Identical bills in the House and Senate propose adding dyslexia as a new and separate disability category under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
The legislation is drawing bipartisan support for attempts to modernize identifications for children with reading challenges, although some disability rights advocacy groups and education organizations caution the move could put struggling readers further behind.
Specifically, the 21st Century Dyslexia Act proposes that the IDEA definition of a "child with a disability" adds dyslexia as a 14th category of disabilities that qualifies a student for special education services.
Currently, dyslexia is named as one of several disorders under the specific learning disabilities category. The SLD category under IDEA can include a variety of disabilities and conditions that potentially make it challenging for students to "listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or to do mathematical calculations," according to IDEA's regulations.
SLD is among 13 disability categories under IDEA. Other categories include autism, hearing impairment, emotional disturbance and other health impairment.
With 32% of the students who qualify for IDEA classified under the SLD category in the 2022-23 school year, it is the largest of the 13 IDEA disability categories, according to the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics. In fall 2023, some 2.4 million students ages 5-21 qualified for IDEA under the SLD category, according to The Advocacy Institute.
Students with dyslexia may also receive school-based accommodations under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.
The Education Department does not collect data specifically on the number of students with dyslexia. According to the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity, dyslexia affects 20% of the population and represents 80% to 90% of all those with learning disabilities. It is the most common neurocognitive disorder, according to the center.
About 5% to 17% of children have dyslexia, and 50 states have passed legislation related to dyslexia, according to the National Center on Improving Literacy.
Debating dyslexia in the IDEA
The bills in Congress — S 3010 and HR 5769 — define dyslexia as an "unexpected difficulty in reading for an individual who has the intelligence to be a much better reader, most commonly caused by a difficulty in the phonological processing (the appreciation of the individual sounds of spoken language), which affects the ability of an individual to speak, read, and spell."
Versions of the legislation have been introduced in previous congressional sessions but were not acted upon. The current legislation, however, may see more activity since it is cosponsored by Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee that would debate the bill in that chamber.
“Despite dyslexia impacting one in five Americans, students are rarely tested,” said Cassidy, a physician, in an October statement announcing the reintroduction of the bill. “This legislation brings a common-sense approach to dyslexia, ensuring students have the resources they need to reach their full potential.”
Rep. Julia Brownley, D-Calif., co-chair of the Congressional Dyslexia Caucus, co-sponsored the legislation in the House. “Students with dyslexia face unique challenges and should have access to the resources and supportive learning environments they need to reach their fullest potential,” said Brownley in the October statement, Brownley added that she has a child who struggled with dyslexia in school.
An FAQ about the legislation posted by the Senate HELP Committee said most schools do not screen for dyslexia, meaning students often go unidentified. Without that identification and the resulting support, students can suffer from low self-esteem if they're unable to read, spell or write on par with their peers, even though dyslexia doesn't impact their intelligence, the FAQ said.
Meanwhile, some disability rights advocacy and education administration groups said that although they support increased awareness and support for dyslexia services in schools, they oppose this legislation for several reasons.
In a Dec. 8 letter to Cassidy and Rep. Erin Houchin, R-Ind., a co-sponsor of the legislation in the House, 27 organizations including the Council for Exceptional Children, the National Center for Learning Disabilities and the National Association of School Psychologists, highlighted these concerns:
- Adding dyslexia as a new IDEA category. The organizations said dyslexia does not account for all reading disability subtypes. For example, some students can read words well but not comprehend what they’ve read but nonetheless do not have dyslexia.
"Adding dyslexia as a distinct disability category distinguishes itself from reading comprehension deficits that are not primarily word-reading deficits," they said. But, in practice, it can be challenging to distinguish between these two types of reading struggles.
"Separating the specific learning disability category into subtypes could potentially delay services and complicate funding for service delivery," the letter said. "An identified disability is a starting point for action, not a recipe for specific interventions or services." - Using the proposed definition of dyslexia. The organizations said the legislation's definition of dyslexia implies the use of an IQ-achievement discrepancy model for determining if a student has a specific learning disability, including dyslexia. Under that model — which IDEA allows but doesn't require — schools identify a student as dyslexic if they are performing far below grade level but have an IQ that suggests they should be performing at average or above average compared to their peers.
The critics said this "wait to fail" approach lacks both validity and reliability and could delay needed interventions for struggling readers. - Maintaining exclusionary factors. The current definition of SLD includes factors that should not be considered when identifying a student with learning challenges. Those include ruling out learning challenges that primarily result from visual, hearing, or motor disabilities, intellectual disabilities or emotional disturbance, or from environmental and cultural factors or economic disadvantages.
These exclusionary factors are important to maintain, the letter said, so students aren't incorrectly or disproportionately identified.
Additional concerns focus on a reluctance to open IDEA to amendments by Congress that could be unrelated to the dyslexia debate. The last time IDEA underwent a significant reauthorization came in 2004. Several disability rights advocacy groups and education administration organizations have said they strongly oppose IDEA being amended by piecemeal.
A more comprehensive analysis and update of the law would be preferable, advocates have said. However, there's not much support from disability rights advocates and K-12 organizations for that route during the current Trump administration and its push to downsize and eventually eliminate the Education Department.
"We think it's very irresponsible for him [Cassidy] to mark up an education bill that amends federal education law in the midst of the upheaval that is going on right now," said Denise Marshall, CEO of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, which also signed the 2023 letter to Cassidy.
The HELP Committee's FAQ addresses the concerns about a major overhaul to IDEA by stating that adding dyslexia as a disability category would simply clarify that schools need to differentiate between SLD and dyslexia and determine the underlying reason for why a student is struggling to read. The document notes that autism was added as a separate IDEA disability category in 1990, which helped students with autism receive appropriate school-based services.
"Any concerns about opening up IDEA categories for dyslexia should be met with a reminder that categories are not meant to never change, but to be updated to reflect a modern understanding of disabilities," the FAQ said.
