Arkansas: 95,000 kids have dyslexia; DoE forms partnership to help students
- Sep 6, 2025
- 2 min read
Sept 4, 2025, KUAF, Fayetteville, AR: Nelms Dyslexia Center and UofA commit to expanding dyslexia care
The Yale Center for Dyslexia reports about one in five Americans have dyslexia, the neurological-based condition that can mean difficulties with reading comprehension. Using that statistic as a yardstick, that means there are many children in Arkansas with dyslexia.
"That’s 95,000 children."
Patricia Elkins is the incoming national president of the Academic Language Therapy Association. She’s also a dyslexia therapist and works at Little Rock Christian Academy.
She said most children with dyslexia in Arkansas are served in special education classes.
“However, oftentimes, more often than not, those individuals have not had that high level of training needed to be able to help these children learn to read and learn to spell. And these are the children who most need the most highly trained person to provide those services,” Elkins said.
Yesterday, a new partnership was officially formed. It’s designed to create more qualified instructors to teach children with dyslexia. They’re called Certified Academic Language Therapists, or CALTs.
The Nelms Dyslexia Center in Fayetteville hosted yesterday’s formal signing of a memorandum of understanding between the center, the University of Arkansas, and the Academic Language Therapy Association. They’ll work together to make it more affordable for people to become Certified Academic Language Therapists.
The Arkansas Department of Education reports there are about 176 credentialed language therapists in the state. The Nelms Dyslexia Center estimates Arkansas needs at least one CALT in each school to sufficiently meet the needs of all students with dyslexia. That’s about 1,500 CALTs.
The pathway to becoming a CALT includes at least a couple of years of training.
Requirements include 200 hours of instruction from a qualified instructor and 700 hours of supervised practicum.. . .
University of Arkansas Chancellor Charles Robinson says the partnership with the Nelms Dyslexia Center is completely supported by the university.
“Because this falls squarely in our mission as a land-grant institution. That land grant means that we serve the state of Arkansas and we serve it wherever it needs service. And with regards to supporting K through 12 and developing the workforce that is necessary to serve these students who need this support and deserve this support, the University of Arkansas is 100 percent with you, Don, in doing that,” Robinson said.
If you’d like to hear more specifically about the creation of the Nelms Dyslexia Center and what happens there, you can find the report prepared by Ozarks at Large’s Jack Travis that aired on our program earlier this summer.
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