After years of waiting, Idaho parents may soon see support for students with dyslexia
When state Sen. Robert Blair’s father was in school, Blair said he was labeled “stupid” and a “problem child.”
His father was dyslexic but didn’t know it at the time, Blair said. Looking back, Blair can remember only one thing his father was afraid of: having to read something in a public setting.
“Even though that was roughly 80 years ago, that stigma is still alive with today’s Idaho students,” Blair said on the Senate floor Wednesday. He was speaking in support of a bill that would provide screenings to help identify students with dyslexia and interventions to help them learn. “Eighty years ago, we did not know what dyslexia was. Today, Senate Bill 1280 … can help today’s students not be afraid.”
Idaho senators unanimously passed the bill — what would be a change in state law that parents, teachers and experts have been fighting for for years.
Parents told the Idaho Statesman that they struggled to get their children diagnosed with dyslexia. Even after they had a diagnosis, families said school districts across Idaho didn’t provide the appropriate resources to help their children. Parents across the state have spent thousands of dollars out of pocket on outside specialists so their kids could learn to read.
The International Dyslexia Association estimates dyslexia impacts 15% to 20% of people.
“We work so much on literacy … but we have been neglecting perhaps 20% of our students, calling them unable to learn when in fact, they simply can’t read because they haven’t been diagnosed properly,” Sen. Carl Crabtree, a Grangeville Republican who sponsored the legislation, said on the Senate floor Wednesday.
Bill defines dyslexia, includes interventions
The bill includes a definition of dyslexia and directs the State Department of Education to put into place evidence-based screening, intervention measures and professional development.
It lays out an approach that would be phased in over the next several years.
For the 2022-2023 school year, the bill directs the Department of Education to administer an initial screener to students in kindergarten and first through fifth grades.
Students in kindergarten and first through third grades are already given the Idaho Reading Indicator. Officials have said that can help identify struggling readers with certain characteristics of dyslexia but is not enough. Beginning the following school year, the bill directs the department to administer a secondary screener to children identified by the test, their teacher or a parent as having characteristics of dyslexia.
The bill then directs the Department of Education to help local education agencies develop multidisciplinary teams to support the identification, intervention and remediation of dyslexia, and to identify universal screening and intervention measures that work for dyslexic children.
Professional development is also included in the bill, which directs the State Department of Education to provide a multisensory “structured literacy program” for teachers on evidence-based screening and interventions for children with dyslexia. It lays out a multiyear timeline for the rollout.
Experts have said catching students early and providing them with the proper interventions will ultimately save the state money in special education.
Senators commended the work of the parents who have pushed for this legislation. A group of parents who make up the Decoding Dyslexia chapter in Idaho attended the committee meetings, met with senators and worked for years advocating for children with dyslexia.
But some education officials said the bill didn’t go far enough. Two officials from the State Department of Education testified against the bill and said it excluded the necessary funding or personnel to train teachers or an appropriate timeline.
Crabtree on the Senate floor Thursday pointed to funds already available for professional development, and said this was just a start.
“We want to see what we can get done, learn as we grow here, and add money later if that is necessary,” he said.
Another dyslexia bill introduced in the House
Superintendent of Public Instruction Sherri Ybarra brought forward a rival dyslexia-related bill in the House.
Ybarra’s bill would also define dyslexia. It would add a section on implementing a dyslexia handbook, which would include educational strategies for children with dyslexia and a description of resources and services available to educators and parents.
Students who are exhibiting characteristics of dyslexia, according to the bill, would be given a reading improvement plan, which must include evidence-based strategies.
The department would also designate a dyslexia specialist to provide school districts with support and resources and support school districts in creating reading improvement plans for children with dyslexia characteristics.
The bill also includes a section on providing training to teachers.
Unlike the Senate bill, it includes a fiscal note and estimates the cost of one statewide dyslexia coordinator at about $97,000 per year. It also estimated about $2 million in funding to provide assistive technology resources for dyslexic students and training opportunities for teachers in identifying students with characteristics of dyslexia and providing instruction.
Those plans are “subject to appropriation,” Deputy Superintendent for Communications and Policy Marilyn Whitney said.
Robin Zikmund, who founded the Decoding Dyslexia chapter in Idaho, criticized Ybarra’s bill for excluding a dyslexia-specific screener and said it didn’t go far enough.
“It’s not going to create the change that the state needs,” she told the Statesman by phone. “Idaho has a huge opportunity here to do something right. We are the last state to join the effort in supporting students with dyslexia.”
Parents share stories of struggles
Speaking to a Senate committee earlier this week, Zikmund shared the experiences of her son. He is in seventh grade now and reading at a first-grade level, she said.
“Many of our kiddos develop behavior issues, they’re angry, they’re bullied, they’re withdrawn,” she said. “In fourth grade, my son had become so fearful of school, so full of anxieties, he came to me and told me he just wanted to kill himself.”
She was able to take her son to get an outside evaluation, where she found out he had dyslexia. But she continued to hit roadblocks as she tried to get her son the services he needed to learn to read.
After founding Decoding Dyslexia in 2018, Zikmund said she was told by the State Department of Education they had “everything in place for students with dyslexia.”
“I have continued to push this issue for over four years now,” she told the committee.
Over the past several months, multiple families told the Statesman their children with dyslexia were not given the interventions they needed to learn. Teachers said they wanted more information on how to help these children, but didn’t have the resources.
Children with dyslexia, Zikmund said, just need the right interventions to “enable them to thrive.”
This story was originally published February 16, 2022 at 3:54 PM.
