Understanding SLD and Dyslexia in Special Education: 2025-2026 Webinar

Good afternoon and welcome to today's statewide webinar hosted by SpedTech's and Partners Resource Network. My name is Sarah Untersi and I am part of the SpedTech's team. The topic for today's webinar is Understanding SLD and Dyslexia in Special Education. A few reminders: This webinar is being recorded and the recording will be posted to our SpedTech site. It usually takes about a week in order for that to be posted, but we will drop our website link in the chat so that you are able to access that once it becomes available. The chat feature today is only available if you require technical assistance. However, you may put questions in the Q and A section. The presenters will review your submissions, which will help us with clarifications and FAQs in the future. There will be no live Q and A today. SPED TEX is the special education information center for Texas. We are a collaborative project between Region ten Education Service Center and the Texas Education Agency. We help parents understand their rights and responsibilities under IDEA and facilitate collaboration when there are concerns between the parent and the school district. We also serve as a resource for educators. We offer support via phone, email, or live chat for families and professionals, webinars, resources. Our contact information is on the screen. I am now going to turn it over to Stephanie McLaughlin to share some additional information about Partners Resource Network. Thank you, Sarah. My name is Stephanie. I'm the training and evaluation specialist for Partners Resource Network. Partners Resource Network is the nonprofit agency that operates the Texas statewide network of parent training and information centers. We are funded through the Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs. And throughout Texas, we have five projects known as PACT, APP, PIN, and TEAM. Our mission is to empower and support Texas families and individuals impacted by disabilities or special health care needs. We do this through a network of highly skilled, regionally located coordinators who are knowledgeable in local policies, services, and resources, as well as state and national guidelines. We provide training, information, and one on one assistance at no cost to Texas families and youth. We serve parents of children and youth with disabilities from birth to age twenty six, as well as youth self advocates between the ages of fourteen and twenty six. Thank you, Stephanie. Okay. We are excited to welcome our presenters, Michelle Reeves and Dawn Jewell. Michelle is the dyslexia and literacy intervention education specialist at the Texas Education Agency, and Dawn is a special education technical assistance manager at the Texas Education Agency. At this time, I'm going to stop sharing and turn it over to Michelle and Dawn. Good afternoon. I'm Dawn Jewell, and I'm going to be presenting first, and then Michelle will follow me. Thank you. Today, we're going to talk about understanding specific learning disabilities, known as SLDs, and dyslexia in special education. Let's take a look at our agenda. First, we're just gonna do a quick overview of the special education evaluation process. Some of you may have heard this before. So here's a refresher, and for those of you who are new to it, I hope you'll find this information helpful. We're gonna talk about if your child is suspected of having a specific learning disability, what that evaluation looks like. Let me note please for you, dyslexia is a specific learning disability. It just has some specific components that we're gonna address at the end of the presentation. So let's begin. Let's start. We're gonna do a quick review of the special education process as a heads up. In this presentation, when I mention parents, this includes biological or adoptive parents, foster parents, a guardian, an individual acting in the place of a biological parent with whom the child lives or is legally responsible for the child's welfare, or a surrogate parent. So I'm addressing all of you with equal respect. The one of the first when your if you request a referral for an evaluation for your child or if the school requests an evaluation. One of the first items you're gonna be provided is an overview of special education for parents. It literally takes you from the referral process through evaluation to the Aard Committee's determination of eligibility, and finally, but perhaps even the most important, the individualized education program development. And please note, you as a parent are an integral, important part of this entire process. And again, you have the right as a parent to request a special education evaluation at any time. Schools are required to refer a student for an evaluation when a disability is suspected. Today, we're talking about a specific learning disability or dyslexia that might require special education services. It's very important to understand the steps of a special education process. And as I said in the previous slide, it all begins with the referral. We do not proceed without your consent in writing. Nothing will happen without your written consent. The evaluation is conducted. The AHRD committee, and you are an important member of the AHRQ committee, it's an admission review dismissal committee, determines eligibility. And finally, if your child is eligible as a student with a disability and needs special education services, the ARC committee will develop an IEP. And then once the ARC committee meeting is completed and you've received a copy of all the paperwork, we start implementing that IEP. On the next slide, let's talk about a referral. A referral is required by law when a public school feels that your child may have a disability that requires special education services in order to be successful. A referral is called a request for a special education evaluation when a parent makes it. A request should be made in writing to the proper staff member. That could be the school principal or it could be the special education director. The school will respond with information on whether it will proceed with an evaluation. The school must respond to you in writing within fifteen school days. They'll either send you information saying, yes. We're gonna evaluate, or they're gonna send you and this sounds very kinda formal, a refusal to out evaluate, but they have to explain to you why. Alright. Let's look at step two. On the before anything happens, you're going to be asked whether you consent for the school to evaluate your child. Permission consent to evaluate is permission you choose to give for specially trained personnel to evaluate and assess your child in specific areas. And remember today, we're talking that specific area is a specific learning disability or dyslexia. Consent to evaluate is used by the school to start the timeline by which the school must complete your child's evaluation. With some exceptions, an evaluation must be completed within forty five school days. K? Let's look at the next slide. Evaluation is done by a group of trained professional. An evaluation is called a full individual and initial evaluation or FIIE. We love to use acronyms in special education, you know that, which includes a written report of education recommendations and information about your child's strengths, interests, and challenges. Professionals with training in the suspected disability must participate. That could be someone like a licensed dyslexia therapist if dyslexia is suspected. An evaluation is done at no cost to you. If you do not agree with the school's evaluation, you may ask for an independent educational evaluation, otherwise known as an IEE. This would be done by someone who is not employed by the school. On the next page, on the next slide, now that the evaluation is completed, and I should add, you must receive a copy of the written report no later than five school days before the AHRD committee meeting is conducted. First thing that AHRD committee is gonna do, and remember, you are a very important member of that, is they're gonna determine if your child is eligible for special education services. This ARC committee is a team including you, teachers, usually a general education teacher of your child and a special education teacher, school administrators, and those with special expertise about your child and professionals with special training about the suspected disability. And, again, because we're talking about dyslexia, someone with special knowledge dyslexia must be a member of that initial that admission ARD meeting. In this meeting, the ARD committee meeting is gonna discuss your child's evaluation report and identify your child's strengths and areas of need and then determine, first, whether your child has a disability and, second, as a result of that disability, do they need special education services? Again, kind of going back to that timeline, once the evaluation report is done, and, again, with some exceptions, they have thirty forty five forty five school days to complete it, the art committee then typically has thirty calendar days to determine eligibility and develop the IEP. I know that's a lot of dates to keep up with. On the next slide, if your child is eligible for special education services, then the a then the art committee will also develop an individualized education program. So what is an IEP? It is a collection of information that identifies your child's disability, shows your child's current strengths and areas of need, identify goals to be worked on, and shows the special education and related services that are required for your child to be successful. An IEP is a document that a school must follow once the process for developing it is complete. And, again, you consent to your child receiving services. Not only do you consent to the evaluation, you consent to services, and services would begin as soon as possible. And, again, you have the right to participate in the development of the IEP and degree or disagree to your child getting special education services. K? So let's talk a little bit more specifically, specifically, about specific learning disabilities. And a lot of times, you'll just hear me say SLD. Let's look at this. That evaluation is completed by what we call a multidisciplinary team, otherwise known as an MDT, and they conduct an evaluation when an SLD is suspected. You, again, are important member of that evaluation team. Your child's general education teacher is a member of that team. Evaluation personnel, that could be a school psychologist, an educational diagnostician, sometimes a speech language pathologist, sometimes an occupational therapist. But again, because we suspect dyslexia, a professional with special knowledge of dyslexia must be part of this evaluation team. Okay? Next, it is best practice that we observe your child in the classroom in the area of difficulty. Now in this case, since we're talking about dyslexia, we're probably gonna wanna observe your child in reading, language arts, whatever that period's called, English. That's the most likely area. And the reason we recommend we do our observation first is when the person goes and sits in the back of the room, it's a stranger to the child. It draws no attention to them being in there versus later, they may know who that person is because that person is doing some testing with them. So that's why we make that recommendation. The next thing that happens, we have to document inadequate achievement. So there are eight different areas, and let me let me break them down for you a little bit. The first one is oral expression. So, you know, what does that mean? It means your child may struggle to answer questions, participate in discussions, or explain their reasoning, which can affect classroom engagement and social interaction. The next area is listening comprehension. Your child may miss instructions, misunderstand lessons, or have trouble following conversations leading to confusion and reduced academic performance. Now as you can see, a lot of times when these area when there are difficulties in the areas of oral expression and or listening comprehension, we may ask a speech language pathologist to join the evaluation team to look at those areas more deeply. Let's talk about if your child is having difficulty in written expression. Your child may produce incomplete, disorganized, or grammatically incorrect writing, making it hard to demonstrate knowledge or complete assignments. Dysgraphia falls under written expression. Today's presentation is really not gonna get into dysgraphia, So I really just wanna share with you dysgraphia would fall under written expression. Now we're moving more into dyslexia. If your child has difficulty in basic reading skill, they may struggle to decode and recognize words impacting reading fluency and comprehension skills necessary to progress in grade level content. And Michelle's gonna go into that deeper. If your child struggles with reading fluency skills, they may read slowly or with frequent errors, making it difficult to understand what they are reading and to complete assignments in a timely manner. If your child has difficulty with reading comprehension, They may read words correctly but fail to grasp the main idea, make inferences, or answer questions about the text, limiting their ability to learn from reading. And, of course, if your child has dyslexia where they're having difficulties with basic reading skill and reading fluency, often it will then impact their reading comprehension skills, which makes sense. If your child has difficulty with mathematics calculation, they may struggle with math facts or written computation, making it hard to complete assignments or progress to higher level math. And finally, if your child has difficulty with mathematics problem solving, they may have difficulty understanding problem language, choosing appropriate strategies, or organizing steps which affects their ability to demonstrate math reasoning. Remember, these are the eight areas we're looking for an adequate achievement. On the next slide, we use multiple sources of data. I cannot share with you how important this is. It should not be based on norm reference scores or testing scores only. The information from you or the teacher or if the child's old enough from the student should corroborate. It it should okay. That makes sense. Their score their scores are low here, and the parents' information information says they struggle with this. Likewise, we wanna look at district benchmarks. We wanna look at progress monitoring. We wanna look at what what are called curriculum based measurements. Those are not scores. They tell us where a child's specific skills are. We wanna look at criterion reference measures, and that's those are things like STAR. Maybe your school gives Iowa test of basic skills. Maybe your child is taking TELPAS, all of this kind of information. In other words, this picture, there should be consistency among all these data sources. And, frankly, if there isn't consistency, that evaluation report needs to provide an explanation for why. Maybe the task we measure in testing is different from the way we measure the task in the classroom. And no one of these data sources is more important than the other. They're all of equal importance. Let's look at the next page, please. There are things called rule outs. Obviously, it makes perfect sense. If your child has not had appropriate instruction in reading and math, it's not right to say they have a specific learning disability. A lot of times what we do is we look at how is the class performing, how is the school performing, how are all the fourth graders in this school performing, how are all the fourth graders in this school district performing. So that's valuable information. To be frank with you, if your child has just missed so much school, that's that's not a disability. We, you know, we just need to go back in school, that kind of thing. Sometimes children are new to the country. They just need to have a chance to be exposed to education in the United States. So that is an important factor that we do look at. In addition to that, we look at on the next slide, we look at does your child have a visual, hearing, or motor disability? Let me give you an example. It's really easy to understand. What if your child had cerebral palsy in the right hand and they wrote with their right hand? Well, their poor handwriting is probably due to their motor disability, not a disability a specific learning disability. Now sometimes the primary disability could be dyslexia and they have a hearing impairment. And you're thinking, well, how do you figure that out? We look at all the children who have hearing impairments. And if they're learning that this child is having trouble in the area of dyslexia, then dyslexia may be the primary disability with the secondary disability of a hearing impairment. An intellectual disability, that is a pre red line rule out. You know, if a child has an intellectual disability, they cannot have a specific learning disability. We look at emotional disability. Again, you could have your primary disability be a specific learning disability with an emotional disability secondary. Again, environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage, and language proficiency. We're always challenged, is it a language difference or is it a language disability? If it is a language difference, they would not have a specific learning disability. So there there are definitely some intricacies to interpreting this evaluation. And last but not least, dyslexia is a specific learning disability, and dyslexia falls under special education. If your child receives dyslexia services, they are receiving special education services. And that is my lead in, to your next speaker, Michelle Reeves. Good afternoon, everyone. Just like they mentioned before, my name is Michelle Reeves, and I serve as the state dyslexia coordinator for TEA. So today, I'm going to talk to you about what is dyslexia, what are the characteristics you may notice, the required instruction that school districts must provide to support students. Much and then I also want you to know that much of the information is coming from our dyslexia handbook. And then, also, we have a dyslexia related disorders information for parents document, so it's coming from that as well, and I will show you in this presentation where you can find both documents. So during our time together, I'll highlight some of the most important points that come from those documents. So to begin, I wanna talk about what dyslexia actually is. Many people believe dyslexia means seeing letters, backwards, but that's a common misconception. Dyslexia is really about how the brain processes the sounds in spoken words, and that affects reading and spelling. So what does the word dyslexia mean? So the word dyslexia was coined from Greek roots, meaning difficulty with words. Dyslexia is a learning disability that makes it hard for the brain to process sounds and words, making reading and spelling more difficult. It's not caused by poor teaching, lack of effort, or a vision problem. Now let's take a look at the updated definition from IDEA. That is the International Dyslexia Association. And I know this would be really hard to read, so I am going to break it down for you. However, I do want you to know that when they made this new definition, they were researching all of the new research that's out there and the experiences with students and families and educators. Okay. So on this slide, I've broken it down, and we're gonna start at the very top. And as Dawn mentioned, it is a specific learning disability. So what does that mean? So dyslexia is a real recognized learning difference. It affects how a person reads and spells, but it's not reflective of intelligence. This classification aligns with the individuals with disabilities education act, IDEA, ensuring that individuals with dyslexia receive the legal rights and education services they're entitled to. As you will see in this area, right underneath specific learning disability, it says dyslexia is characterized by difficulties in word reading and or spelling that involve accuracy, speed, or both and vary depending on the orthography. So I'm gonna talk about difficulties in word reading and or spelling. So this means kids with dyslexia struggle to read individual words and or spell them incorrectly. This is often the first thing a family notices. K? And then the second part of that sentence that involve accuracy, speed, or both and vary depending on the orthography. So let's start with accuracy. Accuracy is applying the correct sounds to each letter or part of the word, reading the word correctly. Speed means reading smoothly and naturally, almost like talking. And orthography refers to the writing system of the language. Different languages have different spelling systems, and this influences how dyslexia looks in each of those. Alright. Moving down to complex causes. So in the definition, the causes of dyslexia are complex. So there's no single cause of dyslexia. It comes from a combination of genetics, brain differences, and environmental factors. No one is to blame. And then the rest of that sentence there is involving genetic, neurobiological, and environmental influences that interact throughout development. Lots of information there. A child may inherit risk factors, have brain based differences in processing language, and be influenced by early experiences all at the same time. So that's all about the complex causes. Our next one is underlying factors. So the underlying factors for dyslexia, difficulties with phonological and morphological processing are common but not universal. So children with dyslexia often have difficulty with phonological processing, meaning they may struggle to notice, remember, and work with sounds and words. Because reading and spelling require connecting those sounds to the letters, these challenges make learning to read and spell harder. They may also have difficulty with morphological processing. So morphological processing is the ability to understand the meaningful parts of words. So for instance, in English, that would be like un, play, and full. And some students with dyslexia may have difficulty using those word parts to support reading and spelling and understanding new words. But there's also that phrase, but not universal. So meaning that phonological and morphological challenges explain much, but not all of the reading and spelling differences seen in dyslexia. Alright. And now I'm moving down to secondary consequences. So the consequences of dyslexia can affect reading and writing growth and may also impact psychological well-being and future employment opportunities. So let's look at how does that affect reading and writing. It may include difficulties with reading comprehension, challenges with written expression, and lower overall academic achievement. And then how does it impact psychological well-being in the future employment opportunities? Well, dyslexia can affect a person's self esteem. They could have depression, which may influence career opportunities later in life. And then the last part of the definition talks about importance of early support. So language and literacy support before and during the early years of education is particularly effective, and that's why we have screening in dyslexia in kindergarten and first grade. But I also wanted to point out our primary characteristics that we have in our dyslexia handbook. So you can see on the left, that is our state dyslexia handbook. So in Texas, we have the dyslexia handbook. The purpose of the dyslexia handbook, I wanna just go over that real quick, is to provide procedures for schools and districts and charter schools and campuses, teachers and students, and parents to provide them information on identification, instruction, and accommodation for students with dyslexia and dysgraphia. In the handbook, you will find a list of the primary reading and spelling characteristics, and you can see them right there on the slide. And so I'm going to go through these. They're gonna sound a lot like the definition that I just went through in the slide previously. So reading words in isolation. This means having difficulty reading individual words in a list. So envision like a piece of paper in a list of words. So it's not part of a sentence or a paragraph. And then accurately decoding unfamiliar words. So this means not being able to apply the correct sounds with the letters in an unknown word or a word that has not been taught. K. And then we have oral reading or reading aloud. So you would notice possibly the child may read aloud slowly. They make a lot of mistakes. They're pretty frequent, or it seems like they're working really hard just to get through the words and read them out loud. And they may also, lack having the natural phrasing or expression. And one thing about slow reading, it can cause issues with comprehension because we've used all of our energy to read those individual words. The last primary characteristic of dyslexia is difficulty with spelling. So students with dyslexia struggle with spelling because they have trouble connecting the sounds they hear in words to the letters that represent those sounds. This can make it hard for them to remember spelling patterns, break words into parts, or spell a word the same way twice. These challenges are not due to a lack of effort. They are directly related to the way the brain processes language. So after hearing about these difficulties, it's natural to feel concerned, but this is where the hope comes in. We have instructional programs designed precisely for these needs. When students receive explicit systematic multisensory instruction or multimodal, they can make steady, meaningful progress. Although these characteristics can be challenging, we want you to know that there is strong, effective instruction available, and it works. Students with dyslexia can and do learn to read and spell with the right support. Dyslexia is such a passion for me. I am dyslexic. I have children with dyslexia, even one with dysgraphia. So this is a near and dear subject to my heart. Right. So instruction. I'm gonna talk about the instructional piece, and the effective instruction for students identified with dyslexia is an evidence based dyslexia program. An evidence based dyslexia program is considered specially designed instruction, SDI, and therefore a special education service. So the provisions of those services must follow the IDEA requirements. So this means that evidence based dyslexia instruction is only available to students who are served under IDA, which prescribes the legal requirements for special education and related services. The evidence based dyslexia program will be documented as a special education service that is received in a special education location. The ARG committee, which includes you, the parent, will document the frequency and duration of services in accordance with the evidence based dyslexia program requirements. Unless the ARC committee is adding to or extending the specially designed instruction, SCI, that is required to meet the students needs. So as I mentioned, the handbook has very specific criteria for dyslexia instruction, evidence based dyslexia instruction, and that information can be found on pages thirty nine through forty one, and we're gonna go through them. So the components of instruction, these components are grounded in research and are designed to meet the unique learning needs of students with dyslexia. The critical evidence based components of instruction include, and you can see on the slide starting over there in the little red square, phonological awareness, so that's recognize and manipulate sounds and words, Sound symbol association. I'm going across the top, and then I'll go back down to the bottom. So that's phonics, sounds, letter sound, letters make, syllabication, breaking words into parts, orthography, knowing how to spell words and spelling patterns, morphology, so that's prefixes, roots, suffixes, Syntax, knowledge of how words are arranged in a meaningful sentence, so creating a meaningful sentence. Reading comprehension, understanding what you read, reading fluency, reading smoothly, accurately, and with expression. And then we go to this next slide, which is the delivery of instruction, and we start with simultaneous multisensory visual auditory kinesthetic tactile, or another term is multimodal. So students learn through visual auditory kinesthetic tactile. So they're seeing it, hearing it, saying it, and writing it. This strengthens memory and understanding. It's must be systematic and cumulative, so skills follow a logical sequence from simple to more complex. Cumulative means students review practice previously learned and materials, so learning sticks. Explicit. So explicit instruction is step by step instruction. The teacher models the skills provided, so they have guided practice, and then the student practices independently while receiving immediate feedback. Also, it must have diagnostic teaching to automaticity so the teacher continually observes how a student is responding to the instruction. If more practice is needed, they provide it. If they need to slow down, they do. And if a skill is mastered, they move on. So this ensures instruction moves at the right pace. So they have synthetic instructions. So teachers teach students how to blend things together, so taking those individual sounds and blending them together. Analytic instruction is taking the whole and breaking it into pieces. So learning the parts of the words and recognizing those patterns. Alright. So the instruction must also be, like I said, explicit, systematic, intentional in its approach. The instruction is designed to take place in a small group setting. Evidence based dyslexia instruction must be evidence based, taught by an appropriately trained instructor. We usually call those the PDI, provider of dyslexia instruction, and implemented with fidelity. So when it is implemented for the with fidelity, the program is taught the way the program was intended to be provided. So the handbook points out that while components of instruction for students with dyslexia include good teaching principles for all teachers, the explicitness and intensity of the instruction, fidelity to program descriptors, so that's grouping format, the training the teacher must have, skills the teacher needs, is different from the core classroom instruction and must be considered when making individual placement decisions. So, again, for more information about the evidence based dyslexia instruction, please see chapter four in the dyslexia handbook. Alright. So now I'm moving on to we were asked. It's that you guys have frequently asked questions about parents, how they can find dyslexia tutors. So on this page, we have provided, a link here that you will be able to have access to. So there are several types of highly trained providers of dyslexia instruction or PDIs, as I mentioned before. These include dyslexia therapists, you may have heard them called CALPs, dyslexia practitioners, CALPs, structured literacy dyslexia specialists, structured literacy dyslexia interventionists. So all of these professionals have completed rigorous specialized training in structured literacy and dyslexia intervention well beyond general reading instruction. So, again, on this slide, you will see several directories that you can use to locate trained providers. First, you have Alta up here. It's found at Alta Professional, which lists the certified CALPs and CALPs. And then we have the International Dyslexia Association who off also offers a, directory of professionals that meet IDA standards. And then you have the center for effective reading instruction, and they too have a directory, a list who have those credentials. So, additionally, if you if your child is already receiving dyslexia instruction, you may want to contact that professional and ask them if they have any recommendations and guide you to some reputable options for a tutor. Alright. As I mentioned before, this is our dyslexia and related disorder page at TEA. If you go to this website, you will be able to find the documents that I talked about today and a lot of additional ones. So you can go to t e a dot texas dot gov forward slash dyslexia. Thank you so much for attending today's webinar. We appreciate your time, your engagement, and your dedication to supporting your child, and thank you so much for having us. Thank you so much, Dawn and Michelle. We appreciate you so much. At this time, I want to go ahead and turn it back over to Stephanie McLaughlin to share some additional information about Partners Resource Network. Thank you, Sarah, and thank you, ladies, for all this wonderful information. As a reminder, our staff are regionally located, and they are here to support you. If you're not connected with your regional coordinator, reach out to us. We'd be happy to get you connected. Be sure and check out our website at prn texas dot org, our Facebook page, and our x page as well as our YouTube page for more information. Thank you, Sarah. Thanks, Stephanie. Have questions about special education? Contact us at SpedTechs, your source for special education information. We are happy to help. Our contact information is on the screen.