Dyslexia is an often misunderstood learning disability that affects reading, writing, speaking, and spelling. It is estimated that 15-20% of the population is on the dyslexic spectrum, although many individuals with the disability go undiagnosed.
In my experience, the educational system’s understanding of dyslexia, as well as the instructional and assessment-related supports and approaches offered to individuals on the dyslexic spectrum, are often very narrow or minimally informed.
Dyslexia is not simply writing backwards letters, switching the order of word parts, or a lack of mastery in the areas of phonics (sound/symbol correspondence) and morphology (word parts and units of meaning in print), even though all of these are common struggles of an individual with the disability.
Dyslexia is a neurobiological condition that significantly affects an individual’s ability to process print in an organized, consistent, and fluent way and to match what he or she takes in (receptive language) to what he or she then says, especially when he/she must say it out loud.
In my experience, the most overlooked portion of dyslexia is the language portion. Generally, schools and programs are beginning to more widely build systematic phonics instruction, which is essential for individuals with dyslexia, into their curricula. That is good.
Most schools and programs then measure phonics mastery via spelling inventories and fluency assessments. Spelling inventories, as long as they are untimed, are very good for monitoring progressions of understanding in encoding phonics patterns for all students, including those with dyslexia, according to most of the research and training I have read and participated in and my own experience.
Fluency assessments are typically comprised of timed reading passages. With the receptive to expressive language delay that many individuals with dyslexia experience, or that many learners with speech and language challenges in general have, reading fast AND accurately at the same time is not always possible. So they fail, or perform poorly on, the fluency assessment. One common result of this is that the difficulty level of the text they are given access to is then lowered so they can achieve the desired fluency benchmark. Alternatively, they may be put in an intervention designed to to improve their fluency, which is measured in terms of the speed with which they can read aloud accurately. The more they struggle, the longer the duration of the intervention that involves regular timing of their oral reading (usually weekly). The timing benchmarks are based on typically developing individuals, not on typical reading rates of individuals with dyslexia or speech and language difficulties.
Repeated failure on fluency measures over time often leads to lowered text complexity, less time spent reading text, and a decreased amount of challenging vocabulary to which the child is exposed, which ends up impacting comprehension in a negative way. The child is now labeled with deficits in fluency, comprehension, AND vocabulary. This exacerbates the problem, causes confidence to crash, and increases the gap between the individual’s abilities and grade level expectations in reading. This is often the point when suggestions for referral to special education are put on the table. Most school districts do not offer special education programming for individuals with dyslexia, however, which presents yet another challenge.
The intentions of what most schools are doing in relation to supporting individuals who are on the dyslexic spectrum or who have speech and language difficulties are positive, but it is my experience that, by and large, the effects or results of what is being done fall far below the intended target.
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