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May. 16th, 2022 07:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conulyNew York City Plans to Screen Every Student for Dyslexia for the First Time
In Seismic Shift, NYC to Mandate Phonics-Based Curriculum in Elementary Schools
If this is implemented properly, this is all for the best. It's the "implemented properly" part that concerns me - it's my understanding that schools throughout the Anglosphere are amazingly resistant to handling dyslexia and/or dysgraphia properly, or even diagnosing it. You'll note that the first link talks about the cost of private assessment. Properly speaking, all US public school districts are supposed to assess children for learning disabilities upon request, even if the child is not enrolled in a public school, but there is a reason you end up doing a private assessment if you're seeking a dyslexia diagnosis.
And I say "schools", but of course that starts with the system and ends up at the teachers, especially in the lower grades. Maybe it's just the ones I've happened to run across in the many years of having a dyslexic niece, but there's a truly shocking number of early elementary teachers out there who will use, as their killing argument against direct instruction in a synthetic phonics program, the rhetorical question "How do you sound out the word red?" Or "me" or "car", and it should be obvious to the casual reader that while it's true that a disproportionate number of high frequency words have one or two weirdnesses that have to be learned by rote, those are not examples. Those aren't even examples of tricky words like "light", which require children to first learn that "igh" is a single phonogram.
I suppose increased access to training in Orton-Gillingham programs such as Wilson or Barton will help... but only if the city actually does fund that and teachers actually do take up that training.
In Seismic Shift, NYC to Mandate Phonics-Based Curriculum in Elementary Schools
If this is implemented properly, this is all for the best. It's the "implemented properly" part that concerns me - it's my understanding that schools throughout the Anglosphere are amazingly resistant to handling dyslexia and/or dysgraphia properly, or even diagnosing it. You'll note that the first link talks about the cost of private assessment. Properly speaking, all US public school districts are supposed to assess children for learning disabilities upon request, even if the child is not enrolled in a public school, but there is a reason you end up doing a private assessment if you're seeking a dyslexia diagnosis.
And I say "schools", but of course that starts with the system and ends up at the teachers, especially in the lower grades. Maybe it's just the ones I've happened to run across in the many years of having a dyslexic niece, but there's a truly shocking number of early elementary teachers out there who will use, as their killing argument against direct instruction in a synthetic phonics program, the rhetorical question "How do you sound out the word red?" Or "me" or "car", and it should be obvious to the casual reader that while it's true that a disproportionate number of high frequency words have one or two weirdnesses that have to be learned by rote, those are not examples. Those aren't even examples of tricky words like "light", which require children to first learn that "igh" is a single phonogram.
I suppose increased access to training in Orton-Gillingham programs such as Wilson or Barton will help... but only if the city actually does fund that and teachers actually do take up that training.
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Date: 2022-05-19 12:05 am (UTC)My folks opted to get me a set of phonics learning things when I was little. It actually did work for me, but I never stopped to think over the years that other people might NOT be able to learn that way.
TIL!