We screen all children in the area of literacy each fall, winter, and spring. These screeners include phonological awareness, sight word recognition, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension, Students who score within the at-risk category will receive standard treatment protocol intervention based on the skill deficit hypothesized. If the student is not making an adequate rate of improvement in the standard treatment protocol intervention according to their progress monitoring graph, the student will be given a more in-depth diagnostic assessment to try to determine a more appropriate instructional matched intervention. All of our assessments (i.e., screeners, diagnostics, progress monitoring) are included in our Read Well Plan.
If the student is still not making progress, then we continue to move through our Multi-Tiered System of Supports, which could result in a special education evaluation for a specific learning disability in the area of reading. However, we do not diagnose students with dyslexia in schools, but we do provide supplemental evidence-based reading interventions to all students who are identified as at-risk readers. In addition, a parent can always make a referral and present outside evaluations in which the data would be considered by the school evaluation team. Depending on the results of the evaluation, a 504 plan or IEP may be written. The student would then receive accommodations and/or special education services as deemed appropriate.
