Missouri public school students to get dyslexia screenings

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Gov. Jay Nixon has signed a bill that requires every student in Missouri public schools to be screened for dyslexia.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Nixon signed the bill last week. Screenings for the learning disorder, which is characterized by difficulty reading, are to start in the 2018-2019 school year.

The screenings are meant to be informal and brief.

State Rep. Kathy Swan, R-Cape Girardeau, was a key architect of the legislation.

"It can make a tremendous difference for some schoolchildren," she said. "One in five people has some form of dyslexia."

The law will mandate screening schoolchildren for the disorder and allow accommodations for students, such as giving them extra time during testing or reading questions aloud for affected students.

It also will require teachers to be trained to address dyslexia in the classroom, Swan said.

A 20-member task force will recommend how classroom accommodations should be delivered.

Kim Stuckey, a dyslexia specialist for the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, said school officials are going to create better awareness about dyslexia.

In Missouri, parents in the advocacy group Decoding Dyslexia have pushed the Legislature for change to raise the status of dyslexia as a learning disability within public schools.

One of the parents, Kelli Unnerstall, said her son struggled to learn the alphabet, rhyme and associate sounds with letters. She said it was not until the fourth grade when her son was diagnosed with dyslexia when she took him to a neuropsychologist.

According to Unnerstall, the private school her son was attending could not serve him, and teachers at a public school would not acknowledge he had a disability.

"It was like dyslexia was a dirty word in the public school system," she said. "I was told things like, 'That's a medical diagnosis, not an educational diagnosis.'"

Unnerstall's son now is in high school and is receiving remediation.

Tara Mueller said her son struggled to learn the alphabet when he was in kindergarten and could barely sound out words by the time he was in third grade. Mueller took him to a specialist, who diagnosed him with dyslexia. She said teachers would not acknowledge her son's condition.

Mueller decided to go back to school to become a special-education teacher to help her son and found teacher preparation programs do not address dyslexia. She hopes the new legislation will help improve education.

"It's going to change the landscape for kids like my son," Mueller said.

"Now we can finally say dyslexia. We can say it."

Information from: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, http://www.stltoday.com