What if we reframed children learning to read as a civil right?
Would that change how schools teach our children, particularly the 1.6 million kids in the U.S. with dyslexia?
On Friday, I went to the premiere of the documentary “Left Behind”. The documentary follows a group of mothers of dyslexic kids in New York City – which has some 200,000 dyslexic kids in the public school system – as they advocated, lobbied, cajoled, shamed, and never gave up until the city opened a school in the South Bronx for kids with dyslexia. A second school is planned, and the goal is to have a school for dyslexic kids in all five boroughs. But even when the second school opens, that’s only a couple of hundred kids who will be served.
Here was a staggering stat: “Dyslexics make up over 50% of NASA employees and 35% of entrepreneurs. They also make up 48% of the prison population.”
I left thinking how fortunate my wife and I were to have access to amazing private schools focused on reading-based learning-disabilities for my daughter, who has dyslexia. (She was the one who got the invite, so I was her plus one!) The instruction that she received was life-changing and within a few years her dyslexia was remediated.
But you have to live near one of these schools, have the means to pay for all or some of the tuition (some, if the school district agrees to cover a part ), and then get your child in. That’s easier in first or second grade when fewer kids are diagnosed with dyslexia, harder in middle school when the impact of not having been taught to read through a structure literacy program really begins to show but these schools only have so much capacity.
That dyslexia diagnosis comes from a neuropsychologist who understands how the learning pathways in the brain work. It costs thousands of dollars and – wait for it – is not usually covered by insurance.
So why don’t public schools have teachers trained in the methods that would help the 20 percent of their students with dyslexia? They’re not devoting the resources nor are reading teachers being given the training in graduate school. Another stat from the film: 95 percent of students would learn to read at a high-level using the structured literacy method for dyslexic kids!
What’s worse is so many public schools balk at having kids tested for dyslexia. Why? Because if they’re diagnosed, the school has to educate them – and if it cannot do so, it has to pay to send them to a private school.
Even if a school has properly-trained reading teachers, it’s likely to have one or two who are expected to cover scores of kids in that school. (Switching to math: that means dyslexic kids would be lucky to get a 3 hours a week when what they need is 7 hours every day!)
Please go see this film! Reading is a civil right – something to remember on this hashtag#MLKDay.
