Closing the dyslexia “action gap”
The Dyslexia Resource Center, founded in Baton Rouge, LA, is trailblazing a clear path through effective dyslexia identification and support, but they’re not stopping there. Through a three-phase approach of research, identification, and support, every member of their team — at each of their locations — is following their passion to serve their surrounding communities through tutoring for students with dyslexia, caregiver support, and educator training.
We sat down with The Dyslexia Resource Center’s Executive Director, Kayla Reggio, to talk about the impact they’re having on their surrounding communities, the research they’ve been doing on the prevalence of dyslexia in special populations, and the path they took to get here.
Kayla, can you please tell us a little bit about yourself and your work with the Dyslexia Resource Center?
My name is Kayla Reggio and I am the Executive Director of the Dyslexia Resource Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. We specialize in bringing what we know regarding the scientific evidence surrounding dyslexia to classrooms and communities. Sally Shaywitz always says, “It’s not a knowledge gap, it’s an action gap” and we’re committed to closing that action gap in the dyslexia-specific sector.
The Dyslexia Resource Center is an accredited center with a dyslexia therapy training program that instructs individuals working toward getting their certification as dyslexia professionals. Throughout those courses, we discuss dyslexia identification and progress monitoring — both crucial parts of providing therapy.
Our Dyslexia Resource Center has satellite locations in a few different states. We have a group here in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and cohorts that meet in Covington, Louisiana. Additionally, we have partnerships in southern Mississippi, a satellite site at the University of Alabama, and a partnership with a program in San Antonio, Texas.
We also have a partnership with the Louisiana Department of Corrections that we've been fostering for several years. We were able to do a study using Pearson products to find the dyslexia prevalence rate of incarcerated individuals. We are now working on Phase 2 where we are implementing services for identified individuals and creating a roadmap to helping them gain literacy rates and higher high school equivalency passing rates.
Our Louisiana Key Academy is the sister organization of our school, serving about 500 students with dyslexia. We have two campuses across Louisiana and will be opening a third campus in the northern part of the state in August which will allow us to serve a total of about 1,000 students and families over the next year.
Could you highlight some of the problems you're trying to solve?
Our biggest hurdle is knowing that students with dyslexia are grossly underdiagnosed and unidentified. We know that we have the capability to identify them by five or six years of age. We know what evidence-based practices look like. We know how we should monitor progress. We know that one in five students have dyslexia1 and we know that they're sitting in classrooms in every school across the country.
One major hurdle is getting people to understand what it means to screen, then implementing the tool that's accessible right at their fingertips. We have seen many local districts adapt and use a screener like the Shaywitz DyslexiaScreen™ successfully.
The biggest piece of our work is bringing awareness to the fact that there are many more kids with dyslexia in our schools than those that have already been identified. I think that is actually really powerful to be able to align that percentage of students who are at risk with what clinically valid studies show is the actual prevalence rate. The first step in starting the conversation is to say, “There is a need and we need to figure out how to serve that need.”
There are 10 million children who have dyslexia, but the problem isn't isolated to schools. We found that 47% of incarcerated individuals have dyslexia which is more than twice that of the general population. So not only does dyslexia have several short-term impacts but it has also significant long-term impacts. Individuals with dyslexia are less likely to go to college, more likely to drop out, and more likely to end up incarcerated2.
What we're trying to do right now is close that action gap. We need reliable tools to be able to identify these individuals, like the Shaywitz DyslexiaScreen. We feel confident about quickly getting the results that we need to make further decisions. To me, that is an easy fit in terms of scalability in solving a problem that impacts so many.
What led you to choose the tools you're using?
The Dyslexia Resource Center has been operating for six years and one of the very first projects that we worked on was a prison study. We were looking at the prevalence rates of dyslexia in incarcerated individuals, and on that very first project we were beta testing for the Adolescent-Adult and Corrections forms of the Shaywitz DyslexiaScreen.
Bennett and Sally Shaywitz are experts in the field and have been doing this work for over four decades. The Shaywitz DyslexiaScreen is psychometrically valid for identifying students and adults at risk for dyslexia, and we believed there really was nothing that could compare. Having something that is psychometrically valid, easy to use, inexpensive, and easy to implement, the screener is really closely aligned with the problem we're trying to help solve in our communities.
We had had a partnership with Sally and Bennett Shaywitz at Yale and they've obviously worked very closely with Pearson. They actually made that connection, introducing us to the Pearson Clinical Assessment dyslexia team.
How did these tools help you overcome your challenges?
On the Shaywitz DyslexiaScreen side, there is a really nice report that you can share with families. What I love about the report is that it has recommendations from Sally Shaywitz. It provides next steps and outlines what you should be looking for. Not just on the school side or the institution side, but for the families as well. It’s really important to close that communication gap. Families are going to get that report and know how to navigate what they need to do next which I think is really wonderful. You can quickly and easily screen a wide range of people at one time and it's so easy to roll up that data. It doesn’t just give you the data in number format; it performs the analysis and provides beautiful charts so when you are talking to a superintendent about the impact of dyslexia in their schools, you can visually show them what you're talking about (without having to create those charts yourself).
On the aimswebPlus™ side, I really appreciate the ability to track fluency, the biggest adversity for individuals with dyslexia. In our work with remediating students with dyslexia, tracking fluency is a big focus. There is an oral reading fluency measure with national percentiles, but what’s really lovely for the practitioners and the therapists that I work with is that it translates nicely into a Lexile level which helps them to pick instructional materials for building fluency. It also helps them communicate with parents about what their student should be reading out loud at home — all of which is built right into the platform. This really allows the teacher to analyze each student’s progress and look at it on a student level which helps inform their instruction.
We have learned so much through our partnership with you. Thank you!
The biggest highlight is that this really has been a partnership. Speaking strictly from a business perspective, we've always experienced excellent customer service. Any questions I've ever had are answered very quickly, and any time we want to order a new product or have a question, that's always handled really quickly. It takes all the different components of our world to really make a strong impact in big ways for students and families. Being able to have this partnership and working on those areas where we find common ground and mutual support has been a wonderful experience.
Partner with us and close the action gap in your school or district! Visit PearsonAssessments.com/Dyslexia to begin the journey.
References:
Senator Bill Cassidy and Dr. Laura Cassidy, ‘Early Screening and Intervention for Students with Dyslexia’, 2019 https://irp-cdn.multiscreensite.com/36c69119/files/uploaded/Cassidy-Cassidy_May-2019-Standard_KudGczjKQb2u0KxEGX0R.pdf
Laura Cassidy, Kayla Reggio, Bennett A. Shaywitz, John M. Holahan, Sally E. Shaywitz, ‘Dyslexia in Incarcerated Men and Women: A New Perspective on Reading Disability in the Prison Population’, The Journal of Correctional Education, September 2021, https://irp.cdn-website.com/36c69119/files/uploaded/Dyslexia%20in%20Incarcerated%20Individuals.pdf