is important for administrators to provide students with quality reading programs.

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Finding or Becoming a Professional Advocate

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Finding or Becoming a Professional Advocate

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William & Mary Law School's Special Education Advocacy Clinic was formed in 2009 as the Parent's Engaged for Learning Equality (PELE) initiative to assist students with disabilities and their families and caregivers with special education legal needs, and to empower parents and others to advocate for children in the special education system.

After a brief interlude in which the Clinic was not offered, the Special Education Advocacy Clinic returned in summer 2023, and will again include William & Mary law students beginning with the fall 2023 semester. These students, working under the supervision of the Clinic's director, offer their services to families at no charge. The students and their director also work to provide advocacy training to caregivers, advocates and disability organizations, and to develop written and video resources for the special education community.

Our Services

The Special Education Advocacy Clinic focuses on providing families and other caregivers with the legal and practical advice needed to navigate special education challenges, including:

Assisting with eligibility, evaluation, and placement issues

Helping resolve disputes through meetings, mediations, and where necessary, other means

Working to develop appropriate IEP goals and objectives

Facilitating behavioral assessments (FBAs) and plans (BIPs)

Advising on obtaining appropriate services and accommodations, including therapies, assistive technology, and extended school year (ESY) services

Addressing school discipline issues involving students with disabilities

Providing advice about IDEA, 504 and ADA questions

Counseling about "transition" services and decisions

A parent, other caregiver, or student may apply for our services by completing a brief web-based questionnaire. Because we are a small Clinic, there may be times of year when we are unable to take on substantive work on new matters. However, we will make every effort to provide assistance, resources, and/or referrals.
Our Training and Resources
One way the Clinic can most effectively help the disabilities community is by providing advocacy training and resources. Our resources pages are in the early stages of development, but we plan to add materials as we develop them. Each semester, the Clinic intends to add additional written resources (including FAQs), video resources on special education topics, and helpful forms to the Clinic website.

We are also willing to visit virtual and in-person (subject to travel limitations) conferences, programs, and meetings to provide basic advocacy and self-advocacy training workshops. If you are interested in having the Clinic provide that kind of workshop or presentation, please contact us using the form here.
Our Advocacy
Law students in the Clinic will work with the director to identify possible areas in which the Clinic can affect systemic change at the local, state, and federal level. This work may involve drafting statutory and regulatory language, advocating for change (or for not making negative changes) at hearings, and meeting with state and federal officials, including legislators and legislative staffers. From time to time, we may also be willing to assist in pending litigation through "friend of the court" briefs or with other help. If you are aware of an advocacy opportunity, please feel free to contact us.

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William & Mary Law School's Special Education Advocacy Clinic was formed in 2009 as the Parent's Engaged for Learning Equality (PELE) initiative to assist students with disabilities and their families and caregivers with special education legal needs, and to empower parents and others to advocate for children in the special education system.

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KIDS COUNT Data Center from the Annie E. Casey Foundation

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Explore data on child and family well-being indicators in the US. Filter by state, city, county, education, health, family structure, race, sex, age, and more.

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To use the calculator:

1. Select your state, county, & district.

2. Select a school or districtwide report.

3. See the number of third grade students, the percentage of students at the "BASIC" reading level (partial mastery), and the percentage of students at the "BELOW-BASIC" reading level (far-below mastery).

4. Select a simple or detailed report and click Results to see the tax cost predictions.

5. Interpreting the reports

Note: Data from some states required adjustments to fit NAEP proficiency levels. If you need help finding your school or district, visit NCES' School Finder. For other assistance, email: calculator@education-consumers.org.

On average, over 2 out of 3 students who fail to reach the proficient reading level by third grade drop out or finish high school unprepared for college or the workplace. As a result, they are significantly more dependent on taxpayer funded healthcare, public safety, and welfare than their successful peers--a fact that has profound economic, cultural, and social implications for the future of the U.S. Interventions capable of altering this trajectory are often negligently delayed.

Thanks to work by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and ACT, it is possible to predict the number of children who will either drop out or graduate from high school unprepared for college or career from their third grade reading skills. Using publicly available data, ECF's calculator estimates the future local, state, and federal expenditures that result from their disproportionate use of public services.

The calculator uses an economic analysis of schooling outcomes published by Teachers College, Columbia University as the basis of its estimates. The number and percentage of students who have failed to master reading in a school, district, or state are used to produce a line-by-line locally-adjusted cost analysis broken out by federal and state/local expenditures. These costs are only the direct taxpayer expenditures, not the full costs.

More about how the findings of the Teachers College report were adapted to this calculator.

The calculator compiles only the added local, state, and federal outlays that result from lifetime use of public services by these students, not the much larger costs of diminished wages, lost tax revenues, and lost productivity. Neither does the calculator assess the life-altering social and psychological costs of school failure to the individual and society.

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ECF Cost Calculator - Education Consumers Foundation

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Reading Failure Is Costing Us Our Future: Here Are the Numbers for Your School or District

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This map provides an overview of states' dyslexia requirements, policies, and SIMR status.

This map provides information about states' policies concerning dyslexia and other specific reading disabilities, as well as their use of dyslexia specialists.

This map provides information about states' policies concerning screening for dyslexia and other specific reading disabilities, reporting requirements, and Student Learning Disability Eligibility.

This map provides information about states' implementation and approach to intervention policies for students with dyslexia.

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This map provides an overview of states' dyslexia requirements, policies, and SIMR status. This map provides information about states' policies concerning dyslexia and other specific reading disabilities, as well as their use of dyslexia specialists. This map provides information about states' policies concerning screening for dyslexia and other specific reading disabilities, reporting requirements, and Student Learning Disability Eligibility.

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Free Resources for Dyscalculia and Math Learning Disability — Discovering Dyscalculia

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Blog, online events, podcasts, downloadable PDF resources, book chapter download, signs and symptoms of dyscalculia worksheet, dyscalculia screener and testing information, dyscalculia newsletter, and more.