Dyslexia is identified as a person's difficulty to accurately decode, recognize and spell words. Parents of students with dyslexia are often frustrated by the inability of some schools to give their children a proper education. Changes have to be made in order to provide students with dyslexia the quality education that they deserve before it becomes a hinderance to them in the future.
For this reason, a group of parents and supporters are meeting legislators at the Missouri Legislature on Wednesday to propose some bills that could help improve the education provided for students with dyslexia, Springfield News-Leader reports. The meeting will also focus on addressing the many problems and concerns that students with dyslexia face every day at school.
How a visually impaired student & a student with #dyslexia read in #OneNote: https://t.co/eO1hrC4OWF via @suemcl1 pic.twitter.com/8mgmaNMyPx
— Microsoft Education (@Microsoft_EDU) March 29, 2016
The parents and supporters of improving the quality of education for students with dyslexia find it very important that the legislators become involved in this issue. "We want to make sure they are informed, since they don't sit on the education committee, about just how desperately this is needed," Decoding Dyslexia Missouri co-founder, Jennifer Edwards, told Springfield News-Leader.
One bill being addressed in the Missouri Legislature is about screening students if they have any learning disabilities. This bill, introduced by Representative Kathryn Swan and Senator Scott Sifton, involves screening all students for learning difficulties such as dyslexia and not just those students with poor grades.
Another bill being addressed in the Missouri Legislature and introduced by Representative Eric Burlison is about creating a Legislative Task Force on Dyslexia. This task force will focus on enforcing professional development programs for educators to make them better equipped for dealing with students with dyslexia.
The task force will also ensure that there is a specialist on dyslexia for school districts. But before these bills are approved by the Missouri Legislature, there are ways teachers can help students with dyslexia learn better.
"In a positive and encouraging environment, a dyslexic child will experience the feeling of success and self-value," Dyslexia.com shares. "An understanding of the pupil's specific difficulties, and how they may affect the student's classroom performance, can enable the teacher to adopt teaching methods and strategies to help the dyslexic child to be successfully integrated into the classroom environment."
