[House Hearing, 114 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
DYSLEXIA AND THE NEED TO READ:
H.R. 3033, THE RESEARCH EXCELLENCE
AND ADVANCEMENTS FOR DYSLEXIA ACT
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
September 30, 2015
__________
Serial No. 114-41
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov
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COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HON. LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas, Chair
FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., ZOE LOFGREN, California
Wisconsin DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
DANA ROHRABACHER, California DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland
RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas ERIC SWALWELL, California
MO BROOKS, Alabama ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois AMI BERA, California
BILL POSEY, Florida ELIZABETH H. ESTY, Connecticut
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky MARC A. VEASEY, Texas
JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma KATHERINE M. CLARK, Massachusetts
RANDY K. WEBER, Texas DON S. BEYER, JR., Virginia
BILL JOHNSON, Ohio ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado
JOHN R. MOOLENAAR, Michigan PAUL TONKO, New York
STEPHEN KNIGHT, California MARK TAKANO, California
BRIAN BABIN, Texas BILL FOSTER, Illinois
BRUCE WESTERMAN, Arkansas
BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia
GARY PALMER, Alabama
BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia
RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana
DARIN LAHOOD, Illinois
C O N T E N T S
September 30, 2015
Page
Witness List..................................................... 2
Hearing Charter.................................................. 3
Opening Statements
Statement by Representative Lamar S. Smith, Chairman, Committee
on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
Representatives................................................ 5
Written Statement............................................ 6
Statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Ranking
Member, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House
of Representatives............................................. 11
Written Statement............................................ 12
Witnesses:
Ms. Barbara Wilson, Co-Founder and President, Wilson Language
Training
Oral Statement............................................... 14
Written Statement............................................ 16
Dr. Paula Tallal, Senior Research Scientist, Center for Human
Development, University of California, San Diego; Adjunct
Professor, Salk Institute for Biological Studies; Founder and
Director, Scientific Learning Corporation
Oral Statement............................................... 24
Written Statement............................................ 27
Dr. Rachel Robillard, Assistant Director, 504 Services and
Response to Intervention, Austin Independent School District
Oral Statement............................................... 42
Written Statement............................................ 44
Discussion....................................................... 56
Appendix I: Additional Material for the Record
Letter submitted by Representative Lamar S. Smith, Chairman,
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
Representatives................................................ 74
Documents submitted by Ms. Barbara Wilson, Co-Founder and
President, Wilson Language Training............................ 76
Slides submitted by Dr. Paula Tallal, Senior Research Scientist,
Center for Human Development, University of California, San
Diego; Adjunct Professor, Salk Institute for Biological
Studies; Founder and Director, Scientific Learning Corporation. 111
Document submitted by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson,
Ranking Member, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
U.S. House of Representatives.................................. 154
Prepared statement submitted by Representative Elizabeth H. Esty,
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
Representatives................................................ 157
DYSLEXIA AND THE NEED TO READ:
H.R. 3033, THE RESEARCH EXCELLENCE
AND ADVANCEMENTS FOR DYSLEXIA ACT
----------
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2015
House of Representatives,
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
Washington, D.C.
The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:07 a.m., in Room
2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Lamar Smith
[Chairman of the Committee] presiding.
Chairman Smith. The Committee on Science, Space, and
Technology will come to order.
Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare
recesses of the Committee at any time.
Welcome to today's hearing, ``Dyslexia and the Need to
READ: H.R. 3033, the Research Excellence and Advancements for
Dyslexia Act.''
Let me say we welcome everyone here today but particularly
those who are under 18, and it's nice to see them represented
in the audience.
I'm going to recognize myself for an opening statement, and
then the Ranking Member.
Today's hearing is on H.R. 3033, the Research Excellence
and Advancements for Dyslexia, or READ, Act, and the need to
prioritize investments in dyslexia research conducted by the
National Science Foundation.
I want to thank the many co-sponsors of the READ Act,
especially former Science Committee Member, Representative
Julia Brownley. We co-chair the bipartisan Congressional
Dyslexia Caucus. The caucus now has more than 100 Members of
Congress. Together, we champion an increased public awareness
of dyslexia, which affects an estimated 8.5 million
schoolchildren and one in six Americans in some form.
Despite this huge number, many Americans remain
undiagnosed, untreated and silently struggle at school or work.
Too many children undiagnosed with dyslexia have difficulties
in the classroom and sometimes drop out of school and face
uncertain futures.
In a hearing last year on the science of dyslexia--one of
the best-attended hearings of this Committee--experts testified
how research in the area of neuroscience has led to practical
ways of overcoming dyslexia and why more research was
necessary. Parents and teachers both must receive training in
how to identify and test students for dyslexia. And the
development of special curricula and educational tools can
better enable students to read at their fullest potential.
The expert witnesses at our hearing were clear, Dyslexia is
the most common reading disability, yet those who suffer from
it often have normal or above-average intelligence. There is no
proven correlation between dyslexia and intelligence. Albert
Einstein had dyslexia, and Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Nicholas
Tesla, Thomas Edison and Steve Jobs are a few of the most
recognized, brilliant innovators and inventors who overcame
dyslexia.
With more research, greater awareness of how to identify
dyslexic students, better curricula and more resources in the
hands of parents, teachers and students, we can develop the
potential of many of those students who might become the next
Einstein. But if you can't read, it's hard to achieve.
The READ Act is a step in the right direction to help those
with dyslexia. The bill ensures that our children have the
means to succeed.
The READ Act requires the National Science Foundation
budget to include a specific line item for the Research in
Disabilities Education program. The bill authorizes at least $5
million annually for merit-reviewed, competitively awarded
dyslexia research projects. It uses funds already appropriated
for the NSF Research and Related Activities account or the
Education and Human Resources Directorate for those projects.
It does not increase overall federal spending at the NSF.
The READ Act supports the practical research our expert
witnesses said is most needed: early identification,
professional training for teachers and administrators about
dyslexia, and evidence-based educational tools and curricula.
This is well within the scope of NSF's current science,
technology, engineering, and mathematics education programs.
Our witnesses today have personal experiences with this
issue. They routinely help students with dyslexia in the
classroom and identify students who can benefit from additional
instruction tailored for their unique situation. They develop
practical curricula to help children and adults with dyslexia.
And some are parents of dyslexic students who want to make a
difference not only in their children's lives but also in the
lives of others.
And we'll put something up on the big screen right now.
October is Dyslexia Awareness Month. One year ago, in
conjunction with our Science of Dyslexia hearing, the Web site
Understood.org was launched. This Web site provides some tests
for dyslexia and other resources. Since Understood.org went
live, over six million people have visited the Web site and it
now attracts about one million different visitors each month.
After today's hearing, I would like to welcome Members of
the Committee to a reception in room 2325 down the hall being
hosted by the National Center for Learning Disabilities along
with the International Dyslexia Association, Decoding Dyslexia,
the Learning Disabilities Association of America, Dyslexia
Advantage, and Learning Ally. By the way, I said just Members
of the Committee, I mean everybody in this room is welcome to
that reception down the hall in that direction.
For many people, dyslexia is considered a disability. But
if we change the way we approach this subject, we can turn that
disability into an opportunity for a brighter and more
productive future.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Smith follows:]
Prepared Statement of Committee Chairman Lamar S. Smith
Welcome to today's hearing on H.R. 3033, the Research Excellence
and Advancements for Dyslexia or READ Act, and the need to prioritize
investments in dyslexia research conducted by the National Science
Foundation (NSF).
I thank the many co-sponsors of the READ Act, especially former
Science Committee Member, Representative Julia Brownley. We co-chair
the bipartisan Congressional Dyslexia Caucus.
The caucus now has more than 100 Members of Congress. Together, we
champion an increased public awareness of dyslexia, which affects an
estimated 8.5 million school children and one in six Americans in some
form.
Despite this huge number, many Americans remain undiagnosed,
untreated and silently struggle at school or work. Too many children
undiagnosed with dyslexia have difficulties in the classroom and
sometimes drop out of school and face uncertain futures.
In a hearing last year on the science of dyslexia--one of the best-
attended hearings of this Committee--experts testified how research in
the area of neuroscience has led to practical ways of overcoming
dyslexia and why more research was necessary.
Parents and teachers both must receive training in how to identify
and test students for dyslexia. And the development of special
curricula and educational tools can better enable students to read at
their fullest potential.
The expert scientists at our hearing were clear: Dyslexia is the
most common reading disability yet those who suffer from it often have
normal or above-average intelligence. There is no proven correlation
between dyslexia and intelligence.
Albert Einstein had dyslexia. And Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo,
Nicholas Tesla, Thomas Edison and Steve Jobs are a few of the most
recognized, brilliant innovators and inventors who overcame dyslexia.
With more research, greater awareness of how to identify dyslexic
students, better curricula and more resources in the hands of parents,
teachers, and students, we can develop the potential of many of those
students who might become the next Einstein.
But if you can't read, it is hard to achieve. The READ Act is a
step in the right direction to help those with dyslexia. The bill
ensures that our children have the means to succeed.
The READ Act requires the National Science Foundation's (NSF)
budget to include a specific line item for the Research in Disabilities
Education program. The bill authorizes at least five million dollars
annually for merit-reviewed, competitively awarded dyslexia research
projects.
It uses funds already appropriated for the NSF Research and Related
Activities account or the Education and Human Resources Directorate for
these projects. It does not increase overall federal spending at the
NSF.
The READ Act supports the practical research our expert witnesses
said is most needed: early identification, professional training for
teachers and administrators about dyslexia, and evidence-based
educational tools and curricula. This is well within the scope of NSF's
current science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)
education programs.
Our witnesses today have personal experiences with this issue. They
routinely help students with dyslexia in the classroom and identify
students who can benefit from additional instruction tailored for their
unique situation.
They develop practical curricula to help children and adults with
dyslexia. And some are parents of dyslexic students who want to make a
difference not only in their children's lives but also in the lives of
others.
October is Dyslexia Awareness Month. One year ago--in conjunction
with our Science of Dyslexia hearing--the website Understood.org was
launched. This website provides some tests for dyslexia and other
resources.
Since Understood.org went live, over six million people have
visited the website and it now attracts about one million different
visitors each month.
After today's hearing, I would like to welcome members of the
Committee to a reception in room 2325 down the hall being hosted by the
National Center for Learning Disabilities along with the International
Dyslexia Association, Decoding Dyslexia, the Learning Disabilities
Association of America, Dyslexia Advantage, and Learning Ally.
For many people, dyslexia is considered a disability. But if we
change the way we approach this subject, we can turn that disability
into an opportunity for a brighter and more productive future.
[The bill follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Smith. That concludes my opening remarks, and the
Ranking Member, the gentlewoman from Texas, Ms. Johnson, is
recognized for hers.
Ms. Johnson of Texas. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman,
and good morning. I appreciate that you are holding this
hearing. I want to thank all of our witnesses for being here
today, and I look forward to hearing your testimony.
I have known several people who have dyslexia. Although
dyslexia is a lifelong condition, if someone gets proper
diagnosis and instructions, they can succeed in school and go
on to have successful careers. I would not be surprised if we
didn't have some examples in this room today. I know some very
personally who are very successful.
The Science, Space, and Technology Committee oversees most
of the federal nondefense R&D, but we do not directly oversee
the lead agency for dyslexia research, which is NIH. Moreover,
we do not oversee the Department of Education, which supports
educational programs and provides services for students with
learning disabilities, including dyslexia. However, we do
oversee the National Science Foundation, which supports
fundamental research that provides a foundation for dyslexia
research as well as educational research. Although several of
the directorates at NSF fund research that contributes to the
science of dyslexia, the majority of the NSF-funded research
relating to dyslexia is supported by the Social, Behavioral,
and Economic Sciences Directorate, and the Education and Human
Resources Directorate--two important NSF Directorates. For
example, the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences
Directorate funded the Science of Learning Centers program,
which supported six large-scale, long-term, interdisciplinary
centers that have made significant contributions to learning
research.
I look forward to hearing from Dr. Tallal about the
Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center of which she is a co-
Director. This Center focuses on understanding the role that
timing plays in learning and applying that research to
improving educational tools and practices. Since processing
language is one of the fastest things that we do, it is clear
that timing plays a critical role in understanding speech and
language. While the Centers program is not awarding new grants,
SBE continues to be a leader in funding the science of learning
research.
Today we are going to talk about H.R. 3033, the Research
Excellence and Advancements for Dyslexia, or the READ Act. This
bill would require NSF to have a line item for the Research in
Disabilities Education program in NSF's Education Directorate
and to fund at least $5 million a year on dyslexia research.
The research would be on the science of dyslexia, including the
early identification of individuals with dyslexia, professional
development for teachers and school administrators, and
curricula development and educational tools. I fully support
funding more research in language-based learning disabilities,
including dyslexia.
But I do have to point out that this bill does not provide
NSF with additional money to fund that research. Rather, it
requires NSF to use existing funding. Although I support more
funding for dyslexia research, in the current environment of
flat research budgets, I would have liked to see additional
money provided for the priority in the bill.
But with that said, I do support the goals and intentions
of the legislation, and I want to thank our witnesses for being
here today. I look forward to the testimony, and I thank you,
Mr. Chairman, and I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Johnson of Texas follows:]
Prepared Statement of Committee Ranking Member
Eddie Bernice Johnson
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing. I want to thank
the witnesses for being here today. I look forward to hearing your
testimony.
I have known several people who have dyslexia. Although dyslexia is
a lifelong condition, if someone gets proper diagnosis and instruction,
they can succeed in schools and go on to have successful careers. I
would not be surprised if we have some examples of that in the room
today. The Science, Space, and Technology Committee oversees most of
the federal nondefense R&D, but we do not directly oversee the lead
agency for dyslexia research, which is NIH.
Moreover, we do not oversee the Department of Education, which
supports educational programs and provides services for students with
learning disabilities, including dyslexia.
However, we do oversee the National Science Foundation, which
supports fundamental research that provides a foundation for dyslexia
research as well as educational research.
Although several of the Directorates at NSF fund research that
contributes to the science of dyslexia, the majority of the NSF-funded
research relating to dyslexia is supported by the Social, Behavioral,
and Economic Sciences Directorate and the Education and Human Resources
Directorate-two important NSF Directorates.
For example, the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences
Directorate funded the Science of Learning Centers Program, which
supported six large-scale, long-term, interdisciplinary centers that
have made significant contributions to learning research.
I look forward to hearing from Dr. Tallal about the Temporal
Dynamics of Learning Center of which she is a co-Director. This Center
focuses on understanding the role that timing plays in learning and
applying that research to improving educational tools and practices.
Since processing language is one of the fastest things we do, it is
clear that timing plays a critical role in understanding speech and
language. While the Centers program is not awarding new grants, SBE
continues to be a leader in funding the science of learning research.
Today we are going to talk about H.R. 3033, the Research Excellence
and Advancements for Dyslexia or the READ Act.
This bill would require NSF to have a line item for the Research in
Disabilities Education program in NSF's Education Directorate and to
fund at least $5 million dollars a year on dyslexia research. The
research would be on the science of dyslexia, including the early
identification of individuals with dyslexia, professional development
for teachers and school administrators, and curricula development and
educational tools.
I fully support funding more research in language-based learning
disabilities, including dyslexia. But I do have to point out that this
bill does not provide NSF with additional money to fund that research.
Rather, it requires NSF to use existing funding.
Although I support more funding for dyslexia research, in the
current environment of flat research budgets, I would have liked to see
additional money provided for this priority in the bill.
But with that said, I do support the goals and intentions of this
legislation.
I want to thank the witnesses for being here today. I look forward
to your testimony and the Q&A.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back the balance of my time.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mrs. Johnson.
Before I welcome our witnesses, I want to note that
unfortunately Geraldine Tincy Miller from the Texas State Board
of Education is not able to testify today due to a death in her
family late last week. Ms. Miller shepherded bills through the
Texas State Legislature to help students with dyslexia and has
been an advocate on the issue for many decades.
Without objection, I would like to include in the hearing
record the history of dyslexia law that Ms. Miller wrote and
provided to the Committee.
[The information appears in Appendix ]
Chairman Smith. I would also like to include in the hearing
record a letter we received yesterday from Dr. Sally Shaywitz
of the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity. Dr. Shaywitz
testified last year before the Science Committee. Her letter
states, in part, ``The READ Act will help to put knowledge into
the science of dyslexia and to action more quickly. Everyone
who is a parent, teacher or researcher working with a dyslexic
child should support H.R. 3033, the READ Act.'' And without
objection, that'll be made a part of the record as well.
[The information appears in Appendix I]
Chairman Smith. Let me go to our witnesses.
Our first witness, Ms. Barbara Wilson, is the Co-founder
and President of Wilson Language Training, which provides
professional support to American educators. Ms. Wilson oversees
graduate and clinical courses to help students with language-
based learning disabilities. She has over 30 years of
experience in working with people with dyslexia. Ms. Wilson
received her bachelor's degree from Fitchburg State University
and her master's in education from Simmons College in
Massachusetts.
Our next witness, Dr. Paula Tallal, is the Senior Research
Scientist at the Center for Human Development at the University
of California San Diego. She also serves as an Adjunct
Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and is
the Founder and Director of the Scientific Learning
Corporation. Dr. Tallal is a Cognitive Neuroscientist and
board-certified Clinical Psychologist who has authored over 200
professional publications and holds several patents. Dr. Tallal
received her bachelor's degree from New York University and her
Ph.D. from Cambridge University.
Dr. Rachel Robillard, our final witness, is an Assistant
Director in the Austin Independent School District where she
helps to provide accommodations to students with disabilities.
She is recognized for the many improvements she helped
implement in how the school district approaches dyslexia
evaluation and intervention. She previously taught in several
Austin Schools and has taught in the Teacher Preparation
program at the University of Texas as well as in the
Educational Psychology Departments at both the University of
Texas and Texas State University. Dr. Robillard remains an
Adjunct Faculty at both universities. Dr. Robillard received
her bachelor's degree in elementary education and Spanish and
her master's and Ph.D. in educational psychology from the
University of Texas in Austin.
We welcome you all, and Ms. Wilson, if you'll begin?
TESTIMONY OF MS. BARBARA WILSON,
CO-FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT,
WILSON LANGUAGE TRAINING
Ms. Wilson. Thank you, Chairman Smith, for your dedication
to individuals with dyslexia and to all here working for the
betterment of their lives.
This is a critical time as many states are recognizing the
existence of dyslexia but need further guidance on how to
prepare their teachers to effectively teach these students and
how to implement the instruction with success.
Thirty years ago, I was hired to test students in grades K-
12 referred for an educational evaluation. I quickly realized
that by far the most common reason for referral was the
inability to read. Following testing, I led the team meeting to
determine an instructional plan. At first, I enthusiastically
shared what we would do to teach the child to read.
Unfortunately, that soon changed as I did many three-year
reevaluations that demonstrated that what we were doing was not
working. In fact, after three years without progress, the
students became even more desperately behind.
My search to help these students led me to Massachusetts
General Hospital's Language Disorders Unit, where I did
clinical training with individuals diagnosed with dyslexia
using a methodology called Orton-Gillingham. I was excited to
see that it worked, and also discouraged that this teaching
knowledge was limited in reach, often only available in private
schools costing $20,000 or more per year.
For five years I continued at Mass General Hospital part-
time, teaching adults diagnosed with dyslexia. Concurrently, I
founded the Wilson Learning Center with my husband, Ed.
Students who had long struggled despite IEPs and teachers'
efforts came to the Center to learn to read.
During this time, I developed the Wilson Reading System.
Soon I was invited to meet with special-education directors
from 10 nearby school districts who asked me to work with their
staffs. Parents were demanding that they teach like we did at
the Center. Thus, I shifted focus in 1988 to provide both
curricula and professional learning to teachers in public
schools.
My work with adults taught me that it was possible to teach
these individuals to read, but if they don't learn to do this
while still in school, too often their paths in life are filled
with significant failure and distress.
I wish I could tell you that the beginning of my story
could not be repeated in 2015 because all teachers are now well
prepared to teach students with dyslexia. Sadly, that is not
true. The same scenario plays out over and over again across
this country today. A student cannot read and is referred to
special education where teachers are unprepared to teach them.
It should not be this way. Research has identified the
necessary instruction the individuals with dyslexia need, as
the previous panel on the science of dyslexia shared with you.
Teachers desperately want to teach their students how to
read, but most teaching degree programs do not include the in-
depth practical work needed to gain the skills to do this with
their most challenged students. School districts throughout the
country have recognized this gap and contract with us to
provide the necessary training. At times, we are brought in as
the result of a due-process hearing for a student who is
desperately behind. Our extensive training yields a
certification and includes expert supervision of teachers as
they work with a student who has a significant reading
disability. Teachers who previously had earned their reading or
special-education degrees often express, ``Why didn't I learn
to do this before?''
Wilson has certified 25,000 dyslexia specialists in public
schools in 50 states, and we now partner with six universities
that embed the certification into their teaching degree
programs.
Individuals with dyslexia can absolutely learn to read if
working with a knowledgeable teacher under the right
conditions. I've witnessed thousands of students who were
unable to reach even basic words when they were past elementary
grades later learned to read with a well-trained teacher, go on
to college, and often chose careers in engineering and science.
Technology aids such as audio books can assist these
students, but they should not replace instruction that will
actually teach the student how to read independently. Further
advances in technology will help us scale effective instruction
to students, but teachers are also an important part of the
equation. Providing teachers with knowledge and skills is
necessary but not sufficient. Implementation science informs us
that successful results will only be realized if a school is
structured to enable these students to provide the needed
instruction.
I believe that the READ Act is important to bridge the gap
between what research says and what we should do for students
with dyslexia and what is actually done in our schools today.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Wilson follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Ms. Wilson.
And Dr. Tallal.
TESTIMONY OF DR. PAULA TALLAL,
SENIOR RESEARCH SCIENTIST,
CENTER FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT,
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO;
ADJUNCT PROFESSOR,
SALK INSTITUTE FOR BIOLOGICAL STUDIES;
FOUNDER AND DIRECTOR,
SCIENTIFIC LEARNING CORPORATION
Dr. Tallal. Good morning. I'm Paula Tallal, and I'm a
Research Scientist and Co-founder of Scientific Learning
Corporation, a neuroscience-based educational software business
that has been actively translating research aimed at
remediating language and reading problems for almost two
decades.
Today I'll testify to the fact that there is an epidemic of
reading failure that we have both the scientific evidence and
novel interventions to treat effectively. What we do not have
is an effective roadmap for implementing evidence-based tools
and technologies on a broad scale or a mandate for our schools
to use these evidence-based advances to help millions of
struggling readers.
The heartfelt message I wish to convey to you today is that
while failing to learn to read is not life-threatening, it
certainly can be life-destroying.
There's ample research that demonstrates that the factors
that cause reading failure begin well before the child enters
formal education. This research has shown that even in infancy,
the precursors to reading failure can be identified reliably in
the form of slow and inconsistent auditory processing. This
auditory-processing constraint cascades over the early years of
life, disrupting the development of succinct phonological
representations in the brain, oral language and ultimately
reading.
Processing the individual sounds or phonemes inside of
words is the fastest thing the human brain has to do. In order
to learn to read, a child must become aware that words are made
up of individual phonemes and it is the sounds that the letters
represent. This process is called phonological awareness.
Decades of research has demonstrated that failure to become
phonologically aware is at the heart of reading failure.
Put simply, when it comes to auditory processing, children
with language learning problems are operating on the equivalent
of dial-up speed while good language and reading skills require
a child to operate on the equivalent of high-speed internet.
Traditional tools for teaching reading, regardless of how
expertly or how often they're applied, will not work for most
struggling readers until these more foundational skills are
remediated. Throughout life but especially early in life, the
brain is literally shaped anatomically and physiologically by
experience. This experience-driven organization of the brain is
called neuroplasticity. Understanding neuroplasticity and the
variables that drive it has the potential to absolutely
revolutionize interventions for struggling readers by directly
remediating their auditory perceptional phonological awareness
and language problems.
In 1994, I began a collaboration with Dr. Michael
Merzenich, a world expert on neuroplasticity, with the goal of
integrating advances in neuroplasticity and learning disorders.
In the ensuing 20 years, both behavioral and neuroimaging
studies have demonstrated that the foundational auditory
processing and language skills known to lead to reading failure
are highly modifiable and can be brought into the normal range
in just a few months using intensive neuroplasticity-based
training exercises disguised as computer games.
We founded Scientific Learning Corporation to translate
these research advances into practice in classroom tools that
could broadly be scaled and efficacy tested in real-world
classrooms. These evidence-based educational tools are
distributed under the brand name Fast ForWord and Reading
Assistant and have been used in over 12,000 U.S. schools with
as many as 70,000 students a week. The cumulative efficacy data
obtained when schools implement these programs rigorously is
very positive, especially when compared longitudinally to
students' previous performance using traditional methods.
Thomas Gibbs Elementary School in St. Mary's Parrish,
Louisiana, is one of the many schools that have used Fast
ForWord and Reading Assistant. Before implementing these tools,
only 19 percent of fourth-grade students scored basic or above
in language arts on their statewide achievement tests, placing
the school in the bottom quartile statewide. After two years of
use, Thomas Gibbs School had moved into the top quartile
statewide with 81 percent of students now scoring basic or
above in language arts.
So here's my news flash. Research shows that reading
success relies on a solid foundation of rapid and consistent
auditory process and oral language. Traditional reading
approaches presuppose that a child has these foundational
skills, but this is just not the case. Not providing educators
with evidence-based tools to remediate the foundational
processing skills that are well known to be precursors to
reading failure is equivalent to demanding that a builder
construct the third floor of a school without having the tools
to build a sufficiently strong first and second floor, and then
wondering why the school keeps collapsing.
I'd like to close with some recommendations for H.R. 3033.
As Ms. Johnson mentioned, NSF has already recognized the gulf
between scientific knowledge and translation into education and
set out to bridge this gulf by creating six Science of Learning
Centers including the Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center at
the University of California San Diego, which I co-direct. The
ten years of funding of these Science of Learning Centers is
coming to a close. My first recommendation is to capitalize on
the advances these Centers have already made to design
professional development courses on the new science of learning
specifically as applied to early identification and remediation
of learning impairments. We must leverage existing federal
investment.
My second recommendation focuses on improving the
translational method itself. Translation and dissemination into
classrooms on the scale needed to address our epidemic of
reading failure is painfully and frustratingly slow. What is
urgently needed are actionable methods that result in
determining the equivalent of a one-lane country road from the
laboratory into the classroom into a bidirectional superhighway
to improve the prospects of the millions of children with
reading impairments for decades to come.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak to this important
bill, and I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Tallal follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Dr. Tallal.
And Dr. Robillard.
TESTIMONY OF DR. RACHEL ROBILLARD,
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR,
504 SERVICES AND RESPONSE TO INTERVENTION,
AUSTIN INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT
Dr. Robillard. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member
Johnson, and distinguished Members of the Committee for
inviting me to testify today. I appreciate the opportunity to
appear before you to discuss the importance of focusing on the
issue of dyslexia, a disability affecting one in six students
that unfortunately goes largely unnoticed in federal policies.
I currently coordinate all student 504 services for the
Austin Independent School District, where I oversee our
district's Dyslexia Services program. Our department works with
each of the 129 Austin campuses to provide professional
development and guidance to help teachers understand the
indicators of dyslexia, so we can identify students as early as
possible and provide the intervention that's needed. This is a
significant change from the previous model, and progress is
still not as swift as we would like.
We had approximately 2,000 students identified with
dyslexia when I began this process in 2013. With concerted
effort, we've now identified around 5,000 students, but that is
still only about five percent of our overall student population
in AISD.
In May of 2014, at the urging of a member of our Board of
Trustees, we began allocating funds to provide teacher training
so that some teachers could become certified academic language
therapists, or CALTs. A CALT can provide the most advanced and
efficacious type of dyslexia intervention available. Our goal
is to have at least one CALT for every campus. Eighteen months
into the program, we're now 61 teachers toward that goal. This
effort, fully funded by local dollars, comes at great cost to
the district and only provides training for one teacher per
school. However, additional professional development including
training and materials is made available for all K-12th grade
teachers so they can better understand dyslexia and how to
deliver curriculum in an accessible manner for all of the
identified students.
Dyslexia impacts 10 to 20 percent of students in K-12 with
varying levels of severity. Ideally, teacher preparation
programs would include coursework dedicated to identifying and
teaching students with dyslexia, a disability which has a high
rate of impact on literacy acquisition regardless of
socioeconomic status or race.
Ultimately, the greatest impact would be provided by
training all pre-service teachers to identify and teach
dyslexic students, making the possibility of having specialized
reading task forces for dyslexia at each campus a natural
byproduct.
In my position coordinating 504 services as well as in my
private practice as a neuropsychologist, I strongly encourage
support for the READ Act. Having specified annual funds devoted
to dyslexia research that focuses on best practices in early
identification, professional development for teachers and
administrators, and curriculum development and evidence-based
educational tools for children with dyslexia can only improve
the opportunities of all students to have access to an
education that allows each of them to learn to read.
At the university level, this would lead a shift toward
increased pre-service development in areas that address basic
reading deficits and their neurobiological etiology as well as
the understanding of language development and how it's
influenced by dyslexia. A few universities have such programs
but most do not address dyslexia in any format during pre-
service training. Lack of teacher training and understanding
the indicators of dyslexia causes students to be missed or even
misidentified as having other learning issues. Teachers deserve
this training.
Identifying dyslexia is only the first step of the process.
To fully address learning difficulties for dyslexic students,
we must keep the disorder in mind when designing classroom
instruction, implementing technology plans, planning for social
and emotional learning, understanding how to provide parent
support and engagement, and training our administrators to be
knowledgeable about appropriate identification and
intervention.
Dyslexia is not a disorder that can be compartmentalized.
It is not just a deficit but it carries with it inherent
strengths that have been recognized for decades. These might
include other areas of academic strength, creative ways of
thinking, more acute perceptual reasoning, and many other
traits.
When dyslexia goes unidentified and undiagnosed, these
strengths are often suppressed and the lack of understanding
frequently leads to both student and staff frustration. It is
not uncommon for unidentified dyslexic students to become
unmotivated or to have behavioral problems, and they often
perform significantly below potential academically.
Unidentified, their underlying strengths may never be
discovered.
The READ Act is a necessary flotation device to bring
scientific knowledge about dyslexia up to a more universal
understanding and to enhance our ability to make the practical
application of science to practice more seamless for educators
and students. Policies such as found in the READ Act will allow
dyslexic students access to early identification as well as
appropriate literacy instruction and the opportunity to develop
their potential to the fullest.
Our prison population is replete with dyslexic individuals
who have been identified too late. While dyslexia
identification and intervention is not likely to be the entire
answer to the school-to-prison pipeline, it certainly seems to
be a key factor that if better understood could be addressed in
a systematic and effective manner. We will all benefit at every
level by investing in research concerning dyslexia and all
issues related to that disorder.
Thank you for inviting me to testify.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Robillard follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Dr. Robillard.
It's my understanding that the gentleman from California,
Mr. Takano, has an urgent need to get to another meeting, so
I'm going to recognize him first for questions with the
understanding, of course, that he join the caucus and cosponsor
the bill.
The gentleman from California is recognized.
Mr. Takano. Mr. Chairman, I am already a member of the
caucus, I discovered, and I will announce my support and
cosponsorship of the bill.
Chairman Smith. The gentleman is recognized for an extra
minute.
Mr. Takano. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, I am so grateful for this hearing. I am so
grateful for the work you've already done and your leadership.
If we can do something about dyslexia in this country, we will
have done a great thing to help alleviate so much unnecessary
suffering among all sorts of people in our country. So I thank
you, thank you, thank you as a former teacher of 22, 23 years.
I've got to tell you, I began my teaching career armed with
an Ivy League degree, and I could analyze literature but I was
little prepared for the first ten years of my teaching career
to deal--I didn't even know I had dyslexic children in my
classroom and kids, and it wasn't until I did a literacy
training that I began to even scratch the surface. And once I
began to identify them--profoundly dyslexic students--I would
try to get them into special ed, but special ed was not
equipped--the teachers did not know how to address it. They had
no more knowledge about what to do with dyslexia than I did.
I had to try to teach myself but of course with all the
other things that are going on with a classroom teacher, that
sort of training--I mean, I needed training, and I'm just
eager, Mr. Chairman, to go visit--I hope that we might have a
chance to go visit some of these facilities and what they're
doing. I would like to know what it is--I mean, I learned
things like the inside-out strategy, you know, with blended
sounds at the beginning. I had a kid that could not read the
word ``strip'' because there were three consonants that begin
that word, and they struggled with it, but if we began from the
inside out and said ``rip, trip, strip,'' that was a strategy
that improved their ability to decode those words. I learned
about phonemic awareness. There is a science to this stuff, and
so I am excited.
I've asked my staffer to take a look at how we can review
the prison population and figure out how many of our prisoners
are dyslexic. That is an important thing for us to know.
So I am just so excited about this hearing, and there's so
much that can come of this.
So Dr. Tallal, I want to ask you a question. Why do so many
English-language learners and children from poverty struggle
with learning to read?
Dr. Tallal. Thank you for that really insightful question.
There's a good deal of research which I have covered
directly in my written testimony that I would ask you to
review, specifically on children from poverty and English-
language learners. I would like to say that children from
poverty also have linguistic impoverishment. That is, that
research has shown that the difference between children from
high-socioeconomic-class families and low-socioeconomic-class
families is a 30-million-word gap in the sheer number of words
they have ever been exposed to.
What we know from neuroplasticity research is that we
literally have to set our own brains up based on experience,
and the most important experience we get as an infant is the
sounds of our own native language. Language experience is what
we have to use to establish these basic phonological categories
to build our efficient and automatic auditory, rapid auditory
processing systems, and if we don't hear words, we're just not
going to have them, and so the end product is a problem with
rapid auditory processing, language developmental delay,
subsequently not having the foundations for literacy.
For children who are English-language learners, they have
not heard the sounds, the phonological sounds, that are
important for learning English, so they have to be given these
sounds in a very systematic way.
Mr. Takano. Systematic?
Dr. Tallal. Yes.
Mr. Takano. So the phonemic awareness, it's often very
tedious. It takes a lot of creativity for the teacher to be
able to develop that.
Dr. Tallal. This is where technology can come in.
Mr. Takano. Ah.
Dr. Tallal. Now, what technology has to offer is the
ability to offer more intense learning trials per unit time
than can ever be provided by a teacher no matter how well
trained they are because computers just can deliver much more
information with stimulus, response, correction and timely
rewards. So, what we often say at Scientific Learning
Corporation is let computers do what computers do best, which
is the repetition, repetition, repetition that the brain needs
to set up its own auditory and linguistic systems, so that
teachers can do what teachers do best. We need to focus on
giving teachers these new and improved technological tools that
allow them to build these fundamental processing and linguistic
skills so that by the time they try to use their more
traditional methods, they will actually have the ability for
them to work.
Mr. Takano. So the technology is really the basis--the
foundation, the physical foundation, the stimulus response, the
neural pathways in the brain----
Dr. Tallal. Right.
Mr. Takano. --to develop that fluency in being able to
decode words at the very physical level. We all have this
phenomenon--we know this phenomenon of ``I read it but I don't
understand it,'' and that's where the teacher comes in to be
able to--after the student is able to physically decode the
words to be able to work with that student in comprehension and
the critical thinking. So we need the teacher in the process
but at the very----
Dr. Tallal. Absolutely.
Mr. Takano. But at the very--but this--I hear what you're
saying because for the teacher to be able to do this with every
single student in a very tedious, systematic way, too much
labor involved and not the best use, but if there's a
technology, that's really promising news.
I have taken my six minutes, Mr. Chairman. I've got to
ironically get to Education and Workforce Committee. We've got
to do supplemental--I hope you will urge Chairman Kline and the
Subcommittee Chairman to also delve into this is great
bipartisan project. I love this, so thank you.
Chairman Smith. Great. I thank you, Mr. Takano. And also,
let me say I think Mr. Takano may be the only former teacher on
this Committee, so we appreciate the perspective that he
brings. By the way, if he's not the only former teacher, I will
be hearing about it shortly.
I'll recognize myself for questions, and let me address my
first one to Ms. Wilson.
You developed a reading system that led to ``rewiring of
the brain to function similarly to the brain of a good
reader.'' That is amazing. Can you describe that to us briefly?
Ms. Wilson. Yes. The reading--do you mean describe the
reading system briefly?
Chairman Smith. Yes, if you can.
Ms. Wilson. Yes. The Wilson Reading System is based on
Orton-Gillingham principles of instruction, or multisensory
structured language instruction. MSL programs work with
students to build up their understanding of the language
structure right from the beginning. So as you heard earlier,
the student needs to understand how to process sounds and
understand from what they hear how sounds work in words, and so
you go right back to the very beginning and do that with your
students.
That's the beginning step. The students really need to
understand how that sound system relates to the structure of
words in syllables and understanding prefixes and suffixes.
Phonology is one piece and morphology another. Morphology is
the study of the smallest units of meaning within words.
Chairman Smith. Right.
Ms. Wilson. So students need to understand everything about
language structure and its words, its sentences and text
structure.
Chairman Smith. Okay. Thank you.
By the way, you're familiar with a Shakespeare quote that
says, ``All's well that ends well''?
Ms. Wilson. Yes.
Chairman Smith. It sounds like you're saying all's well
that begins well.
Chairman Smith. Dr. Tallal, let me ask you a question, and
that is, what is the best way to detect dyslexia earlier, just
kind of what we're talking about across the board.
Dr. Tallal. Well, interestingly, the precursors to dyslexia
can be detected quite reliably even in infancy in the form of
slow auditory processing, and my colleague, Dr. April Benasich
at Rutgers University found that children that were born into
families with a family history of language learning problems
were 50 percent more likely to develop reading problems later
in life. She subsequently showed that the speed of auditory
processing of simply detecting differences between two brief
tones separated by small gaps of time was the single best
predictor in 7-month-old babies to subsequent oral language
development. Oral language development subsequently is the
single best predictor for reading and reading failure. So
there's this cascade which I call the language-to-literacy
continuum, which begins with slow auditory processing, which
interrupts the brain's ability to effectively and efficiently
process the sounds of language which are necessary, are the
necessary components, as we're hearing, for being able to hear
the small sounds in words and learn that those are the letters
that are in the words, and you can't really learn to read
without that.
Chairman Smith. Great. By the way, I liked your earlier
metaphors between the dial-up versus the high-speed internet
and the country road versus the superhighway. That's a nice
description.
Dr. Tallal. Thank you.
Chairman Smith. Dr. Robillard, this is really just
following the trend here, but what do you think is the quickest
and most efficient way to test and identify those with
dyslexia?
Dr. Robillard. We have good tools. I think that we need to
be applying them a lot earlier than we typically do. The tools
that we have I think could be improved upon, and I thoroughly
agree that that oral language, our speech pathologists that
identify our students at 3 and four years old for PPCD programs
in schools would certainly be our allies in really identifying
these students very early. The screening that they do for that
process could be expanded on fairly easily to identify these
students that are needing this early intervention.
Chairman Smith. Okay. Good.
I'd like to ask you all a question, and we can start with
Ms. Wilson. If you will each give me two strengths that you all
think are inherent with those with dyslexia? Ms. Wilson?
Ms. Wilson. Absolutely the perceptual strengths. So often
they make wonderful architects and have incredible ability to
see in different ways visually. Also, I think that they are
often intuitive and are great at reading people and reading
situations, and I have seen that in so many students who are
dyslexic, that they are great at perceiving other people's
emotions and strengths.
Chairman Smith. Okay. Dr. Tallal?
Dr. Tallal. Yes, I would agree that visual perceptual
strengths are often characteristic of individuals with
dyslexia. I don't know which came first, the inability to
process the rapid auditory signals and so the brain had to
compensate by developing stronger visual processing, but I
never cease to be amazed at the number of cameramen who come to
do interviews or whatever. It's not the person doing the
interview, it's the cameraman who will often come up to me
after the interview often with tears in his eyes about his own
personal struggle with dyslexia and the shame, so that's one.
The other is perseverance and hard work. I mean, don't ever
tell me that these kids aren't trying or don't care. They try
so hard. They just don't have the neural capacities set in
place, and we can give that to them. I mean, that's what's
exciting. We have the tools now to help them build this
foundational structure, and then everything else we're hearing
about is going to work better.
Chairman Smith. Absolutely.
Dr. Robillard?
Dr. Robillard. So I would agree with the perceptual
reasoning. I think that they're typically very creative
thinkers too. They have to think differently. They're typically
very bright and they figured out ways to compensate for not
being able to read, and so that helps them be very creative
thinkers, so they're often the people that come up with that
solution that nobody else thought of. And I think the second
characteristic that I see over and over again that I think
helps partially with that perseverance piece too, is they have
a great sense of humor.
Chairman Smith. Excellent. Thank you all very much.
The Ranking Member, the gentlewoman from Texas, Ms.
Johnson, is recognized for her questions.
Ms. Johnson of Texas. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I have not yet signed on to this bill, not because I don't
believe in it but because I need some clarifications on how
extensive the research is going to be.
And so Dr. Tallal, I'd like to know, you talked about some
research that you were doing and where some of it is coming to
a close. What we're proposing here, is that going to extend
your research or make it more comprehensive so we'll get all
students ailments involved in the research? Or tell me where
you are.
Dr. Tallal. Well, this might seem unusual for a research
scientist who has depended on government grants for a long time
for my research, but I would agree with Dr. Sally Shaywitz last
year that we have the knowledge that we need to improve the
outcomes of millions of children. We're just not using it
effectively. We don't have an appropriate roadmap so my
suggestions that I put into my longer report as well, my
written report, is that we capitalize on what we already know,
and that we really focus on the translational path itself
because it's so slow and tedious. We've been at this 20 years,
and we have very effective methods, but it's only been used at
12,000 schools, and that's just a drop in the bucket. We know
that we can do better but the translational method itself needs
a lot of work, and NSF can help with that. First of all, when
someone proposes to do a research study that says that it aims
to improve translation to education, show me the plan for where
it shows how it's going to be scaled up to the heterogeneous
schools, teachers with different kinds of training, and
students that's going to work because that is not a simple
thing.
Doing it in your own laboratory with well-trained
scientists is one thing. Getting it to work in the hands of
Mrs. Smith or Mr. Jones in the Thomas Gibbs School, that's a
very different thing, and to do that over and over again in 55
countries, which we've done, takes a lot of knowledge. We need
to use some of that knowledge.
Ms. Johnson of Texas. Have you read the bill?
Dr. Tallal. Yes, I have.
Ms. Johnson of Texas. What would you do to improve it?
Dr. Tallal. I would focus on this translational process
itself and including the professional development part, and I
would recognize that we need a two-way highway, a two-way
superhighway. Too often as researchers, we think our job is to
do outreach and teach everyone what we know. I've learned as
much from educators who are sitting in classrooms every day
that are struggling with the process as I can teach them. It's
got to be a two-way and a two-directional street, so I would
put something in the bill that really reinforces and gives
teachers and educators themselves the opportunity not only for
professional development but I've even suggested the
possibility of training grants or degrees for higher education
where teachers can do their own Ph.D.'s in their own classrooms
to try out some of the methods that are already coming from
research.
Ms. Johnson of Texas. Thank you very much.
Ms. Wilson, would you like to comment?
Ms. Wilson. I agree that implementation is the gap that we
need to address, and the more we can focus on that aspect of
the bill, I think that would be ideal because research has told
us what we need to do and we have seen what works in schools.
It is possible in public schools.
I recently coauthored with Dr. Michelle Duda a white paper
for Literature Nation that talked about the policy to
implementation gap. There is a science to implementation called
implementation science, and it talks about you can have an
effective intervention but that's only a small piece of it. You
need to have effective implementation and enabling context so
there's actually a formula that has been proven by
implementation science and it takes those three pieces of the
formula to get the intended results. I would like to have some
of the research look at looking at putting into practice that
formula.
Ms. Johnson of Texas. Thank you very much.
Yes?
Chairman Smith. Would you yield me the balance of your time
quickly?
Ms. Johnson of Texas. Yes----
Chairman Smith. Thank you. I wanted to get----
Ms. Johnson of Texas. --reluctantly.
Chairman Smith. Ms. Wilson, a question I didn't get to ask
you a while ago is, what's the difference in your approach to
young people versus adults when it comes to dyslexia?
Ms. Wilson. That's a wonderful question. I am so glad you
asked that because I would also love to see research focus more
on ``it's never too late,'' because as important as early
intervention is, and we know how important that is. In fact, if
you do not identify a student early and start teaching an
intervention in fourth grade as opposed to first grade, it
takes four times as long to teach that student how to read. So,
what happens as the student gets older? There's a lot more
failure that you're working to overcome. We know that IEPs
after fourth grade often do not include the types of things
that students with dyslexia need.
Chairman Smith. By the nodding of heads, everybody else
agrees with you. Good point. Thank you.
The gentleman from Arkansas, Mr. Westerman, is recognized
for his questions.
Mr. Westerman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Mr. Chairman, I
would also like to thank you for your lead that you've taken on
this issue. I know I'm a freshman here, but we talked about
this earlier, and I was excited that you're working so hard on
this. I told you about my wife, who's a special-ed teacher, and
the biggest advocate for me is her asking if I would sign on to
the Dyslexia Caucus, have I sponsored this bill yet.
I'm also happy that we've got a great bipartisan issue that
we can work on because it's for children in this country, and
it's really for our future, and it's so important that we teach
children to read at an early age because it helps them out all
through life. We all understand that.
As a matter of fact, as has been mentioned today, there's a
large body of research on dyslexia. We know what it is, we know
how to fix it, we know how to identify it. We've even got
fabulous technology that we can use in the process to help
correct dyslexia. But it's almost as if we've found the cure
for cancer, we've developed the drugs to heal cancer but we
can't get those drugs into the pharmacy and out to the people
who need them.
So I see this huge issue with implementation, and I can
tell you a personal story on this. I was in the state
legislature and I helped sponsor a bill in Arkansas to create
our dyslexia law much like Texas has done, and the bill passed.
Then we found out that the schools were totally unprepared to
implement this law. The teachers were not trained for it. We
found out that this training is not in the institutions of
higher education. I was glad to see, Ms. Wilson, that you said
there are six universities that are implementing your program
into their training, but I think we've got a huge gap at the
higher education level in training teachers, and actually I
think we're training teachers in reading programs that may even
be detrimental to helping children with dyslexia.
So I want to put a plug in for my home state. We're doing a
forum next March. Dr. Shaywitz is going to be there as a
keynote speaker. I'm doing this in conjunction with our
Department of Education. I'm going to have a forum there, and
the focus of my forum's going to be how do we improve this
implementation gap, and I just want to get your ideas on the
areas we need to address to help the implementation, to get the
teachers and the schools and the administrators trained and
motivated to apply these fabulous tools that we've got so that
we can help these kids and reap all the benefits of that, and
I'll start with Ms. Wilson.
Ms. Wilson. I find that special-education teachers are very
motivated. They themselves recognize that they don't have the
skills, and I think we heard that earlier as a teacher when
you're working with students and you're not making a
difference, you know it. So I think the motivation is there.
They just don't know what to do, and so the work with schools
and school districts really has to begin with the
administration and educating the administration as to what is
needed for the professional learning.
We develop plans with school districts called COMPASS plans
which are comprehensive plans that occur over one or two years
to help train teachers. We first work with the school district
to see where there are gaps, do they have teachers that are
trained and----
Mr. Westerman. I don't have a lot of time. I talked too
much.
I understand there are ways you can go into individual
schools, but in the bigger picture, we've got to train teachers
at the higher-education level, and I've seen a resistance for
the departments of higher education to take in these new--take
on these new programs. How do we infiltrate that and get
teachers taught this so that when they come out of college,
they're ready to help children?
Ms. Wilson. That is a major gap. The International Dyslexia
Association (IDA) has also taken on that issue. A paper was
written, The Knowledge and Practice Standards for Teachers of
Reading, and it's a great document that really outlines both
the knowledge and the skills that teachers need. It really
specifies that this is what we should be doing in colleges of
education. I was one of the coauthors of that papaer and IDA is
now working to get the word out to universities. There's so
much need absolutely at the university level.
Mr. Westerman. Thank you, and I guess I'm negative on
yielding.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Westerman.
The gentlewoman from Connecticut, Ms. Esty, is recognized.
Ms. Esty. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Ranking
Member Johnson, for holding today's hearing.
As the mother of three who's been in those first-grade
classrooms and seen very bright kids who are struggling, as
somebody who comes from a state where our Governor, Dan Malloy,
by his own admission is profoundly dyslexic, was the first
person in the State of New York to have an oral bar exam as a
level of his dyslexia, had his wife read his law books to him,
is an example of the kind of stellar people we have who happen
to also be dyslexic.
And to your category, Dr. Robillard, I would add every
tradesperson I know who is supercreative is terrible at
reading, and they put their creativity into working with their
hands and that spatial ability. So we have enormous innovators
who are hampered and oftentimes beaten down, discouraged, told
they're stupid, made to feel unsuccessful. So I see an enormous
opportunity for this country, and I'm so delighted that, as you
can tell here, there's a lot of enthusiasm on the part of this
Committee and elsewhere in Congress to do a better job. So
let's figure out how we do that.
I was encouraged, Dr. Tallal, by your discussion about
neuroplasticity, and particularly when we look at prison
populations, we look at people looking for retraining. Can you
talk a little bit about the research we might need to do on
that? In addition for children, how do we get this
neuroplasticity training at work for adults who need this help
as well?
Dr. Tallal. Well, the good news is that neuroplasticity
lasts a lifetime, and the same variables that drive
neuroplasticity, which are repetition, repetition, repetition,
individually adapting from easier to harder items, sustained
attention, and timely rewards to release neurochemical feedback
saying that was a good one, save it, are the same throughout
life.
Yes, it may be harder because people have--older people
have developed more alternate strategies but we have developed
versions of Fast ForWord for all ages. It's been shown to work
in colleges, it's been shown to work in prisons. The big
problem that we have getting our methods into prisons is the
fact that we require the computer and the internet to give
feedback on a mouse-click-by-mouse-click basis so we can
individually adapt. These are highly technological methods, and
many prisons don't allow the internet. But you can get around
that by having servers.
Nonetheless, the results are very encouraging that
neuroplasticity lasts a lifetime. You just have to know how to
drive it, and it needs to be driven by computers first and then
backed up by what teachers do best. Let computers do what
computers do best, which are also much more scalable at a more
economical level so that teachers can do what teachers do best.
Ms. Esty. That makes a great deal of sense. The Chairman
and I have worked a lot on STEM education and support for
teachers, and I hear a lot of the same issues that we face in
the STEM field. We have great programs that work. We need to
scale them and we need to get that information out in a way.
So one thing I would ask you, because we've seen this on
the STEM field with the Noyce master teacher program, is
whether we need something like that to help show--I think part
of it is to show teachers how effective this is, to get them
into classrooms and see what the teacher who's trained with
these skills to see what a difference they can make so that
they embrace it--not as a requirement, but rather as an
opportunity to help students who are otherwise struggling.
Dr. Tallal. If you don't understand neuroplasticity or how
the brain actually learns, which is what these Science of
Learning Centers are all about. If you don't understand that
children who are struggling, or adults who are struggling, to
read have not built the foundational first and second floor and
you keep hammering away at trying to give them more time to
build the third floor and you have never been taught that in
your educational programs, you're not going to understand why
these programs when you look at them could possibly work. So
you need the professional development or changes within the
teachers' colleges themselves, which is much harder to come by
in order for people to even understand why something might need
to be done, what the science shows and then why these tools
might be effective.
Ms. Esty. A final question. As we try to figure out how to
scale up, and we all are talking about the scale-up issue, do
you think that in this legislation or perhaps in other
legislation we need to be having research that demonstrates the
effective teaching skills that would lead to faster
dissemination and acceptance?
Dr. Tallal. What I mean by scaling up is that if we say
that our goal for getting funding from NSF is translation to
education, I think the bill could ask for explicit criteria for
evaluation and priority to those methods and approaches that
have more potential to actually be scaled up for use in a wide
variety of classrooms, and many of them do not. I mean, I see--
as scientists and as NSF starts to evaluate, they're always
looking at the theory, the science, the double-blind control
study. I think we also need to really reevaluate whether a
double-blind control study is ecologically or morally sound for
an educational environment as the only gold standard for
determining efficacy. I think cumulative data over a lot of
different approaches is what really will help move this bar for
education rather than demanding that there's only one kind of
evidence that works.
Ms. Esty. Thank you, and that's a provocative one we can
follow up on later. Thank you.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Ms. Esty.
The gentleman from Alabama, Mr. Palmer, is recognized for
his questions.
Mr. Palmer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to thank
all the witnesses for being here. My daughter is finishing her
graduate degree at Auburn University in speech pathology----
Ms. Wilson. Fabulous.
Mr. Palmer. And she had to have speech therapy when she was
little, so I know how important this work is.
Dr. Tallal, we have a school, Spring Valley School in
Birmingham, that specializes in teaching children with learning
disabilities, and according to information from that school
individuals affected by dyslexia are often affected by other
disabilities as well. Can you discuss the interaction of
dyslexia and other disabilities and the challenges that this
presents for students and the teachers?
Dr. Tallal. That's an excellent point. Our brain is not
divided easily into compartments. When you have a problem in
one area, it often will cascade into other areas. When you have
a problem with how the brain can efficiently process incoming
sensory information, that is going to cascade in a number of
ways into other functions, cognitive functions, linguistic
functions that subsequently impact reading. So I think that
is--basically the finding is that there's a tremendous overlap
when you get right down to it and great heterogeneity in
children whose final common denominator is they cannot learn to
read. But there are many subskills that could have led them
there.
Many of these children are diagnosed with attention deficit
disorder, and at a scientific level did you fail to pay
attention because you couldn't process fast and efficiently, or
are you failing to process fast and efficiently because you
can't pay attention? So we do need to still understand that.
Many children are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.
That is a language-based learning disability.
Mr. Palmer. So when we talk about increasing funding for
research on dyslexia, I think we need to also be talking about
some overlap with--in the research in this area, how these
other disabilities interact and follow that out.
Dr. Tallal. The diagnosis you get often depends on just who
you got sent to see.
Mr. Palmer. Right.
Dr. Tallal. Okay. If you got sent to see a psychiatrist,
you're going to get one diagnosis. If you got sent to see a
speech pathologist, you could get a different diagnosis. If you
got sent to see a reading specialist--and it also depends on
the age at which your disability is finally diagnosed. But that
doesn't mean they're all mutually exclusive from each other.
Mr. Palmer. It really sounds like we need to be able to
have a one-stop-shop when we're dealing in these areas because
you could get misdiagnosed. It's kind of like firing a rifle at
a target. If you're off a little bit at the front end, you're
off a lot at the back end.
Dr. Robillard, in your testimony, you highlighted the
approach you're taking in Austin to better serve students with
dyslexia. What are you doing in Austin that's different than
approaches taken in other schools?
Dr. Robillard. I think what we did in Austin was, we took
that science to practice seriously the last two years. I left
the ivory tower to come back and do this because I would
diagnose them as a neuropsychologist and I would send a lovely
report to the school district, and nothing would happen, and so
I got a little frustrated and finally decided to put my money
where my mouth was and went back to try to see what I could do
with it and had wonderful backing of our board of trustees.
That's where our process started was getting their support and
then getting our superintendent on board, and teaching. I
actually would go teach our board of trustees. They invited me
to come teach them about dyslexia, teach our superintendent
about dyslexia, and from there we were able to--we now have in
every school in Austin, 129 of them, 85,000 kids in our school
district, we have what's called a dyslexia designee on every
campus, and that person has been taught what these ladies have
been talking about all afternoon and they have--they understand
now on that level. We've also brought in evidence-based
multisensory Orton-Gillingham-based programs for all grade
levels. We have changed the diagnostic process. We used to have
classroom teachers doing this diagnosis. Many kids went
misdiagnosed. So sadly, I'm diagnosing students that are in
high school now that never got diagnosed early, but we're
diagnosing them now and we're intervening now because the
neuroplasticity is there, and if you have the right tools, you
can make a huge difference in their lives by getting the right
diagnosis and getting those intervention materials.
So we've made a concerted effort to not only get those
highly trained CALTs but to get training for all of our
teachers K-12 in at least the understanding of dyslexia and
then at every grade level have teachers trained who are both
special education, and we address a lot of dyslexia in Texas by
504 under the ADA. So we do it in the regular education setting
with teachers that are trained on the materials to deliver them
in the gen-ed classroom.
Mr. Palmer. Mr. Chairman, would you allow me to ask a
question of Ms. Wilson?
Chairman Smith. Yes. The gentleman continues to be
recognized.
Mr. Palmer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Wilson, you were talking about your reading program.
One of the things that I wanted to ask you is, is there a
distance learning component for this when children are out of
school so that parents can continue to be involved with their
kids and continue to help them learn.
Ms. Wilson. Yes, there is distance learning actually for
teachers and so the teachers can learn.
In terms of teachers who are trained, they will often do
distance learning because of technology. That's one of the
things that technology has brought with the fast internet and
the ability to do work in observations online. So there are
some teachers who are actually providing instruction to
students distantly.
Mr. Palmer. So they're providing the instruction to the
students when the students are out of school, and is it
programs where parents can participate in this program with
their kids?
Ms. Wilson. That is--it's not something that we organize
because we focus on teacher training, and so that would be
something that the school or the teacher themselves would
organize. But if that were the case and they were working, yes,
the parents could be involved with that at home, parents work
at home is just in a support role as opposed to an
instructional role.
Mr. Palmer. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Palmer.
The gentlewoman from Maryland, Ms. Edwards, is recognized
for her questions.
Ms. Edwards. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank
you to the witnesses today.
I have to tell you, I was sitting here a little bit
earlier, I think it was the Chairman who asked, you know, what
the positives are for young people, for people who have
dyslexia, and it made me tear up because you were describing my
son, and it was a reminder as a parent and as educators how
important it is to value all of the person that these young
people are and how that can contribute to their eventual
learning success.
And I was really curious, Dr. Tallal. In your testimony,
you talked about a description that wasn't--didn't say dyslexia
but a language-based learning problem, a more inclusive way of
thinking about the way that some of our children are learning
differently, and I think that that's really helpful because I
think it's important for us to say what it is and for people,
especially our young people, to feel like we're talking about
them and that we're trying to work on strategies that help them
to learn the best way that they can.
It was also a reminder that in the READ Act, of which I'm a
cosponsor, that we may have some tweaking to do to try to make
sure that we're capturing the elements of research and of
teacher training and other aspects that you've identified and
the knowledge gap from the action gap. And so I thank you for
that.
I just came from a celebration of 50 years of Head Start. I
love Head Start. But it was also another reminder that for
children not of means, and Dr. Tallal, you talked about this
30-million-word deficit, that being able to identify learning-
based conditions is really important in that early period,
especially among young people not of means. And so I wonder if
you can describe for me what we might begin to think about
programs like Head Start where we know when people get a good
head start that they really can succeed but what we can do in
teacher training, in working with educators to give them the
tools and something like Head Start that will enable us to
identify these conditions earlier and to deal with ways that we
can make sure that young people have the tools that they need.
And I'll just give you the rest of the time and all of you the
time to talk about that.
Dr. Tallal. Well, I love what Head Start has done. I
completely agree with you on that. And I would just say that if
we now could also add some of these new technologies, they will
even further boost the advantage of Head Start. We need to get
more words and more consistently pronounced words.
There's a reason that a child, a young child, when asked to
have a storybook read to them, despite the fact that they may
have several books, they always want to pick the same book.
Have you ever experienced that? The parent's going, oh, not
again, but why does a child want the same book? Because the
brain is reinforced by being able to predict what is about to
come next and then have it happen, and books are great for
that, and repetition is great for that. So there are also some
wonderful technologies that can allow children to receive more
consistent reading patterns through books, either through a
human giving them to them, if they're available, or just by
being able to have some books that are being read to them.
Our second product is Reading Assistant, which I haven't
talked much about, but what Reading Assistant is, is it is a
scientifically based state-of-the-art voice recognition
software that allows a child to read out loud to the computer
and get real-time one-on-one feedback like a virtual tutor.
There's a tremendous amount of research that shows that if you
want to build reading fluency, the only way to do that is to
allow a child to read more out loud with corrective feedback.
but who has the time to give each child that individual
attention? Again, we can use some of these technological
advances to add to what teachers are able to do, and it's a
partnership, I think, at this point between technology--let
technology do what technology can do so that teachers can do
what they can do.
So I would say adding some of these new technologies--
iPads, you know, what are you going to put on your iPad. Let's
get some programs that are very well identified and researched
and evidence-based to provide to some of these younger
children.
Ms. Edwards. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Ms. Edwards.
The gentlewoman from Virginia, Mrs. Comstock, is
recognized.
Mrs. Comstock. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you. I
join the enthusiastic response of the other Members of the
Committee.
I'm from a family of educators. My husband was in school.
He was an assistant principal, certainly saw this issue quite a
bit oftentimes with the children who might be, since he was the
assistant principal, some of the kids who would get in trouble,
right because acting out in some ways. My sister's a guidance
counselor. My mom was a librarian. So I've seen a lot.
I was interested in following up on the technology now that
I have three grandchildren also. How can we make parents sort
of be partners and what are some of the good things that are
already online? Are there things on iPads? Are there things
that you can start doing with young children that help you
identify if there are early problems and help the parents be
partners with you and with others, you know, and their
contemporaries?
Dr. Tallal. Well, we have actually come out with a distance
learning component, as you might call it, speaking to Mr.
Palmer's question earlier, that is a direct--it's Fast ForWord
that is run by parents in their own home with children across
the many ages in collaboration with a trained therapist who
talks to--or teacher that talks to the parents once a week. So
there's a lot that parents can do to use these technologies.
But the beauty is that they don't have to have the
educational level of a trained professional to be able to
implement. What parents can do is implement something when it's
really running individually and individually adapted for a
child and just keep them motivated to do it and help with
reinforcement that way. So there's a lot that parents can do
with these technologies.
We also have kind of forayed a little bit into early math
learning and developed a program called Eddie's Number Party,
which is just a little app, and it teaches the number line. So
research is coming out with all this information as is
education, and the question is, how do you work together with
the people who know how to motivate kids now through developing
computer games to do something with their time which is more
valuable, and I think that's a great way also to focus in the
future of how do we make what kids are going to be doing and
wanting to do anyway--playing with these computers--something
that could actually teach them the fundamental skills that are
going to set them up early in life for success in math, in oral
language, in written language, et cetera.
Mrs. Comstock. And with the online and then also maybe in--
you talked about the language exposure and having kids exposed
to more words, things like that, I hear from my kids now when
they're dealing--having their children, they won't put them in
front of television. I was a big Sesame Street lover. I did
park them in front of that at the arsenic hour at four o'clock
and let them watch, and they were all very early readers. I
thought that Sesame Street did a very nice job on the alphabet
and having them understand that. But now they're oh, we can't
let them in front of the TV before they're 2 years old. Is that
true? Did I totally mess up my early reading children?
Dr. Tallal. Well, there's a difference, I think. I think
the question is interactivity between adults and children. In
the best of situations, the very best thing you can do is have
parents who are talking to children and reading with children
in a clear, consistent way, but that's not going to happen in
most environments.
So then what else can you do? Passive observation does not
work to drive neuroplasticity. That's one of the factors that
we do know. You have to actively pay attention. So if a child
is actively paying attention to what's going on on an
educational program like Sesame Street, it's going to be
helpful, but if they're just passively listening, it probably
isn't.
Where computers again can be better than that is that they
can provide similar information but give one-on-one
individually real-time feedback so it's much more interactive.
It much more closely simulates the parent-child or teacher-
child interactions in real time, and that's the clue, in real
time and personally individually adapted to your brain so
you're moving at the speed that your brain is getting about 80
percent correct.
Mrs. Comstock. Any other comments from the others?
Dr. Robillard. I think the assistance technology pace is
key, and we have an assistive technology person that's on our
staff that goes out and works with our students as they get
explicit instruction to start, and then as they're getting
better at reading, we use more and more assistive technology,
not only for their reading but for their writing, which is
dysgraphia is really connected to this reading, this issue of
dyslexia, and so we find that man of our students who are
dyslexic or dysgraphic as well, and there's wonderful apps for
that and wonderful assistive technology applications for that.
The University of Edinboro actually has some great apps
that we put on our kids' iPads that help them out in schools
with dyslexia and dysgraphia and decoding and incoding and
immediate feedback sorts of things and helps them with their
writing as well.
So I think assistive technology, the explicit multisensory
systematic sequential teaching, the Orton-Gillingham method, I
think is always going to be inherent in helping our dyslexic
kids get to that place where they can read but the technology
of the repetition that they need in order to build those new
neural pathways that are more successful for reading than the
ones that they came to us with I think is really key.
Mrs. Comstock. And I wanted to ask the Chairman if for our
record we can maybe include a lot of those apps and Web sites
and anything that you think might be good just sort of as a
demonstration so we can sort of put them on our Web sites, let
people know about them and any way we can be promoting this
information and help them, and thank you a lot and look forward
to working with you.
Chairman Smith. Good idea. Thank you, Mrs. Comstock.
And the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Beyer, is recognized
for his questions.
Mr. Beyer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'd like to begin by thanking the Chairman and the Ranking
Member for having this hearing this morning, and Chairman,
thank you for your leadership on this issue. It's very
important. And I'd like to thank you for showing up. I want to
pile on assistive technology too.
My oldest has this wide variety of learning disabilities,
and in fourth grade he could still not read at all until I
brought a PC home with Sierra Games, which were text-based, and
you could only get through the adventure if you could type and
spell the words correctly, and in six months, he went from
barely being able to read to reading on grade level, and now
he's got a townhouse full of books. So it's really terrific
stuff to do that.
Dr. Robillard, in your written testimony, you said--and
probably you've spoken to--that ``Dyslexia is not a disorder
that can be compartmentalized; it is not just a deficit, but
carries with it inherent strengths that have been recognized
for decades.''
In his school, the Oakwood School out in Fairfax, they had
big pictures of Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Winston
Churchill, and the most fiery political speaker I've ever known
who was Majority Leader of the Virginia House who never had a
note because he couldn't read them because his learning
disabilities were so bad. But he was an incredible orator.
How do we make sure that these strengths, these inherent
strengths, are not suppressed? How do we recognize them and
celebrate them?
Dr. Robillard. Well, I think we have to really do that
piece, that part that we're teaching our teachers to recognize
this. Our universities--and I have to say, I've been a part of
our universities that have not taught our pre-service teachers
about dyslexia as well we should have. We fortunately in Texas
now have since House Bill 5 a little piece in there that says
all higher-education entities that are training teachers will
teach about dyslexia now, and we're starting to do that. I
think that getting at that basic level of making sure all
educators, all administrators recognize that just because a
student has dyslexia, that they are still able to do so many
other things and they are so capable in so many other areas
that contribute to their non-dyslexic counterparts that may not
be able to see the world or understand the world as well as
they can in other ways I think is really key in making that
happen.
And I think it's an education from the ground up. It's not
just our teachers but our principals, our assistant principals
who are often disciplining these kids because they often have
creative ways of thinking about doing things. I think that our
administrators really need to understand it as well, and that's
been a grassroots effort in our district to help our
administrators understand that.
Mr. Beyer. Thank you very much.
Dr. Tallal, the READ Act provides a definition for dyslexia
that captures everyone who has difficulty reading despite
normal intelligence, and again, I think of my son, who never
had the reverse letters dyslexia. It was soft vowel
differentiation, sequencing difficulties, specific word recall.
It was always that red stuff in the refrigerator rather than
ketchup, you know.
How broadly or narrowly should we define dyslexia, and does
it matter in terms of intervention?
Dr. Tallal. That's an excellent question. The research I
think primarily by Martha Denckla and many other well-
established and well-respected dyslexia researchers have shown
despite tremendous research and study that there seems to be no
difference between children who have a frank diagnosis of
dyslexia and those who for research purposes are called garden-
variety poor readers. So there's no difference in their
symptomatology and, importantly, there does not seem to be a
great difference or any difference that we can discern about
what works to improve their outcomes.
One of the things that is often used in definitions of
dyslexia is that children have failed to learn to read despite
normal intelligence and opportunity to learn to read, and
that's an important statement as well, but there usually is a
word that says unexpected reading problems, and what concerns
me about that is that if a child comes from a high
socioeconomic family of successful people and they are failing
to learn to read, that's quite unexpected. But if a child is
coming from poverty or from family that doesn't have English as
their primary language and that child fails to learn to read,
people aren't that surprised. Well, the truth is that even
though they got to their reading problem in very different ways
along different avenues, they all seem to need the same kind of
intensive repetition at the auditory-process and spoken-
language level to break the code for reading.
So if we want to use a definition of dyslexia, I think
there is value to bringing attention to the fact that there's
so many children failing to learn to read. But it also can have
the effect of limiting the school's sense of responsibility for
children who don't have a frank diagnosis, and you may want to
speak to that.
Dr. Robillard. And we run a camp in the summer for high
school kids who are still struggling readers. We have now also
interjected all of our English-language learners who have some
capacity for English, and we're finding that our dyslexic
students have the opportunity to help these kids learn to read
as well and that they are benefiting from the same
methodology--the same repetition, the same assistive
technology--and are moving ahead and reading much quicker than
their counterparts who are English-language learners who don't
come to the summer program. Furthermore, in six weeks, we have
statistically measurable differences in their fluency and their
comprehension scores.
Mr. Beyer. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Beyer.
Let me recognize myself for a final quick question to Dr.
Robillard.
One area we haven't covered today is the possibility and
connection between adults with dyslexia and adults that had
behavioral problems, and I know you've been aware of some
research at the University of Texas about that. Can you comment
real quickly on anything we need to address or anything we need
to know? And then we'll finish up.
Dr. Robillard. Well, I think it's significant that we have
this school-to-prison pipeline that is full of dyslexic
students who are either undiagnosed or misdiagnosed or just
struggling readers even who are misdiagnosed or undiagnosed,
and the research about ten years ago, in 2004, I believe, Dr.
Falbo at UT did quite a bit of research on this population and
found about 80 percent of our prisons in Texas had prisoners
who had dyslexia or some form of reading disorder.
Recently this summer, in July of this year, current year,
new research came out, similar research, says 85 percent of our
prisoners have dyslexia or related disorder. That is a huge,
huge number of people.
Chairman Smith. And the logical conclusion is, if we could
have helped them earlier, we may not have had the kind of
problems that they've exemplified later in life.
Dr. Robillard. I think there is a correlation. I don't know
that we can say it's a cause and effect but I think there's a
very high correlation.
Chairman Smith. Thanks for that answer.
Also, let me thank you all for your testimony today. This
has been very, very informative.
I have to end with a little bit of a plug for the State of
Texas because I think we're a little bit ahead of the curve or
we're certainly ahead of a number of other states because of
legislation that has been passed, and we mandate the
recognition of dyslexia in our school districts and mandate
that the school districts have a program of early detection,
and I only wish all school districts across the country had
that as well.
So again, thank you. Just a reminder, the reception is down
the hall this way to my left at the very end of the hall. I
look forward to seeing you all there.
And we stand adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:36 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
Appendix I
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Additional Material for the Record
Letter submitted by Chairman Lamar S. Smith
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Supplemental Testimony submitted by Ms. Barbara Wilson
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Document submitted by Ms. Barbara Wilson
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Slides submitted by Dr. Paula Tallal
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Document submitted by Ranking Member Eddie Bernice Johnson
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Prepared statement submitted by Elizabeth H. Esty
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