The Legacy of Reading Failure

I am the parent of a child with a reading disability, but I have also worked with UO reading researchers for nearly 20 years.

I support this bill because I believe all children have the right to learn to read. For most children, that means explicit, systematic, instruction. 

It took 2 full years of complete reading failure and an evaluation for reading disabilities to get my son help at school. He received so little instruction in kindergarten that we didn’t know he was a struggling reader until first grade. And yet, with a poor curriculum and lack of evidence-based instruction, my son continued to fail while getting no support at school. 

My son was diagnosed with suspected dyslexia and anxiety related to reading the summer before 3rd grade, but it took the first 3 months of that year to get him any services. I thought that once he was identified with a disability that everything would get better. It did not.

I try very hard not to think about the what if’s in my son’s life. What if I had pushed harder to get help sooner? What if he had received evidence-based instruction? Mostly I ask why he wasn’t given that chance to succeed in the earliest grades. He has a reading disability, but he is also a curriculum casualty of our faulty system. 

The legacy of poor reading curriculums and instruction for my son are

• The years it took to reduce his fear and trauma about reading.

• The years of lost electives so he can have a class for extended work time.

• The accommodations in his IEP that are rarely met.

• The thousands of dollars and time spent on tutoring in explicit, systematic reading instruction for the last 8 years.

• And the extra time and effort he has to put into reading and writing compared to his peers.

My family has the time and resources to help my son succeed, But there are so many families who can’t pay for private evaluations or tutors, and who don’t have the time to advocate. There has to be systematic statewide change because my son’s story is NOT unique.

This bill is a first step to giving kids the chance that my son never had.