Establishes pilot projects for dyslexia screening and intervention and teacher training. Each project will be implemented in three school districts selected by the state superintendent of education.
“Dyslexia” is defined as “a specific learning disorder that is neurological in origin and that is characterized by unexpected difficulties with accurate or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities not consistent with the intelligence, motivation and sensory capabilities of the person, which difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language.”
Each participating school district, through early childhood reading instruction and reading assistance programs, shall screen children six years of age or younger for indications of dyslexia, provide appropriate reading intervention services for those children identified as having risk factors for dyslexia and administer assessments, approved by the state superintendent, to ascertain whether the intervention services improve those students’ reading and learning.
The pilot project shall run for three full school years, beginning with the 2012-2013 school year.
The teacher training programs shall provide teachers of grades kindergarten through fourth in the selected school districts with programs designed to train teachers on the indicators of dyslexia and the types of instruction that children with risk factors for dyslexia need to learn, read, write and spell, including multisensory structured language programs.
