Wednesday, December 14, 2016 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
9
Oregon law requires screening students for dyslexia
By Kailey Fisicaro
The Bulletin
BEND
(AP)
—
Legislation passed in Oregon
is shining a new light on
dyslexia, an often-misunder-
stood learning disability.
Senate Bill 612, which
went into effect in July 2015,
requires that every kinder-
garten and first-grade public
school student be screened
for risk factors of dyslexia,
a learning disability that can
make it difficult to learn to
read and write. Looking for
signs a student may be likely
to have dyslexia can allow
for early intervention, some-
thing that can make a huge
difference in how it affects a
child, according to dyslexia
experts.
Much of what the Senate
bill mandates falls on the
Oregon Department of
Education to administer. The
bill requires the education
department to hire a dyslexia
specialist to support school
districts in their new role in
screening for risk factors.
Carrie Thomas-Beck, a
former special education
teacher from the Midwest
who co-directed the Oregon
Reading First Center, which
sought to improve reading
among elementary school
children, became the state
dyslexia specialist in January.
She calls dyslexia a “learn-
ing difference” for the chil-
dren who have it. Dyslexia is
genetic, she said.
“So they are born with it,”
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said Thomas-Beck in a call
from Portland. “Where chil-
dren experience it has to do
with early intervention.”
Dyslexia isn’t a one-size-
fits-all learning difference. It
can be different for different
children, Thomas-Beck said.
“Dyslexia by defini-
tion is not a difficulty with
vision — they see print just
like anybody else,” Thomas-
Beck said. “It’s a language
disability.”
Although some might
have believed dyslexic indi-
viduals see letters reversed,
that’s not the case, according
to Thomas-Beck. Individuals
with dyslexia have difficulty
hearing and isolating sounds
in spoken words, she said.
“Listening comprehension
is often a strength,” Thomas-
Beck said. “Often they are
quite articulate and have
great vocabulary, but might
have trouble with word-find-
ing, or they’ll store a word
inaccurately.”
Thomas-Beck said aca-
demics sometimes use this
example: A student may
want to share a thought
about volcanoes, and know
its meaning, but might say
“tornadoes.”
“It goes back to word-
finding,” she said.
Dyslexia is generally
obvious in a person’s spell-
ing and writing, according
to Thomas-Beck. A person
might also have trouble orga-
nizing ideas, and lack punc-
tuation, as well as connecting
words.
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Students get so bogged
down in just trying to figure
out how to spell a word or
use basic writing conventions
that they can’t get sophis-
ticated ideas to flow out on
paper, Thomas-Beck said.
“Orally they could share it
in a way that makes perfect
sense, but written, they might
do it simply,” she said.
Still, she added, it’s dif-
ferent from person to per-
son. Dyslexia can occur as
commonly as 1 in 5 people,
Thomas-Beck said. Other
estimates show about 85
percent of students with
learning disabilities have a
disability in reading and lan-
guage processing, according
to the International Dyslexia
Association.
A lot of times, kids with
dyslexia don’t qualify for
special education because
they do so well in other
areas. They might dedicate
hours after school to assign-
ments that may only take
a half-hour for their peers
to complete, Thomas-Beck
explained.
Through legislation, the
state is building awareness,
Thomas-Beck said. Another
piece of legislation, House
Bill 2412, which went into
effect Jan. 1, addresses how
teachers are trained for dys-
lexia education. Decoding
Dyslexia, a grass-roots parent
organization, was the main
group pushing for legislation
in Oregon, Thomas-Beck
said.
Part of Senate Bill 612
requires that school districts
have at least one teacher in
each K-5 or K-8 school who
has received training related
to dyslexia by Jan. 1, 2018.
That teacher will act as a
resource who can help fellow
teachers carry out the screen-
ing of risk factors.
Thomas-Beck worked
with stakeholders, includ-
ing the Oregon Education
Association and Oregon
School Boards Association,
to draft a plan for universal
screening. The drafting took
about six months, and was
submitted to the interim leg-
islative committee on educa-
tion by September. That com-
mittee will decide whether to
approve the plan.
The draft plan names a
few risk factors to screen for,
Thomas-Beck said, including
formological awareness, a
student’s ability to hear and
manipulate sounds in spoken
language; letter-sound corre-
spondences, a student’s abil-
ity to map a sound to print;
rapid naming; and any family
history of difficulty learning
to read.
Rapid naming involves
asking a child to look at a
set of familiar items rapidly
presented, such as numbers,
letters or pictures of things
like a boat or cat, and name
them. Schools can find out
about family difficulties with
learning to read by asking for
that information on an enroll-
ment form.
Most schools will con-
tinue to use the same
Response to Intervention
method they already do, in
which universal screening
helps identify where students
belong in multitiered instruc-
tion. The tiered approach
allows teachers to adapt
See DYSLEXIA on page 24
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