So What EXACTLY is Dyslexia? (Part II)

Originally published here on June 4, 2008.

(Read Part I.)

Below you will find a few of the more popular, formal definitions for dyslexia:

• According to the British Dyslexia Association dyslexia is "a combination of abilities and difficulties that affect the learning process in one or more of reading, spelling, writing. Accompanying weaknesses may be identified in areas of speed of processing, short-term memory, sequencing and organisation, auditory and/or visual perception, spoken language and motor skills. It is particularly related to mastering and using written language, which may include alphabetic, numeric and musical notation."


• The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Strokes says that dyslexia is "a brain-based type of learning disability that specifically impairs a person's ability to read. These individuals typically read at levels significantly lower than expected despite having normal intelligence. Although the disorder varies from person to person, common characteristics among people with dyslexia are difficulty with phonological processing (the manipulation of sounds) and/or rapid visual-verbal responding.


• The International Dyslexia Association says that dyslexia "is a language-based learning disability. Dyslexia refers to a cluster of symptoms, which result in people having difficulties with specific language skills, particularly reading. Students with dyslexia usually experience difficulties with other language skills such as spelling, writing, and pronouncing words. Dyslexia affects individuals throughout their lives; however, its impact can change at different stages in a person’s life. It is referred to as a learning disability because dyslexia can make it very difficult for a student to succeed academically in the typical instructional environment, and in its more severe forms, will qualify a student for special education, special accommodations, or extra support services."

The definitions have some common threads. The IDA's definition seems gear toward asserting the legal status of dyslexia as a educational disability. All three definitions are broad and general. And none are particularly clinical in the sense of providing much criteria for testing or for distinguishing people who have some of the symptoms but are not dyslexics from people who are dyslexics.

So now I'll return to my conversation recently on the International Reading Association's listserv for reading teachers. Hugo Kerr put forward a proposed definition for dyslexia as part of that discussion. I think the definition comes from his new book, but I haven't finished it yet. Hugo's definition is

An innate, neurological condition specifically disabling the acquisition and use of literacy.

You can find it here in a post he wrote to the Reading Teachers list, hosted by the International Reading Association. (You can read posts from the larger discussion here, in the archives of that listserv on the IRA's site.)

If you contrast Hugo's definition to the three put forth at the beginning of Part II here, it has some advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, it is more concise, more portable than any of the three definitions we started this piece with. The phrase "the acquisition and use of literacy" keeps us from having to specify particular problem areas and covers things that might be involved in literacy even though research hasn't discovered them yet.

Two words make the definition difficult to deal with. The first is innate. I'm not sure it's clear to us what is and what is not innate in humans yet. I know what the word means. I just don't know how we measure it. How do we determine whether a particular behavior is innate - especially if it is a behavior that emerges after birth during some developmental stage.

The second problem word for me is specifically. From discussions with Hugo on the listserv, he seems to me to feel that the problems commonly called dyslexia will eventually be attributed to disorders that don't primarily have to do with literacy. Hugo doubts that we'll ever identify a neurological disorder that specifically affects literacy. In fact, he has said repeatedly that he doesn't believe in dyslexia (for example here, in the listserv post from the IRA's site).

So why write a definition for something you don't believe in? My conclusion is that Hugo's definition is so narrow in order to define dyslexia out of existence. The definition is in itself a tool for helping to promote the idea that dyslexia doesn't really exist.

Does dyslexia exist? I'm not sure. I do know that it is a persistent concept. Over a century of work on the idea hasn't killed it yet. And I know that brain science is a relatively young field in light of the explosion of technology in the last 25 years.

As someone who provides reading interventions in an elementary school, my primary concern is with what prevents reading. Whether reading failure is the primary cause of some brain problem or is more secondary, the growing importance of literacy in our society probably makes literacy the most important area of impact.

One of the most common complaints about dyslexia research is that the definition is so poor. How do we know what we're testing for in an experiment? Hugo is among those who complain about that problem. Shoddy research: that's the accusation. The difficulty with that is that with the advances that have taken place in technology (and therefore in the types of data we can collect) we don't seem to be sure what we're looking for at the moment. The research is exploratory, and hopefully well soon know enough to design better research. That's how science works.

One thing that will not happen: we will never arrive at some final conclusion about dyslexia, one that allows us to simply say, "so there you have it." That's not how science works.

Want to know exactly what dyslexia is? Ask me again in 10 or 15 years...

So What EXACTLY Is Dyslexia? (Part I)

Originally published here on June 3, 2008.

That is the ten thousand dollar question...

I recently participated in a discussion on the International Reading Association's listserv for teachers, a discussion in which the exact definition of dyslexia featured prominently. As a backdrop to that discussion, let me show you what I found when I went looking for a definition online.

• Speakability, a UK-based support group for people with aphasia, defines dyslexia simply as "difficulty reading."


• The Communications Forum, another UK-based support group for people with communications disorders, dresses their definition up with a few details: "Difficulty with written language. Dyslexia affects reading, spelling, writing, memory and concentration. Sometimes called a specific learning difficulty. Dyslexia can be developmental or acquired."


• Shannon Booth, a neuroscience major at a college in Minnesota, has a definition online that seems simplistic to me, but reflects common perceptions: "A disorder where things are done or read backwards. For example, a "d" and a "b" might be confused."


• inURarea, a UK-based childcare group, expands the definition slightly to exclude some reading problems based on "sensory defect" and specify that it is a neurological condition: "Difficulty in reading due to a defect of brain function other than sensory defect."


• The Nebraska Department of Education says dyslexia is "a developmental reading disability, presumably congenital and perhaps hereditary, that may vary in degree from mild to severe."


• Child Care Aware defines dyslexia as "an impairment in the brain's processing of information that results in difficulty reading, spelling, writing, and related language skills."


• One high school science teacher says that dyslexia is an "impairment in the visual cortex that leads to difficulty in learning to read, write, or spell."

You can probably guess from those seven examples that definitions of dyslexia are spread out along a continuum ranging from the simple two word "reading difficulty" to formulas that are tediously long and complicated. They also range from vague generalities (half the people I know have difficulty reading) to somewhat more specific ideas (like being congenital and hereditary) and the nature and location of the disorder.

The term "dyslexia" was coined by an eye doctor in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1881. While the scientific community has been tinkering with the condition for over 125 years, most of the definitions during the first hundred years are best described as "exclusionary." That is to say that a doctor or therapist would exclude causes for poor reading (is it poor eyesight?...no; is it low IQ?...no; is it a hearing problem?... no; is it lack of access to education?...no), and when the doctor ran out of other choices, the reading problem was determined to be dyslexia. Theories existed about what caused dyslexia, or how dyslexia worked to cause the problems seen in a patient; but the technology to test those theories, to observe brain function, didn't exist until recently.

The growth of linguistics led to new ideas about dyslexia in the 1970's - ideas that revolved about brain function and the processing of the sounds in a language. Phonemic awareness has become one focus of research into dyslexia. If children had some problem identifying the psychological sound units of their language, associating those sounds with symbols (letters) would obviously present problems - and reading would be affected.

The development of neuroimaging in the 1980's and 90's has further served to promote research into dyslexia. It is now possible to observe some aspect of brain function in a living person without invasive techniques like surgery. And far more data on brain function can be obtained than was possible in the past.

Richard Allington PodCast on Response to Intervention

Originally published here on March 26, 2008.

If you're looking for some insight into RtI, there's an excellent podcast available at the International Reading Association's website. If clicking on the word "podcast" above doesn't get it for you, you can go here and you'll find the podcast under "online resources" about halfway down the page.

I'm a fan of Richard Allington - and not just because he teaches at the University of Tennessee (thoguh I do know all the words to "Rocky Top"). Dr. Allington is a past president of the IRA and has several good books out.

Among the insights in this 13 minutes podcast (the download is about 12 megabytes):

• RtI does not necessarily mean a three-tier model


• Not all RtI curriculum are appropriate for all reading problems (duh)


• There is not a huge amount of research yet to show that RtI will be effective

I especially appreciated two points he made. First, in order for an RtI curriculum to be useful in solving the problem of a student being behind, it has to deliver more than a year of progress in one year. It doesn't help (not much, at least) to take a student who is two years behind and learning 5 months worth of skills each year, and put that student in an intervention program that gets them to learn seven months worth of skills a year. Slowing the rate at which students fall behind is not the goal. The goal is for them to catch up. Second, students are rarely the problem. If a program doesn't work, it's probably because the program isn't suited for that student.

I also learned a new term: sound outable. Dr. Allington used that phase a couple of times. I'd never heard that before; usually I hear people say "decodable." I smiled and put the term away for later use...

Listen to Dr. Allington's podcast on RtI.

Thoughts on Response to Intervention as a Means of Identifying Learning Disabilities

Originally published here on March 25, 2008.

As an IRA member, I subscribe to the International Reading Association's listserv. Recently, someone brought up the subject of response to intervention and how it relates now to identifying learning disabilities. I thought I'd share my statements on the listserv here, as well...

My perspective is this:

1. RTI is a useful model; but it is a concept, not a curriculum. How effective it is depends on what specific curriculum package you're using.


2. Abandoning the old discrepancy model allows students with real disabilities to be identified and placed earlier - sometimes MUCH earlier. That's good.


3. Reading and/or learning disabilities come in varieties. They are not homogeneous and generic. RTI may serve to tell you that there is a problem, but it will not necessarily tell you what the problem is. Figuring that out may require some sort of a more technical cognitive evaluation (which may or may not include an IQ test). Federal law no longer REQUIRES IQ tests to legally identify learning disabilities, but psychological or cognitive tests are sometimes still useful.


4. The old discrepancy model provided a mathematical definition for learning disabilities (achievement is 71, IQ is 88, in our state that big of a discrepancy implies a learning disability). RTI by itself leaves much more room for professional judgment - and people will disagree when a committee sits down to discuss it. One person will say, "Johnny is responding to our intervention; so he doesn't seem to me to have a disability." Another person will say, "Johnny's response to our intervention, while it exists, is not adequate to allow him to ever catch up with his peers; so he DOES seems to me to have a disability." At the end of the discussion the group will either flip a coin to decide whether to place Johnny in special education or fall back on other tools for determining whether he has a disability.

As I understand IDEA 2004, it says that:

• the discrepancy model cannot be used exclusively by your state anymore


• RTI has to be one choice available for considering whether a student has a learning disability


• and your state is free to look for other methods of determining whether a student has a eligible disability.

I don't think IDEA 2004 makes clear exactly HOW you use RTI decide whether a student has a disability. It is a marvelous general education tool, especially when employed as Allington suggested, in a manner where they curriculum in the tiers compliment each other instead of competing with each other. It may well prevent reading disabilities in particular children from becoming such profound problems that the child will have to be identified as needing special education services. But it's effectiveness and usefulness in identifying learning disabilities is only now beginning to be tested...

The role of RtI in identifying learning disabilities is sure to be the topic of much more discussion as IDEA 2004 gets further implemented in individual states...

Integrating RTI with Cognitive Neuropsychology

Originally published here on March 10, 2008.

I attended Dr. Steven Feifer's session this morning on the cognitive neuropsychology of reading. Dr. Feifer is a school psychologist who now works in Maryland and I enjoyed the session enough to buy his new book.

Dr. Feifer discussed the areas of the brain that process reading. He answered my question about whether dyslexia is genetic. He said that it is inherited, but pointed out that there are a variety of factors that influence each other and that the issue was a little more complicated than a "yes" or "no" question allowed for.

Dr. Feifer looked at the nature of reading (learning) disabilities and at the brain activity behind different reading problems. I asked him if he thought that learning disabilities could be prevented (something I've been skeptical about) and his answer was that if we catch problems early enough and apply the proper types of interventions with those problems, that good instruction can change brain chemistry - and that yes, we can actually prevent disabilities. He was convincing and I'll now have to delve more deeply into the research on that issue...

Dr. Feifer was also very practical in his suggestions as to how to decide which interventions to use with what reading problems you see in a student.

I enjoyed Dr. Feifer and I look forward now to reading his book...

Is Response to Intervention a Money Grab?

Originally published here on March 8, 2008.

Dr. John Wills Lloyd published a short post on Response to Intervention (RtI) on Wednesday at his Teaching Effectively! blog. Dr. Lloyd is a professor at the University of Virginia's Curry School of Education and has been on the faculty there for 30 years now.

Dr. Lloyd linked to a video by George Buzzetti, from the Association for Accountability and Equitable Education. I listened to the video a couple of times. You can listen yourself and see if you hear the same things...

Buzzetti sounds as though he believes that RtI (as it is set forth in IDEA 2004 related to the process of identifying learning disabilities) is little more than a tool for moving special education funding into the general funds of school districts. Under IDEA 2004 a school district can use 15% of Federal special education funding to work with general education students who haven't yet been placed in special education. According to Buzzetti, school systems can also mirror that process with state special education funds; whether that's true nationwide or just in California where he works is unclear to me.

Buzzetti goes on to say that not only does funding from special education get used to work with general education kids under this scheme, he points out that the goal of RtI is to reduce the number of students in special education - and that that would also reduce special education funding. Buzzetti's conclusion is that IDEA 2004 and the RtI approach to identifying learning disabilities could reduce the money being spent on children with disabilities by as much as 50% in some districts (at least in California).

Is Buzzetti right? Well, I'd say he's both right and wrong. IDEA 2004 does allow special education money to be spent on services to general education children in the framework of RtI. But I think it also allows specialists outside the framework of special education (Title I reading specialists, for example) to be used to provide direct services to special education students.

I work at a school that implemented RtI this year. I'm a special education teacher providing Tier II and Tier III instruction to mixed groups of special education and general education students. I provide RtI instruction in those tiers to four different grades. The special education students that are in those classes have their needs met along side general education peers, which makes me feel good about least restrictive environment issues. And the truth is that some of the general education students in my RtI classes have disabilities that just haven't been formally identified yet. I like that fact that someone trained in disabilities (like me) is already working with them.

It's not like a child comes into an eligibility committee meeting one day without a disability and leave with one just because the committee recognized his disability and placed him. So while Buzzetti is right when he says that we 're moving money, I'm not sure that bothers me as a special education teacher. And I don't see the instant cynicism in it that he seems to see.

Will we reduce the number of students placed in special education by using the RtI model? I expect two things to happen. First, I expect some students to be place in special education by the first or second grand when before they might have had to wait until the fourth (or even fifth) grade because of the nature of the old discrepancy model. I think that's a good change. I also expect some children to be kept out of special education who might otherwise have eventually been placed. I'm less sure how I feel about that...

Can we prevent learning disabilities? I've expressed my doubts on that topic elsewhere. The discrepancy model was broken. The RtI model seems to leave a lot of room for ambiguity in the process. If most learning disabilities are caused by dyslexia (which seems to be true) and dyslexia is a genetic, neurological condition (there's some evidence of that) - I have a hard time believing that RtI will prevent dyslexia.

The question is this: Do we have a clear enough idea of what constitutes a learning disability?

I don't think identifying learning disabilities less often is the same thing as preventing them. And I think that the answer to the above question is probably "no."