The Berkeley Unified School District agreed to settle a lawsuit claiming it failed to provide an appropriate education for students experiencing reading difficulties
. Lori DePole, co-director of Decoding Dyslexia California, explained why: Students who don’t receive support early on, in her words, “suffer from low self-esteem, anxiety and depression. A lot of them just give up on school.”
The program outlined in the BUSD settlement is fully aligned with the Ontario Right to Read recommendations. In California, a universal program known as FastTrack Phonics has been piloted in the state. For students in need of specific interventions, they are implementing the Wilson Reading System, in line with standards set by the International Dyslexia Association, and specifically recommended for Ontario.
The lack of support for students with dyslexia is a critical problem far beyond California. While the BUSD settlement was a tremendous breakthrough, system-wide initiatives, even with legal agreements, are no guarantee of adequate educational services. In the case of Ontario, implementation of the Right to Read recommendations ran into stiff resistance from literacy consultants and professors in many of the faculties of education.
Early literacy reform advocates such as Mount Saint Vincent University professor Jamie Metsala, who championed the
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