Protecting Every Child's Right to Learn How to Read  

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Dyslexia Day 2020, Albany NY

We talked to legislators about literacy laws to protect our students and communities in New York State

Joint Legislative Public Hearing: 02/11/2020
Dyslexia Advocacy Action Group asks
​NYS to take action!!
Thank You: Decoding Dyslexia NY !!!

Click for Written Testimony HERE

How Common is Dyslexia?

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Dyslexia is the most common reading disability affecting up to 1 in 5 people or 20% of the community (Yale Scientific).
Dyslexia crosses racial, ethnic and socioeconomic lines. With a structured literacy approach that is explicit, sequential and multisensory every student with dyslexia can become a skilled reader, fully participate in their education and successfully achieve their potential.

• 3 out of 4 people on welfare cannot read (National Assessment of Adult Literacy) 
 
• 80% of youths brought before the courts have low reading skills (National Assessment of Adult Literacy)
• 70-85% of people in prison cannot read (National Assessment of Literacy) 

• 38-45% of people in prison have dyslexia (Moody, 2000)
• 89% of suicide notes left by youths when studied were found to have a disproportionate amount of dyslexia-type spelling mistakes (Learning disabilities and Adolescent Suicide, 1997) 

• 85% of children classified with Learning Disabilities (LD) actually have dyslexia (Yale Center for Dyslexia) 
• Dyslexia is genetically inherited (International Dyslexia Association)
• Students with learning disabilities including dyslexia have a three times higher risk of attempting suicide (Journal of Learning Disabilities, 2006) 

• Low reading scores and levels of intelligence for students with dyslexia have no correlation. In fact, the most innovative scientists, inventors and artists of our time have dyslexia (Yale Scientific). What are we doing to our potential geniuses?
• The cost of reading failure (prime reason for school drop-outs) in New York State is: $ 3,088,573,000 (Education Consumers Foundation)

Take Action: Support Us Now!
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Help us protect a child right to learn how to read.

No child should be in crisis at their public school. Together we can influence change.

Make a small donation today!

Get Help:

Ask us to bring a Parent Support Workshop to your area: find out what you can do.

We are a grassroots movement driven by families concerned with the limited access to educational interventions for students with dyslexia or at risk of dyslexia. ​

Our Support Workshops Cover:

• Evaluations
• Dyslexia subtypes (and what this means)
• ​The Law
• Remediation that works
• Teaching to fidelity - what to look out for
• How to get programs into YOUR school district
• What you can do
• Any questions & discussion​

​All Welcome: Teachers, Professionals & Parents!

FREE WORKSHOPS

Results

In-Person Advocacy 

Only one school district refused to provide services to teach a child how to read and to use science-based strategies for regular students.

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Free Advocacy Consultations 

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Workshops 

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Teacher Training

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Psychologists Trained to Identify Dyslexia

The impact of untreated dyslexia

ill-Literacy

Mom & Son Story

Film Credit: Director Producer Stephen Polk
 School Stories

Is Your Child Struggling in School?

Do they guess at words instead of reading them?
Do they struggle with spelling?
Are they starting to dislike school?
Are they falling behind?

We Can Help

LEARN MORE

Parents Support Workshops

Parent support groups offer support and educational information on how to advocate for your child at their public school district. There are question and answer sessions and we will bring guest speakers to talk on a particular subject of interest.

REQUEST A WORKSHOP

What we do

We advocate for students who struggle to read, are not making progress, and are in crisis at their public school districts. We organize cost effective teacher training in science-based programs, and ensure students receive the services they need to learn how to read, and write to grade level. We hold school district workshops to ensure the science of reading language and writing is consistent and sustainable across the school district. We provide support, free screening tools, and educational workshops on dyslexia to empower parents, teachers, and students.

​Our programs include educational workshops on the science of reading at correctional institutions. Reading and writing support and tutoring for incarcerated adults and youths.
 
Our mission is to educate administrators, parents and teachers on the science of reading to ensure that every child at risk of dyslexia (and in general education) learns how to read at their public school. We advocate for early intervention to stop learning differences from becoming  life-long disabilities.

Dyslexia is a symptom of a broader misunderstanding about how to teach reading. In New York, 52% of 8th grade students who speak English as a first language struggle to read. Of those, half are functionally illiterate.
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• Advocate for individual students at their public school district
• Highlight the benefits of early identification of students at risk of dyslexia
• Introduce freely available screening tools
• Highlight benefits of daily multi sensory structured literacy for general education
• Organize parent support groups & recruit parent advocate volunteers
• Parent advocacy training
• Organize teacher training in multi-sensory programs and approaches
• Organize school psychologist training to identify students at risk of dyslexia 
• Multi-Sensory structured literacy summer reading camps
• ​Free multi-sensory structured literacy clinics for 25th percentile & below
• School district Implementation & Impact Services
• Remediation programs for women in prison​​​

FIND OUT MORE

Hard to Read
How American schools fail kids with dyslexia

There are proven ways to help people with dyslexia learn to read, and a federal law that's supposed to ensure schools provide kids with help. But across the country, public schools are denying children proper treatment and often failing to identify them with dyslexia in the first place.

(Listening pages coming soon) find article here

Guidance from NYS Dept. Of Education:
Directs Schools to Put Diagnosis on
​Independent Education Plans (IEPs) 

This is the first step, lets now solve the problem.

SIGN OUR PETITION!
LET'S ENSURE ALL STUDENTS LEARN HOW TO READ AT THEIR PUBLIC SCHOOL!

 Advocacy Parent Reviews

credit: International Dyslexia Association / Carolyn Cowen (info-images)