Iowa Dept of Ed creates dyslexia task force; teachers lack expertise

Oct 19, 2018, Education Dive: [Iowa] Task force forms to boost support for students with dyslexia https://www.educationdive.com/news/task-force-forms-to-boost-support-for-students-with-dyslexia/540057/ The Iowa Department of Education has appointed a task force to focus on dyslexia and ensuring that more students are meeting reading goals by 3rd grade, according to WHOtv.com. Required by legislation passed this year, the task force will address areas such as screening students, the range of intervention options, teacher training and professional development, accommodations in the classroom and assistive technology. Iowa Department of Education Deputy Director David Tilly said in the article that roughly 20% of the state’s students have dyslexia, a learning disability in which individuals have difficulty attaching speech sounds to a word or learning how letters represent sounds. Recent coverage of dyslexia has also drawn attention to a lack of expertise among teachers in the area of reading instruction, as well as how some approaches to teaching reading are not well-suited to the needs of students with the disability.