• Background Information: Documents relating to the Task Force & its charge

• Prework Assignments: Shared in the Prework column, organized by due date (e.g., prework due at our October 8 convening will be under the sticky note labeled "October 8")

• Convening Materials: Agendas, slides, & resources for each convening will be housed under the column with the corresponding Task Force date.

• Public Hearing Notes: Available once meetings are complete and notes are synthesized.

To the right, we have four sections for resources:

• Subcommittee Artifacts

• Research & Articles

• Tools

• Miscellaneous

To share a resource, click the "+" under the appropriate column (as pictured above). You may add links, PDFs, documents, and more directly to this Padlet. Please scroll through resources already shared to ensure there is no duplication.

Source: NYSED

Source: NYSED

• identify the specific credentials that should be required for the potential positions created at the state level or NYSED related to a possible Center for Dyslexia / Dysgraphia and /or the over seer of screenings, interventions, professional development, community engagement and communications related to Dyslexia and Dysgraphia.

• It is imperative that these positions are filled with highly specialized and credentialed dyslexia trained reading specialists that have experience successfully working with students with these characteristics or diagnoses.

• All schools should be required to report to NYSED and provide in an accessible location on their public website the actual names of all programs, materials that is in use and what PD’s have or will be taking place each school year related to ELA for K-5. Transparency with the program, materials, PD and methodology utilized by LEA’s are all funded by tax dollars and should not be cloaked in secrecy. The public has a right to know specifically what products, methods and trainings are being selected by their LEA’s to ensure that they are in fact utilizing evidence based best practices aligned with SoR and not merely adding a patch here and there to already known and discredited programs that have been found to be misaligned with cognitive science (i.e. adding a phonics and PA patch such as Fundations and Heggerty to the main curriculum that still is using TCWRP/Reading writing Work Shop/ Units of Study -Lucy Calkins, F&P (reading levels assigned via BAS/Running Records which emphasizes 3 cueing - guessing at unknown words via picture and context clues rather than focus on letter sound to letter print correspondences / sounding out) or any other balanced literacy related program.

• Mixing of strategies that have been discredited along with phonics and PA is detrimental to students tasked with learning to read especially struggling readers with characteristics of dyslexia / dysgraphia (see NYSED Dyslexia Q&A included in this padlet).

• NYSED should look at states with a long history of work regarding literacy ie Ohio, and TN departments of education have undertaken huge roles in creating frameworks that support evidence based best practices aligned w SoR from ground up. Please include them in this report and for potential collaboration opportunities.

Screening

• Bench mark screening for reading is already required in NYS Fall, Winter and Spring as part of MTSS/RTI/AIS process and can easily incorporate a screener that includes the listed components. It should be incorporated as part of this process to increase compliance and to help encourage tracking of consistent data sets over time especially for students who may seem ok at the start of the school year when less is expected but then may start to struggle as more is demanded. Once a year is not enough to catch before they fail.

LEA capacity and intervention Building

• It is essential that the main tenets required for successful MTSS are not ignored here. MTSS includes and is interdependent on the use of evidence based Tier 1 which is part of the language used in NYSED description of MTSS for Tier 1 also not just for Tier 2 and Tier 3.

• Tier 1 must be aligned with evidence based with high gains for the majority of all students (SoR / Structured Literacy). This ensures that all students are receiving high quality evidence based best practices in every classroom and that all are being taught to read and write based on the science of reading. This hurts no one and is essential for dyslexic/dysgraphic students and or those with characteristics of dyslexia/dysgraphia.

• Ensuring and requiring Tier 1 to be aligned w SoR/ structured literacy will greatly mitigate the degree of reading / writing difficulties across the board for all students and decrease need for special ed referrals and or number of students in need of significant interventions.

• Not addressing Tier 1 equally alongside Tier 2 and Tier 3 is not in agreement with the provision of an MTSS plan consistent with the established research on successful MTSS implementation (see Stephanie Stoller / Reading Universe).

These are my main areas of concern after reviewing the

recommendations provided to us prior to this meeting. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Dr. Dinorah Dellacamera

The survey will, however, remain open until EOD 12/11.

The survey will, however, remain open until EOD 12/11.