Rethinking How Students with Dyslexia Are Taught to Read
March 11, 2018
By: Emily Hanford
Source: NPR Ed
Dyslexia is the most common learning disability, affecting tens of millions of people in the United States. But getting help for children who have it in public school can be a nightmare.
“They wouldn’t acknowledge that he had a problem,” says Christine Beattie about her son Neil. “They wouldn’t say the word ‘dyslexia.’ ”
Other parents, she says, in the Upper Arlington, Ohio, schools were having the same problem. The district in a suburb of Columbus wasn’t identifying their children’s dyslexia or giving them appropriate help.
So, in 2011, the parents pooled their resources and hired a lawyer.
“I was not surprised there was a group of students with dyslexia who were not getting the kind of instruction that they really needed,” says Kerry Agins, an Ohio special education attorney who represented the Upper Arlington parents. She says the issue of public schools failing to address the needs of students with dyslexia is widespread, in Ohio and across the country.
Agins advised the parents to file a group complaint against the district.