Aug 9, 2018, Fort Collins Coloradoan: Parents, Poudre School District struggle to help dyslexic kids keep pace with peers https://www.coloradoan.com/story/news/2018/08/09/poudre-school-district-dyslexia/899912002/ About 1 in 5 people have some symptom of dyslexia, according to the International Dyslexia Association. At its core, people with dyslexia struggle with word recognition, reading fluency, spelling and writing. … Joy Short is the director of the NOCO Dyslexia Center in Fort Collins. Before she started the center, she was a teacher in Denver. She didn’t know much about dyslexia until she left the classroom to tutor full-time and did research on her own. The center now has 50 students enrolled in regular tutoring, she said, and has screened 150 students in the last two years. It takes calls daily from parents looking to learn more. As a private practice center, Short said, it tends to attract families who feel they don't get enough support from public schools. NOCO Dyslexia Center has a list of PSD schools it deemed to have the proper support available — such as specific curriculum and tutoring — to help kids with dyslexia, Short said. They give it to parents who come in, but she declined to give the list to the Coloradoan in fear of flooding the schools with prospective students. There are four schools in Fort Collins, one in Windsor and one in Loveland on the list, she said. There are 50 schools and four charter schools in PSD — so according to Short, about 8 percent of schools in the district make the list. "Our schools don’t commonly have the proper services,” Short said. “That’s where the problem stems from. ... But PSD and Thompson are working to change that, to get programs in." In the 2017-18 school year, 35.9 percent of the 2,541 special education students enrolled in PSD fell under the "specific learning disabilities" category that includes dyslexic students, according to the district's website. Heather Bakas said she had a hard time getting the right help for her son at first. He had reading interventions and tutoring early on, but they didn't help much. She later learned those methods didn't work for dyslexic students, she said. … Now the district is working to increase teacher awareness of dyslexia. “Teachers may have heard the word (dyslexia),” Stahl said. “But their level of exposure depends on their courses at the university level.” According to materials provided by the district, PSD created a district-wide roll out plan to increase awareness this year. The district asked each elementary school to identify two teachers to participate in a group focused on dyslexia and struggling readers. … Over the summer, Melissa and Rob enrolled Will in Rocky Mountain Camp, a summer camp for dyslexic kids they heard about on the radio. It’s a five-week camp based in Evergreen, 90 miles from Fort Collins. Payne enrolled her son in the camp, too. … Tuition costs about $6,000. Couple that with Will's tutoring — two hours of private tutoring each week at $50 per session — and the cost of private help to catch up can add up. …
top of page
Childhood Lost
Children today are noticeably different from previous generations, and the proof is in the news coverage we see every day. This site shows you what’s happening in schools around the world. Children are increasingly disabled and chronically ill, and the education system has to accommodate them. Things we've long associated with autism, like sensory issues, repetitive behaviors, anxiety and lack of social skills, are now problems affecting mainstream students. Blame is predictably placed on bad parenting (otherwise known as trauma from home).
Addressing mental health needs is as important as academics for modern educators. This is an unrecognized disaster. The stories here are about children who can’t learn or behave like children have always been expected to. What childhood has become is a chilling portent for the future of mankind.
Anne Dachel, Media editor, Age of Autism
http://www.ageofautism.com/media/
(John Dachel, Tech. assist.)
What will happen in another 4 years? How can we go on like this? This is a national (and international) problem of monumental proportions. We have an entire new class of children who cannot be accommodated by the system: many are manifestly neurologically impaired. Meanwhile, the government and the medical profession sleep on regardless.
John Stone,
UK media editor, Age of Autism
The generation of American children born after 1990 are arguably the sickest generation in the history of our country.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
It seemed to me that with rising autism prevalence, you’d also see rising autism costs to society, and it turns out, the costs are catastrophic.
They calculated that in 2015 autism cost the United States $268 billion and they projected that if autism continues at its current rate, we’re looking at one trillion dollars a year in autism costs by 2025, so within five years.
Toby Rogers, PhD, Political economist
bottom of page