Authorizes educational service centers to provide teacher professional development on dyslexia.
Provides that the governing board of any educational service center may engage the services of a dyslexia specialist to provide training for teachers of grades kindergarten to four on the indicators of dyslexia and the types of instruction that children with dyslexia need to learn, read, write, and spell.
If a service center provides this training, it shall make the training available to local school districts within the service center’s territory and to other school districts, community schools, and STEM schools that have contracted for the training from the service center.
If a governing board of any educational service center does not provide the training, a group of local school districts within the service center’s territory may engage the services of a dyslexia specialist to provide training for teachers independently.
A school district or school may require the training authorized under this section for its teachers as part of the district’s or school’s regular in-service training programs.
“Dyslexia” is defined as a specific learning disorder that is neurological in origin and that is characterized by difficulties with accurate or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities, which difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language.
“Dyslexia specialist” is defined as a person who is trained and certified in a multisensory structured language program that meets the level II specialist criteria set by the international dyslexia association’s knowledge and practice standards, or any subsequent standards adopted by the association.
Professional developement should be for all grades. Too many children have fallen through the cracks and are now in High School. They are still failing in so many areas of their curriculum due to this disablitly. You fail to reach all students when limiting professional developement to only 5 grade levels. Too many parents have been fighting with the schools for too many years for help with their children. These older students are just as much in need if not more so!