Author Archives: Tim Odegard

In 2021, I wrote about the challenge of finding children with dyslexia in a sea of struggling readers. At the time, we were beginning to see the national impact of legislation mandating early literacy screening and structured literacy instruction. The promise was clear: if we could spot reading and spelling risk early, we could act early. We could make a difference.
Now, in 2025, we’ve learned a lot. And we’ve also learned where clarity is still sorely missing.

Screening Isn’t the Solution. It’s the Start.

More states than ever have passed legislation requiring K–2 literacy screeners and benchmark assessments in later grades. These tools help us find students who are at risk, especially for the word-reading and spelling difficulties that form the core of dyslexia.

But screening is just the beginning. Without a thoughtful Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS), screening data becomes a warning light with nowhere to go. What’s more, we’ve blurred the lines between early identification of risk and formal diagnosis, and that confusion is hurting kids.

We Are Not Identifying Dyslexia in Kindergarten.

Let’s be clear: we are not identifying dyslexia in kindergarten. We are identifying elevated risk. This is based on evidence, yes, but not certainty.
When we rush to label, we don’t just misrepresent the nature of dyslexia. We also confuse school leaders, psychologists, teachers, and families. That confusion becomes a barrier to the very systems of support we are trying to build.
Dyslexia is real. But it is not simply something a child “has” at birth. It is a developmental, language-based learning difference, shaped by the interaction between biological risk factors and environmental exposure, particularly early instruction. Some children enter school already on a pathway toward difficulty. But, whether that difficulty becomes persistent and severe depends largely on what happens in school.

We Can Prevent Much of the Reading Failure We See.

This is not about denying dyslexia. It’s about honoring the full spectrum of risk and response. With timely, high-quality instruction and early preventative intervention, we can dramatically reduce the number of children who develop severe word-reading and spelling difficulties.
That’s the shift our current policies are only beginning to grapple with. Too often, we conflate diagnosis with destiny. Instead, we need a system that responds to risk dynamically, escalating intensity only when early efforts fall short.

What the Data Is Telling Us.

In my own research, we observed something that might seem counterintuitive: the youngest students, second graders, were the ones who required the most sustained, intensive intervention.
Why? These children, flagged early, showed severe difficulty acquiring even the most consistent word patterns in English. They were not behind simply because of a lack of exposure and instruction. They were showing clear signs of pronounced, intrinsic difficulty.

Older students who emerged later often stumbled as language demands increased. But they had typically developed some basic decoding skills. In contrast, the younger students identified early showed deficits so deep that they required support beyond what most systems were prepared to offer.
Still, the overwhelming majority of students in our study achieved proficiency in word reading. Many also saw gains in reading comprehension. That’s the vision we must fight for, for all children. And especially for those like me, who live with dyslexia.

What We Need from Policy Next.

• Clarity of Language. We must distinguish between risk identification and diagnosis, especially in early grades.
• Developmentally Appropriate Framing. Dyslexia is real, but it is not fixed at birth. It emerges through interaction and can be mitigated through early response.
• Coherent MTSS Models. Screening must connect directly to prevention. Systems must support graduated intensity, not just labels.
• Avoid Overreach in Reporting. Efforts like individual learning plans in several states (AR, MS, TN) are well-intentioned, but risk adding paperwork without clarity unless implementation frameworks are aligned.
• Narratives That Empower, Not Paralyze. We must move beyond debates about labels and focus on the systems that allow students to show what they need.

A Final Word.

Dyslexia is real. But it is not inevitable. And most importantly, it is not a foregone conclusion in kindergarten.
If we want to truly serve students with dyslexia, we must first serve all students well, especially those at risk. Only then will we have the capacity to identify and support those with the most persistent and pronounced needs.
The work continues. And the stakes remain high, for our policies, for our systems, and for every student in our care. Especially for those in my community. For those of us with dyslexia.

Measuring and using data to inform reading comprehension instruction is like eating an elephant!

Deriving meaning from text involves the convergence of word meaning, syntactic context, background knowledge, inference-making, and monitoring for cohesion. Where do you even start?

This is very different from measuring and using data to inform word reading and spelling instruction. The problem space is far more constrained. With word-level skills, there are a finite number of building blocks—a fixed set of letters and speech sounds—and the outcome being assessed is straightforward: yes or no. Did the student read or spell the word correctly?

Even when we move into more complex words, the system remains structured. The addition of inflectional and derivational morphology actually adds clarity and constraint. Inflectional morphemes are highly prescribed, made up of only a handful of letters and predictable letter patterns. Assessing a student’s ability to read and spell words with inflectional morphemes can be quite telling—it reveals how well they’ve internalized the underlying structure of written English.

Because word-level reading and spelling follow a more predictable path, instruction can be precisely targeted, and progress can be measured with relatively fine-grained tools. We can identify where the breakdown is—decoding, phoneme-grapheme mapping, morphological awareness—and deliver instruction that addresses it directly. In contrast, comprehension requires more inference, integration, and interpretation, making both instruction and assessment less precise and more dependent on context.

That said, there are important similarities between word reading and reading comprehension. Both require the integration of automatic and strategic processing—but to varying degrees. With word reading, we work to build automaticity so children can recognize words effortlessly and fluently. Yet even skilled readers encounter unfamiliar words, and having deliberate strategies to analyze and decode them remains essential.

Reading comprehension, too, leans heavily on automatic processes. We often underestimate how much meaning we derive effortlessly—automatically accessing word meanings, syntax, and background knowledge. We generate inferences so seamlessly that the underlying work becomes invisible. Three realities obscure this complexity for proficient readers: the invisibility of automaticity, the ease of integrating familiar knowledge, and the fluidity of strategic inference-making. And then there’s the text itself. Its structure, coherence, and complexity add cognitive load—requiring us to track global cohesion and engage metacognitive awareness to monitor and sustain understanding.

So as you reflect on reading comprehension, never lose sight of the bigger picture. Understanding what a text means is the outcome we’re working toward. Breakdowns in word reading can absolutely disrupt this outcome—but even when a child pronounces every word correctly, there’s still more to consider. So be sure to step back and ask yourself: Which part of the elephant are you starting with? Because it’s a big one.

A few days ago, I was part of a panel at the AIM Institute in Philadelphia. As I prepared, I wrote these remarks—thinking through what I wanted to say about literacy, leadership, and the importance of alignment in making real change happen.

But when the moment came, I didn’t deliver them. Instead, I made a different choice.

Early in my career, I achieved things that looked impressive on paper. I built a career in basic science, publishing, and earning recognition. But I did it through an unhealthy coping mechanism—one that told me I had to be the smartest person in the room. That drive served me for a time but at a cost. It no longer serves the impact I want to have.

The truth is, the people we need to hear from most are those in the field—educators doing the work day in and day out. So, in that moment, I set my words aside and did something that mattered more. I handed the microphone to my friend and trusted colleague Margaret Goldberg. And I didn’t need it back.

Still, these reflections hold meaning, and I hope they have some value. They capture patterns I’ve observed, challenges we need to name, and a way forward that I believe is necessary. So, I’m sharing them here, as I originally wrote them—not as a speech I gave, but as a reflection on some of what I’ve learned and what still needs to change.

Here are the words. I share them with you now, knowing that what matters most in any moment is shaped by the context and the people in the room.

I come to this conversation not as someone who works in schools every day but as someone who has the opportunity to observe, listen, and learn from educators, school leaders, and policymakers across different contexts. So, I’ve been observing all of you—learning, reflecting, and trying to see things at various levels of awareness.

But before I begin, I want to acknowledge something important.

The only reason I can do this work—the only reason I can stand here and share these reflections—is because of the trust people place in me. The trust of the educators and leaders who open their schools, their classrooms, and their experiences to me. The trust of the students and families whose stories I carry with me. And the trust of those who give me the space to speak today.

I don’t take that lightly, and I don’t take it for granted. So, I approach this conversation with gratitude and a deep sense of responsibility to honor that trust by being clear, honest, and reflective in what I share.

My role often involves visiting schools, talking with teams, and studying how literacy instruction and intervention are being implemented at scale. Over time, I’ve started to see patterns—what works, where things break down, and what leadership practices seem to make the biggest difference in whether strong literacy instruction actually reaches students.

At a micro level, I constantly think about the schedule—how it runs day to day and how everyone fits into it. Time and time again, I observe children not being given sufficient opportunities for authentic, teacher-facilitated instructional interactions. I see a lack of time spent engaging with text alongside a teacher who can provide the scaffolds they need. And I commonly observe students who are profoundly behind not receiving high-dose intervention in a sustained way, delivered by a highly knowledgeable and skilled teacher.

This is what I see far too often. And when I visit classrooms, I look beyond the learning itself—I see the helplessness on students’ faces and the frustration and fatigue of educators who are trying to make a broken system work.

But what is the larger pattern?

One idea that has emerged from these observations is something we can explore together. As a placeholder, we could call this The Alignment Principle—the idea that sustainable success isn’t driven by pushing harder but by designing systems that work together. When leaders ensure alignment between instructional goals, institutional structures, and daily practice, students get the intensity of instruction they need, and teachers get the time and support to deliver it.

But when leadership is fragmented or forceful—trying to turn misaligned gears—systems break down, and instruction suffers.

And from my lived experience, I know that when this happens, lives and families are shattered.

Much of this thinking is about the urgent need to shift toward a prevention model—ensuring that from pre-K or day one of kindergarten, students receive the structured, systematic instruction necessary to build strong foundational literacy skills. But we must also recognize that some students will not respond as effectively to these efforts. These students will require high-dose, intensive, multi-component intervention to make meaningful progress.

When we get prevention right, we accelerate the process of differentiating struggling readers, revealing those who require this far more intensive level of support. AIM stands as a refuge for students who need precisely this—one beacon among a small constellation of similar schools.

But public schools are not aligning their levels of support in a way that creates the excess instructional capacity needed to meet the most intense needs of students like those at AIM.

And to be honest, the data plainly shows that too many schools have an overwhelming percentage of students who can’t read at a basic level. These schools are concentrated in predictable neighborhoods and communities.

Research—both my own and that of many others—confirms that these rates far exceed the number of students who should require sustained, multi-component intervention. The students who are struggling fall into multiple groups, but they do not add up to the level of reading failure happening in schools across the nation.

I don’t have the answers—no one person ever does. But I do want to challenge us to think about these problems in a clear and honest way. And with humility, build community and empower teams to find solutions unique to schools across the nation.

So, as you reflect on this, you might consider:

• How does the daily instructional schedule create or limit opportunities for students to get the support they need?
• How do leaders use student outcomes not just to respond to individual needs but to identify systemic gaps in instruction and support?

Leadership isn’t just about ensuring implementation fidelity—it’s about fostering instructional intensifiers, small but critical moves that deepen impact, refine teaching, and drive student learning forward.

How we align systems determines whether those intensifiers emerge—or get lost in the chaos and destruction of misaligned gears being turned by leaders who are not grounding their efforts in the alignment principle.

Recently, I shared aspects of my personal experience of dyslexia with Susan Lambert during an episode of the Science of Reading podcast. Rarely do I agree to share this part of my narrative, but I shared it because of the encouragement of so many friends. They reminded me that we are strongest when we honor the fallibilities inherent to our humanity. The outpouring of support generated by this episode caught me by surprise. And wow, the aspect of the episode that touched on dyslexia as a superpower evoked considerable curiosity and awareness of my imperfections. So many people asked me to clarify and elaborate.

So, what was I trying to convey?

I tried my best to say that I do not find the narrative that has morphed into a stereotype that individuals with dyslexia are inherently endowed with superpowers compelling. And in my personal and clinical life, I have observed the narrative as dangerous for members of our community. That is just my perspective. At the same time, people have shared with me before and after the podcast that they view their dyslexia as a superpower and something that comes with gifts. I do not feel entitled to limit the realities of others. How members of our community understand themselves is up to each of us. And I acknowledge that this narrative has provided solace to many of us.

For me, one bridge too far has been a mythical form of dyslexia characterized by a list of specific superpowers. A checklist of endowments printed on the back of our membership cards, marking us as being “real dyslexics.” For many of us, our learning differences caused great suffering. If anything, it felt as if those were branded on our foreheads for everyone to see – and fittingly, the names of the deficits we carry branded on our foreheads are misspelled. Wasn’t that the mark of a “true dyslexic” – shame. This is the reality we can all seem to agree on. We know the depths of shame that one can only feel as a child made to feel broken and undeserving of help. And I find sensationalizing trauma as a narrative of how dyslexia comes with a silver lining of a finite list of superpowers that “research” shows us to have unpalatable. It may have been well intended, but it also has led children and adults I encounter to feel even more shame and inadequacy.  These thoughts are grounded in my lived experiences and understanding of the research basis that has explored and characterized dyslexia. Something in my small way, I have added to.

At the same time, it is one bridge too far for me to uniformly decide what is true for everyone from the dyslexia community. Maybe you view your dyslexia as a gift that gives you superpowers. That is your lived narrative. My take on the current research is that we lack data from well-designed studies documenting specific gifts consistently across our community as often included on lists printed in books and on websites. But each of us is different. Some of you might have a gift and attribute it to your dyslexia. Or have developed a way that serves you to view your dyslexia as a gift. I honor your reality.

What do I believe?

At my core, I believe in empowering our community to find and leverage our gifts to pursue what drives and fulfills us. Gifts that we have yet to unlock and are not limited to eight or so traits printed in a book or on a website. As a community, we are unified by several things. One great unifier is that we all know the anguish of struggling to read and spell words due to no fault of our own other than the original sin of being born. But we are also unified by the great potential in each of us to learn for ourselves that those limitations do not define us in our totality. That we, too, have the potential to develop strengths and do things that add value to the world. We are all beautifully woven into the fabric of humanity.

What did I learn?

Something hit me as I reflected on what I took away from having done the podcast. I saw in all the reactions afterward how big our community is and how much empathy we have for each other. In all the feedback I received, nobody once devalued me or questioned my lived experience and perspective.

For me, empathy has been my greatest superpower. And yes, my capacity for empathy has been forged by my struggles to read and spell words. I had to develop a capacity to find empathy for the adults who were supposed to be there to help me but instead told me that I was broken. It took strength and work to realize that I wasn’t broken. And with time and psychological distance, I found empathy for those adults and realized that they were just as trapped as I was in systems. And I now see clearly that the systems are broken – not me.

As humans, we inherently want to make sense of the world and our experiences in it. Doing this often shapes the stories we tell ourselves. The gifts of dyslexia are woven into the fabric of the stories many of us in the dyslexia community tell. The idea of these gifts as being confined to a list of traits we are supposed to possess is a point of great happiness and hope in the stories that some of us tell. But in others, it is another heartbreaking point of shame – they can not check any of those traits off on their dyslexic membership card.

I would ask us to consider taking down the lists and replacing them with the boundless potential to create through our efforts the powers and gifts needed to obtain our life’s work—many of which we haven’t even discovered. My issue with the lists is they are finite. They are not big enough to capture us. As a community, we are boundless in our capacity to grow, with each of us holding the potential for so much. We contain multitudes who can be united as a community by our support for each other.

Thank you for taking the time to hear my story. I offer you my love and respect to the end.

 

Does dyslexia fit the simple view of reading? The simple answer is yes. Dyslexia fits within the simple view of reading and emerged as one of four reading profiles outlined by the simple view. And as a result, it has been widely adopted to talk about dyslexia with educators and parents. But let’s dig deeper and ask a more pressing question.

How well does a contemporary understanding of dyslexia fit within the simple view of reading?

The answer to this question is – not so well. And it seemed timely to pause to consider why this is. To understand why we should consider the limitations of the simple view when it comes to dyslexia. And this compels us to answer a fundamental question.

What is the simple view of reading?

The simple view is a basic way of thinking about reading comprehension introduced in the 1980s by a pair of researchers. They proposed reading comprehension to be the product of two aspects of receptive language – oral language comprehension and word recognition. From these two aspects of language – the simple view was used to identify four categories of readers based on various strengths and weaknesses in oral language comprehension and word recognition. A two-by-two contingency table is typically used to illustrate them. The cells in this table indicate different categories of readers that emerge based on oral language comprehension and word recognition abilities.  When skilled in both domains, a child is labeled a typical reader. Deficiencies in oral comprehension give rise to a specific reading comprehension pattern of reading struggles. Being deficient in word recognition gives rise to the dyslexic category. And being low in both oral language comprehension and word recognition gives rise to a mixed profile or a garden-variety poor reader.

The simple view of reading is a simplistic way of thinking about things.  And many researchers, educators, and others have made this point. Since the simple view’s inception, several not-so-simple views of reading have been put forth. And I have put forth variations of a not-so-simple view in various graphics I have created. But there is nothing as practical as a good theory. And that is because it allows us to predict the world around us. And the simple view does just that. And the categories of reading profiles that emerge from the simple view of reading have been adopted widely in the Science of Reading movement. And the simple view of reading is a foundational doctrine of this movement. Yet, I want to pause and ask how well the simple view of reading captures the reality of dyslexia as understood in the 21^st century. Because I fear that if we don’t pause and reflect, many children and adults might be unintended casualties and not receive the services they are entitled to under federal and state laws.

Which members of the dyslexia community are captured by the simple view of reading?

As a member of the dyslexia community, I would suggest that it captures those of us who fit the stereotype of dyslexia that is pushed in popular culture. These are the precocious children with dyslexia growing up in an enriched academic language environment with ample opportunities to explore the vast world in their community and beyond. But it only captures the presentation of dyslexia in these children early in their schooling, and it does not capture all of the primary characteristics these children would exhibit when striving to read and write English. As a result, the simple view is insufficient even for the children held up as the prototype of dyslexia.

How does the category “dyslexic” derived from the simple view of reading fall short?

First, it misses an essential primary characteristic of dyslexia outlined in the consensus definition – spelling. Because the simple view is all about reading, and dyslexia in the English language is all about word reading and spelling. As such, the dyslexic profile derived from the simple view of reading misses a critical consideration when identifying children with dyslexia. This deficit applies to all of us with dyslexia. But you can find us if you look for the right things. It would be best to look for word reading and spelling deficits. It would be best if you looked for deficiencies in oral reading fluency. And it would be best if you looked to see how much instruction and practice it is taking to get us to develop these skills because it takes a tremendous amount of instruction and time practicing for us to develop them.

Second, many of us will fall into the mixed profile or garden variety category outlined by the simple view of reading. If the Science of Reading movement adheres too closely to the simple view of reading and the reading profiles that come from it, it will fail to serve many children and adults with dyslexia. I did not have a college-educated parent in the house growing up. My parents loved me, but their academic language use was less advanced than it might have been had they been college educated. And this likely contributed to why neither me nor my sister, when tested, looked like what we were supposed to look like to be called dyslexic. And neither of us got identified as having dyslexia in elementary school. We could have done better on listening comprehension tests, and IQ had certain environmental protective factors been in our household. But those weren’t present, and we were labeled a “garden variety struggling reader.” As a result, we were denied protections under both a federal law and a state dyslexia law. We both should have received those protections.

These failings were not our fault. Nor were they the fault of our family or our upbringing. The responsibility lies in the failure of society to adopt effective ways to see our potential as human beings. Indeed, my son fits the stereotype of dyslexia. His oral language development, especially his vocabulary, was more advanced than mine as a young child. He also had developed far more background knowledge about the word as a young child than my sister or me. Dyslexia is generational, and my view of dyslexia is very long. I raise my voice for the sake of all children, including my potential grandchildren and great-grandchildren. 

What about children with multiple brain-based language differences? 

The simple view also inappropriately categorizes children with developmental language disability (DLD) and dyslexia. According to the simple view, these children would present as garden variety struggling readers. This is because dyslexia, if not prevented through early intervention, develops into word reading and spelling deficits. And DLD is characterized in part by listening comprehension deficits. However, you can identify a DLD well before school starts. And when this happens, it should be documented and considered when addressing the child’s schooling needs because there is a high co-occurrence of DLD and dyslexia. You can also identify the risk of dyslexia before a child starts kindergarten.

What about the precocious children held up as the prototype of dyslexia by society?

The categorical label of dyslexic, as outlined by the simple view, would only capture some of even the privileged precocious children because of the cascading effects that being unable to read words can have on oral language comprehension abilities. After formal schooling starts and children learn to read, oral language development is partly fed by reading text. This allows children to acquire new vocabulary and background knowledge needed to perform well on grade-appropriate measures of listening comprehension. As such, the children who experience secondary consequences of dyslexia could transition from having a strength in listening comprehension to deficits in this aspect of language. And when tested, they may be labeled as a garden variety struggling reader according to the simple view of language. This is why advocates and parents push so strongly for accommodations to allow children with word reading deficits access to written language through other means – such as print-to-speech technology, audiobooks, and access to books being read by others. Also, I am sticking to the limitations of the simple view of reading. There are other reasons children with dyslexia may not be identified based on standard practices being implemented nationwide. But to keep this blog entry short and to the point, I will save that discussion for another day. This is also why so many of us push for early identification of the risk of future reading problems and early instruction and intervention to head off word reading deficits before they start.

So for me, the bottom line always comes down to this – what in theory makes good sense may not translate into practice as well as hoped.

How can we do better?

And let us remember the ultimate question. How can we do better? The answer to this question is as complex as a not-so-simple view of reading. I provided some suggestions throughout this blog post. And I will highlight another. When we introduce the simple view, we must address the complexity of the profiles of readers and spellers. Because many people, including me, have used the simple view to talk about dyslexia for a long time. When we do, we should address its strengths and weaknesses.

And as I continue to share my perspective as a member of the dyslexia community, I will attempt to share my thoughts on how we can all do better in other posts. And I welcome other community members to raise their voices and share their thoughts. Create your platform and share your perspective. None of us are alike, and we all have our own stories to share. Although we experience similar deficits, there are infinite ways that we shine bright. There is no single list of strengths ubiquitous to our community. And I share my voice to elevate all of us with our unique strengths true to us. And my voice is never intended to marginalize or minimize the voices of others in my community.

I challenge us to collectively stop and reflect on the work needed to enable kids to develop into independent learners equipped with the life skill of literacy. Much of the discussion on social media and elsewhere around this work is adult-focused. Well-meaning adults ponder, speculate, and debate a host of questions. What should teachers teach? How should teachers teach it? What must teachers know? What has been learned from research? What still needs to be learned from research? When should screening be done? What are the best screeners? These questions have their place, but they miss an essential part of the conversation. What should children be doing? This is a question that I seldom hear directly asked in this manner. It is typically what adults should do to children? What should adults do for children? What should adults be doing for themselves? With all these questions swirling in the mix, it seemed like an excellent time to stop, reflect and ask a different question.

What should children be doing to enable themselves to develop into proficient readers and writers?

You may be thinking to yourself, “Why ask this question?” Well, because it only makes sense. After all, the children work hard to develop into proficient readers and writers. It happens as a result of their efforts. And what is most vital is that children doing the work benefit from an enabling context that often is established through the efforts of a host of adults in their lives. So opposed to asking what adults should be doing, which is the most frequently asked question, I suggest that we not lose sight of an equally if not more pressing question. What should children be doing? This question motivates another question. What should adults do to allow children to do the work they must do to develop into proficient readers and writers? The simple answer is to establish an enabling context. A context that will enable children to engage in the hard work of developing into proficient readers and writers.

What is that context? First, it is a learning context in which children receive direct instruction at a level of intensity that allows them to learn language concepts in support of reading and writing. Second, the context must also provide ample opportunities for children to apply what they learn to read and write text. Reading text is a huge payoff for what they are doing when they do the work to learn concepts about language and how language works. And children must be supported and helped to engage with and learn from text. The words are written by someone else in hopes of connecting with readers, allowing them to take away something – maybe a new idea, perhaps a new piece of knowledge, perhaps a funny story about something that happened long ago or just a few days ago.

Adults – parents, teachers, and others can support children in this work. They can protect time for direct instruction. They can make that time count by being prepared to instruct children on how words work in spoken language, in written language, and what they mean. They can support them by providing protected time for children to read and receive scaffolded support as needed. And when doing this work, they can help them understand how words are strung together and structured for various purposes – such as informing, entertaining, and persuading. And they can support them by protecting time for children to write and be instructed on the basic mechanics of writing – handwriting, spelling, and grammar. All of the structured time should be reserved for practices established to be effective.

In addition, children need to learn about and engage with the world around them. And adults can support children by elevating the language they use around them. Adults can also help children by engaging them in thoughtful conversations about the world and facilitating opportunities for children to engage one another and learn about the world together. Children are inherently curious and want to know about the world and how it works. Feed them this knowledge and engage them in fun opportunities to learn about the world. This learning will help these children unlock the words on the pages of books, and it will provide them with the raw materials needed to write.

And teachers, as well as parents, have an essential role in advocating on behalf of children to ensure that they are placed in an enabling context that supports them as they do the hard work that only they can do for themselves.

All of this to say, I feel compelled to ask a simple, straightforward question because I worry that we have lost sight of it. What should children be doing to enable themselves to develop into proficient readers and writers?

It’s dyslexia season, and everyone is filling the ether of the internet with memes, quotes, infographics, and musing about dyslexia. So, it seemed like an appropriate time to drop a little piece to evoke thoughtful dialogue about the construct of dyslexia and how it is perceived. The implications of a construct, like dyslexia, for policy and practice, boil down to how it is interpreted. I propose a straightforward approach to understanding a couple of the perspectives held by individuals about dyslexia. In doing so, I am not striving to capture every view. However, it seems necessary to outline competing perspectives to foster and elevate conversations impacting policy and practice.

At the heart of the differing views of dyslexia is a distinction between the extent to which a person views dyslexia as something a person has (i.e., a condition that someone is born with) versus dyslexia being an end state. People who consider it something that a person is born with often hold a deterministic view of dyslexia. Those who view it as an end state representing the confluence of many factors often adopt a probabilistic view of dyslexia.

A critical distinction between these competing points of view is the role that environmental factors play. Both views hold that environment matters. However, the causal role of the environment on the manifestation of dyslexia starkly distinguishes the two perspectives. People who adopt a deterministic view of dyslexia perceive it as being a lifelong condition that is neurobiological in origin – something a person is born with that excludes the environment from possibly being the nexus of the problems that manifest into an end state. As such, the role of the environment is to support these individuals with an intervention specific to their needs and provide appropriate accommodations to access learning and experiences in life. Environment modulates a neurobiological predisposition, either helping or hindering the development of reading and spelling. However, the environment does not cause dyslexia. Adherence to a probabilistic perspective based on a biopsychosocial view of development forces one to entertain the idea that environmental factors can be causal and lead to neurobiological indicators of dyslexia and an end state.

And from these competing views also emerged disagreements about exceptionalism, which is often central to a deterministic view of dyslexia. When exceptionalism mixes with the concept of a specific learning disability manifested as dyslexia, there is an overriding belief that the goal should be to categorize individuals who have dyslexia and distinguish them from the so-called garden variety struggling readers. What differentiates individuals with dyslexia from a garden variety struggling reader is the extent to which it can be determined that the reading struggles are caused by factors inherent to the individual at the exclusion of poverty, school context, etc.

A probabilistic view of dyslexia based on a biopsychosocial framework can be agnostic to cause. The causes are only critical to the extent that knowing them can inform prognosis and treatment course. The cause of some individuals’ reading and spelling struggles may be neurobiological, and this falls within a biopsychosocial framework. But the nexus of the issues potentially could be the environment and lead to the same neurobiological and behavioral end state. And, if distinguishing between the exceptional and unexceptional poor reader does not meaningfully inform prognosis and how we intervene differentially, it begs the question of whether it is worth the investment of time and money to make this distinction in the first place. Those scarce resources might be better invested elsewhere and better allocated in support of providing the instruction and experiences most needed from day 1 to set a child up for lifelong learning enabled by the lifeskill of literacy.

As we step back and consider these features, the deterministic view of dyslexia is predicated on the idea of dyslexia as a neurobiological condition that a child is born with, marked by exceptionalism. It lasts a lifetime and requires a particular form of intervention. In contrast to a deterministic perspective, several contemporary understandings of dyslexia highlight that individuals with dyslexia can experience an assortment of intrinsic risk factors in language and cognition that interact with their environment to increase the probability (i.e., likelihood) that they will struggle to read and spell words. The probabilistic view of dyslexia does not exclude the idea that some individuals may be born with a genetic predisposition that influences their brain development, elevating their risk of profound reading and spelling difficulties. However, from the probabilistic perspective, neurobiology is not destiny. Just because a person may have intrinsic risk factors, it is not guaranteed that a lifetime of reading and spelling struggles awaits that person. From the probabilistic perspective, what is critical is knowing the probability of a given end state. The essential considerations once risk is estimated are 1) to determine prognosis, 2) to identify how best to prevent the end state, and 3) to specify the optimal treatment course if an individual arrives at the end state.

Starting from data, we learn that many kids struggle to read words and answer straightforward questions about what they read – a fundamental problem that should be addressed with a clear plan with a high chance of success. But therein lies the problem. We disagree on how to address this problem with warring factions camped out within the educational landscape. Part of this entrenchment results from dissent that arises about how best to understand and teach reading. There may be a consensus that reading matters, but there is also disagreement about how we should go about teaching reading. And dissent around this topic is made just that much worse by the complexity of what it takes to educate children to read.

There is a tireless debate surrounding the whole language versus phonics approaches to reading instruction. The names of these approaches change from time to time. The whole language approach was rebranded to balanced literacy. Yet, the core of the debate remains unchanged. Do we put books into kids’ hands and allow them to discover reading through guided reading experiences? Or do we provide explicit instruction in the components processes of reading – in particular letter-sound correspondences taught using phonics? Sadly, people still believe that we should narrowly define the act of reading instruction to fit within the strict confines of these perspectives as they have been defined historically.

But neither of these limited perspectives encompass all that we have learned nor the full spectrum of readers who make up the plurality of the U.S. And no one person or monolithic group of individuals can fully encapsulate and understand this complexity. The parable of the blind men and the elephant seems like an apt analogy to help appreciate this dilemma. Each of us is groping around at this problem within the confines of our unique world views stymied by the fixedness of thought and ideas that emerge from the limited ability of humans to capture the full diorama of any problem. Expertise and background knowledge gained through book learning and real-world experiences can go a long way to functionally expand our capacities to appreciate a problem and come to reasoned well-founded conclusions. Yet, expertise to represent the totality of a challenge is achieved by exposure to the full spectrum of readers and contexts in which reading develops. It can’t just emerge from the perspective of what is best for children at high risk of being struggling readers nor those children who seemingly learn to read just as effortlessly as they learned to produce and understand spoken language.

Overcoming these challenges requires dialogue to establish a shared awareness, which must be synthesized, communicated, and translated into concrete, actionable steps. However, our ability to engage in this hard work is disrupted by continual conflict and dissent. And sadly, the damage done by conflict and dissent is not exclusively the result of waring between the historically polarized factions discussed thus far. The dissent also emerges within these factions – especially within the skills-based camp. And the warring within this camp has led to real and pressing challenges that threaten our collective ability to move the needle on reading education.

Dissent within this group seems inevitable because the approach they adopt is based on deconstructing word reading, spelling, and comprehension into the component processes and areas of knowledge that support them. And here is where we lose all of the whole language / balanced literacy folks. They would rather talk about the construction of meaning as the act of reading based on personally held schemata, and they argue their work is science-based and grounded in the cognitive sciences. However, from what may have started with a sleeper cell of holdouts in Europe that included folks such as Bartlett and his explorations of the construction of meaning from stories such the War of the Ghosts, emerged a much different cognitive revolution in the behavioral sciences that supplanted radical behaviorism in North American. And this revolution gave rise to cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience, which fall under the broader umbrella of the cognitive sciences.

The overall impact of the cognitive sciences on Educational Psychology has been profound. And one of the results of this influence has been the identification of a host of candidate processes and sources of knowledge implicated in word reading, spelling, and text comprehension. Overall, this has been a good thing and has supported the development of tools, assessments, and instructional practices. And this work is ongoing.

However, there is also a dark side to how the conversation surrounding the translation of this research has unfolded. Cognitive science is grounded in deconstructivism. Simply meaning that understanding advances by taking complex acts that we perceive as relatively straightforward and effortless, such as a proficient reader’s understanding of a text passage and breaking that act down into its constituent parts. There are myriad ways of breaking it down and a host of theories to explain what seems to us to be such a simple act. Yet, much of this science has been descriptive identifying correlates of word reading, spelling, and comprehension. Some of this research has been developmental exploring trends that emerge as children develop their reading capacities. Far less of this research has been instructional and focused on figuring out if instruction in specific processes and areas of knowledge supports the development of word reading, spelling, and comprehension and for whom it does so.

Sure, the science is thoughtful and deliberate. But it is also painfully slow to generate answers to pressing questions. It takes time to go from start to finish, and the most informative studies – longitudinal and instructional studies – take the longest to conduct and disseminate. They also are far more expensive to conduct than one-off descriptive studies that illustrate correlations.

The time it takes to generate concrete recommendations based on this process frustrates many stakeholders – parents, teachers, educational leaders, and policymakers who want concrete answers to straightforward questions about how to go about reading instruction. They want the answers now. And, we need answers to these questions because kids are in school right now. Sadly, the majority of third-grade students across the country fail to pass reading tests administered at the end of third grade. Even more troubling, the majority of students graduating from high schools across the nation lack the requisite reading skills to be competitive in the 21st-century workforce.

Yet, it can’t be stressed enough that getting answers takes time, and researchers are hesitant by their nature to rush to provide solutions. Also, they are often engaged in different pursuits than translating research into practice. Even if more of them were involved in this work, ideally, they would be part of a larger consortium of individuals. No singular, homogenous group has the requisite expertise and knowledge to translate research into practice. But these realities should not stand in the way of more researchers engaging in this necessary work.

When there isn’t thoughtful engagement from the research community to support how findings are contextualized into the classroom, a vacuum is created. A void that has become a fertile playground for others to muck about. And some of these folks seemingly love to expound upon which constellations of processes and sources of knowledge matter the most, which should be taught to children in support of literacy development and exactly how it should be done. These prophetic voices demarcating what constellations of these processes and sources of knowledge matter and how to go about teaching them can become extremely granular and get bogged down in the minutia. This level of minutia is precisely what many educators crave and gladly consume.

All of this espousing about what matters, why it matters, and how to go about teaching it is done under the flag of science. But oddly, there aren’t that many folks credentialed as scientists doing this work. So, it seems we must find ways to fill this void with thoughtful dialogue that includes a diverse array of individuals who collectively have the knowledge, practical experience, and wisdom to engage in this work. This work is not easy, but it is the work that needs to be done. But to be clear, this works needs to be undertaken as a dialogue with all groups engaged in a back and forth and sharing of experiences, expertise, understanding of the different challenges and ideas about how we might focus efforts to address them.

I wear many hats. I am a researcher. I am a person who struggled and continues to struggle with something that we have historically called dyslexia. And I am the parent of a child who struggles with dyslexia.  Because I am also a gluten for punishment, I spent two years training as a reading therapist after receiving my Ph.D. All of this training makes me a research practitioner. I am trained and qualified to practice what I study. And vice versa. I am trained and qualified to study what I practice. As a research practitioner, I continue to work with children and families using my practical skills. I also actively give back to the larger community in various ways. These are both musts for me because they keep my practical skills fresh. It also keeps me honest when I work with literacy leaders and teachers in schools and teach and train college students.

One way that I keep my practical skills sharp is to consult with parents about their children’s literacy skills and school experiences. I recently consulted with a family. Their child was in the 5th grade. In first grade, he was identified as needing support within the general education setting in tiers 2 and 3. As a result, he received a structured intervention targeting his reading and spelling deficits for several years. Those efforts remediated his deficits in phonological awareness and word reading skills. He was making As and Bs in his classes. However, he was still a slow reader, he struggled with spelling, and writing was a challenge. These continued struggles were all documented by testing that his school had recently conducted. His parents consulted with me because the school was struggling to justify continued intervention for their son.

So, the family came in, and I looked at the kiddo and asked, “What do you need to help you in school?” He said, “I have a hard time writing because of my spelling and handwriting.” Then, I looked at him and asked. “How are the spelling tests going?” “Well, not so good. I study 45 minutes every night, and then I go in and take the tests and do not do very well on them. Last week my teacher graded my test and looked at me, and said, ‘You obviously are not working hard enough at home on this.’ I could see the pain in his eyes as he said that.

I took a breath and replied, “You have a long life ahead of you to forgive people for what they do not know. Your teacher cannot see the work you did outside of school to get that grade. She does not see the extra time that it takes you to get through your nightly readings for school. It was hurtful to you that she said those things based on what she did not know. It would have been more helpful if she had asked you how much time you had spent studying and what you had done to prepare for the test. The consultation continued, and I provided concrete recommendations on engaging in conversations with the school and using state standards and state policy and procedures to advocate for this determined, hardworking child.

His experience of hurt and pain stuck with me because it was all too familiar. I have experienced similar interactions with teachers in my life, and variations of this snapshot of life play out countless times for others. The simple truth of the matter is that people can’t see the effort that goes into what each of us does to get by in life. It’s invisible to them. This reality forces us to rely on compassion to forgive people for things they don’t know, as we hope they will forgive us for those things that we don’t know. And we have to remember that the words of others do not define us. It is how we respond to their words.

Another way that I engage with the larger community is by providing counsel to people struggling with obstacles that I overcame or am in the process of overcoming. A few days after the meeting I just described, I received an email from someone reaching out for guidance from half a world away living in a country I have never visited. The subject of the email read, “I’m dyslexic.” It went on to read. “I am a third-year psychology major studying at university. I really want to do a Ph.D. program after I graduate. After studying at university for the last three years, my confidence in my writing skills and general attitude to the academic field has fallen so low that I am currently unable to pick myself up. I honestly do not know why I am emailing you. I recently heard your talk on YouTube and wondered what gave you the courage to go for your Ph.D.? Was it tough? How did you get through it? How did you overcome your challenges every day?”

My response to her read in part as follows. “Pick yourself up. You have fallen before. Brush off the dust. It will float away with the wind. And keep moving forward along the path that you create for yourself. As I look back on the path that I blazed for myself, I can say that it did not get easier. It got different. The obstacles I face today are different than the obstacles I met when I was in my third year of undergraduate study in Psychology. The challenges that you face are specific to you and your life experiences. We likely share some of the same struggles. Writing was and still is very difficult for me. It took me a tremendous amount of time to write papers that would not score as well as one would think based on the information and ideas in my head.

But the rules of the game are set. We must write to advance in school and, depending on the career a person selects, life. So, it is up to us to adapt how we play the game based on the rules that govern how it can be played. Because it is how we choose to overcome the limitations put upon us by our weaknesses and play to our strengths that determine how well we overcome these obstacles. And if you get the chance to inform how the rulebook is written, take it.

It takes a considerable amount of focus on my part to write. It does not flow effortlessly. I create space and time for writing. As much as possible, I keep the distractions to a minimum and curate a space that feels comfortable to me. Also, I use technology to aid me in writing now that apps exist. Spell check is ever-present. And I use text to speech at times to hear my words read aloud to me. With practice and lots of time working on it, I have gotten better at writing. 

As you move forward, pick a path that you want to go down and curate a world around you that allows you to overcome the obstacles that will present themselves along your path. Your path will be different than any others, and your path will have challenges and opportunities that no one else has.”

What stuck with me about her email was the courage it took this young woman to reach out to a stranger halfway around the world. She must have felt isolated, alone, and unseen. And I understood her feelings of isolation. I am sharing her experience and the experience of that 5^th grader to make their struggles and others like them visible. The people in those experiences are real. I know the pain of those who have reached out to me for help. Their pain is real. And that pain is not a feeling that I want them to have to feel if they don’t have to.

Look, life isn’t fair. That was my mother’s motto for life. Anytime my sister or I objected and said that something was unfair, she would retort. “Whoever lied to you and told you that life is fair?” A life lesson that people like my mother born into a life of disadvantage learn from a very early age.

We aren’t going to remove every obstacle that a person will face in life. You are not always going to get into your top college pick or get the job you want. You will get a broken heart or two or three. But we should strive to remove those obstacles that we can, especially when we have learned how to overcome and remove them as a society. Life is hard enough just dealing with the obstacles that we can’t make go away. So why make it any harder on ourselves by leaving those obstacles that we can remove standing in the way of our success.

Varying interests and diverse perspectives populate conversations on a host of topics central to how we go about education in our society. A constant point of discussion in these lively conversations has been and remains reading and for good cause. The importance of reading is undisputed. There is almost universal agreement that children should learn to read. Even lifelong naysayers are hard-pressed to deny the practicality of a basic ability to read. And being a proficient reader, capable of more than just the basics, opens up a world of opportunities and staves off the dire consequences that reading struggles can have on individuals, their families, and society.

As a result, a push to transform reading instruction is underway in classrooms across the nation. A transformation motivated by an honest acknowledgment of reality – most children in the United States struggle to read. These struggles are not the exception reserved for the minority of kids with a disability – such as dyslexia. No, they are the status quo. And sadly, this has been the case for decades. Sure, we can quibble over tests used to make this claim. But at the end of the day, multiple data sources indicate that most students in the nation struggle to read words strung together into text passages and answer questions about what they read. This is a fundamental problem and one that is largely preventable. Yet, we have not found the collective will to prevent this calamity that breaks parents’ hearts, teachers’ backs and causes untold suffering for children.

To be clear, the reality facing parents as they painfully watch their children struggling to read has not gone unseen. Their pleas for help are palpable, and the desperation of parents in the U.S. has led to laws being passed across the nation in an attempt to help their children. As a result, almost every state in the U.S. now has some form of legislation specifically addressing the needs of students with dyslexia – a trend that alarmed me from the start. I am leery of such laws. However, I am not a skeptic who does not “believe” the overwhelming science indicating that a minority of students have extreme difficulties learning to read and spell. The science in this regard is vast and compelling.

However, the push for dyslexia legislation is the wrong solution for the root cause of the nation’s problem. When most students in a nation struggle to read, the answer cannot be to focus on identifying and intervening with a minority of students. No, that is an illogical proposition that diverts attention away from the more fundamental problem we face. Whatever might be happening in classrooms across the nation, it is not adequately preparing the majority of students to read. An awareness of this reality is growing, and the initial push for dyslexia legislation has morphed into efforts to exact changes that will address this larger issue.

The push for change has left some people wondering what this all means for students with disabilities – like those with dyslexia. Overall, it is good news for all students – especially those with learning disabilities. We need base systems of support that foster the reading ability of the majority of students. Schools struggle to find kids with reading disabilities, like dyslexia, when most children in a school struggle to read. Within this context, the struggles of the few kids who are predisposed to struggle with reading due to a reading disability are not exceptional. They find themselves struggling to keep their heads above water in a sea of struggling readers – all of whom are at risk of drowning because the ship they set off in was not seaworthy in the first place.

In a sea of struggling readers, we lack the educational context to effectively implement public policies at the federal and state levels intended to identify students with learning disabilities – such as dyslexia and provide them with adequate instructional support. As a result, the interests of students with learning disabilities like dyslexia are bound to the welfare of all students. And the bond is simple. We know a lot about reading disabilities. We know a tremendous amount about how to teach all children to read. Yet, all the science in the world doesn’t do us any good when the base systems needed to translate it are overtaxed or non-existent.

To address the more fundamental issue, we need trained educators instilled with the knowledge and practical skills to set all students up for success. Fundamentally teachers and literacy leaders need to understand what children need to learn to be proficient readers and how they should teach this to them. But therein lies the challenge. As a society, we do not agree upon how best to address this existential crisis that robs our economy of money and our children of their futures. And the interplay between a lack of consensus on what to teach and how to teach it and the layers of adults in the educational landscape provides fertile ground for a host of challenges that can keep things from getting better for children.

However, we have made a massive public investment in decades of basic and applied science to answer these very questions. As a result, we have a solid understanding of what to teach and how to teach children in the early grades – including those with learning disabilities – such as dyslexia. What we need is the public will to establish a network of systems to translate what is known into practice. And efforts to develop these systems will have to be established within the reality on the ground within a local context.

With that said, there are core instructional principles and areas of instruction that should be taught for the betterment of all children. And there are some key takeaways from what we have learned from our public investment in reading research.

We know that language is the basis of reading and writing. In reality, they are not just based on language. They are language. They are the written forms of receptive and expressive language. Also, we have learned that teachers must lead with effective instructional practices. These practices must be grounded within direct instruction that allows educators to teach the skills that support reading and writing. In support of these efforts, students need plentiful opportunities to practice these skills, and some students will require far more opportunities for practice than other students. And critically, it is the application to reading and writing text that ultimately makes these skills matter and allows them to become second nature to a child.

When literacy leaders walk into a classroom, they should see an integrated approach to teaching students to read grounded in these core principles. To see these practices, literacy leaders must know what to look for, and to provide this instruction, teachers need to know what they should be teaching and how they should go about teaching it. So, we need to establish a consensus on what to teach and how to teach it. We also need a highly knowledgeable workforce prepared to implement educational systems to deliver this instruction to students.