Frank Couch
Dyslexia education
Grant Belcher, a VHHS junior, has dyslexia and often listens to audiobooks while reading the printed version to help him study. His mother, Leigh Belcher, has been appointed to the new state Dyslexia Advisory Council.
With new rules about dyslexia adopted by the state Department of Education, some Vestavia Hills parents believe their dyslexic students will get the help they need sooner, boosting their grades and their confidence.
The new regulations – the result of more than a decade of advocacy by parents, teachers and dyslexia groups – state that dyslexia is a “learning challenge,” not just a disability, and that dyslexic students can now get services as part of their regular school work without necessarily obtaining a special education certification.
Under the old rules, students with dyslexia could not get services through special education programs until they had fallen far enough behind their peers to demonstrate the extent of their disability.
Under the new rules – the Dyslexia Amendments to the Alabama Administrative Code adopted Oct. 8 – students will be screened for dyslexia as part of the general curriculum, and students with dyslexia will get immediate help without going to special education.
“It will make a big difference for kids, because they will get diagnosed earlier in the school system and get services earlier,” said resident Julie Tapscott, whose son, Duncan, a sixth-grader at Louis Pizitz Middle School, is dyslexic. “With the old rules, you had to have enough of a discrepancy between your I.Q. and your ability, and that ruled out a lot of kids.
“There are lots of issues – not just that they are behind, but that they feel it. They are aware that their peers are reading Harry Potter and they are still reading ‘Henry and Mudge,’” Tapscott said.
Leigh Belcher, whose 17-year-old son, Grant, is dyslexic, agreed.
“The benefits of having these new rules are that all students can receive help in the regular education classroom setting.”
The new regulations should mean that schools will be able to help more children “before their gaps get really significant,” said Debbie Hargrave, director of assessment and accountability for Vestavia Hills Schools.
“We can target the remediation at a more basic level, and they don’t learn as many habits or personal practices that may hinder them, so they can cope more effectively at younger ages.”
In a memorandum to city and county superintendents Oct. 16., State Superintendent of Education Tommy Bice agreed with the effectiveness of the new screenings.
The amendments also call for intensive training for teachers and established a Dyslexia Advisory Council in Alabama. The training, called Multisensory Structured Language Education (MSLE), is a specialized reading, writing and spelling instruction method that equips “students to simultaneously use multiple senses – vision, hearing, touch and movement.”
Dyslexic students will have access to these multimedia learning aids and other assistance technology, as well as accommodations in their schoolwork, as part of the Response-to-Intervention process.
Hargrave said Vestavia Hills schools are fortunate because some of their teachers received extensive MSLE instruction several years ago.
“We have these folks who can help build the foundation for others,” she said.
Belcher believes dyslexic students are generally very smart and should be encouraged to contribute fully to society, and she notes many dyslexics have been great entrepreneurs, such as Charles Schwab and Richard Branson.
However, Belcher and other advocates believe dyslexic students perform much better when allowed to make small adjustments or accommodations in how they complete their schoolwork.
For example, timed tests can be frustrating for students with dyslexia, according to Belcher.
“Some of the dyslexic kids don’t take tests well, and their brains take a little longer to produce, sometimes, a better answer than a normal thinker would,” she said.
Belcher has been involved in dyslexia advocacy since her son was diagnosed in 2007, and Bice has appointed her to the new Dyslexia Advisory Council.
Efforts to change the rules took a long time because a lot of people do not understand dyslexia, according to Libby Crumpton, a former Vestavia Hills elementary school teacher and the mother of a dyslexic son in the third-grade.
“So many people have an idea of what they think (dyslexia) is – reversing letters and numbers, not being able to read – and they don’t take the time to learn what it really is,” Crumpton said. “It’s a neurological processing disorder. There is no cure, but there certainly are ways to better teach dyslexics. People with dyslexia don’t fit a mold.”
The new amendments define dyslexia – which affects between 10 percent and 20 percent of Alabama schoolchildren, according to Bice’s memo – as “a specific learning challenge that is neurological in origin (and) is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities.”
To find the extensive new Alabama Dyslexia Resource guide, go to the web site for the Alabama State Department of Education at www.alsde.edu.
