Starting in fall 2025, California public schools will be rolling out a new reading screening program for students in kindergarten through second grade. The screening is mandated by Senate Bill No. 114, the TK-12 Education Omnibus Trailer Bill from 2023, which went into effect in January 2024.
For more insights about these universal screenings, we reached out to the Assistant Director of Decoding Dyslexia, Rachel Hurd, who worked hard to advocate for this screening program, and Kristin Wright from the Sacramento County Office of Education, who is also director of the California Center for Inclusive College (CCIC).
The reading screenings are for the purpose of screening students for risk of reading difficulties, early identification of student learning needs, and providing supports and services. The screeners are all designed to align with the science of reading and identify where students have missing foundational reading skills because evidence indicates that early reading intervention improves outcomes for students.
The screenings are all very short — about 10-30 minutes — and primarily computer-based. Kindergarteners will likely take the screening in January 2026, while students in first and second grade will begin in fall 2025. In many districts, first and second graders will repeat the screening in the spring to measure their progress.
Hurd tells us, “Screening assessments are just brief snapshots, analogous to when you go to the doctor for a health screening and they take your temperature and your blood pressure. They indicate if the learner is on track or not. The reading screeners assess the skills that are the building blocks of reading and compare them to benchmarks for that grade level.”
Although local educational agencies (LEAs) are only required to screen once a year, best practice is to periodically re-screen to check progress. According to Hurd, there are usually three checkpoints: at the beginning, middle, and end of the school year. The screener shows if the child is above, at, below, or far below the benchmark. This feedback helps teachers identify which children may need additional support in those building blocks of reading. The three screenings are often part of a system called Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) — a framework that can provide targeted intervention and support for children who need it. Hurd tells us, “Universal screening is just a key part of the MTSS that school districts throughout California are beginning to adopt, or have already adopted that framework.”
Your school district Board of Education or charter school board should have selected one of four screeners approved by the Reading Difficulties Risk Screener Selection Panel (RDRSSP):
You can learn more about the screening that your school district or charter has selected from your LEA, which is your school district or charter school. LEAs should provide K-2 parents with information about the screening with other back-to-school materials at the beginning of the school year, including the date(s) of the screening. Your school will also provide instructions for how parents or guardians can opt their child out of the screening, which must be at least 15 calendar days before the screening date.
No more than 45 calendar days from the screening date, your school must send a letter with the results and information on how to interpret the results. If your child is flagged as being at risk of having reading difficulties, your school must also provide a plan for the supports and services that they will use to address their difficulty. This might include:
Evidence-based literacy instruction focused on the pupil’s specific needs. This includes structured literacy instruction that has been demonstrated to be effective and is based on scientific knowledge of how the brain acquires foundational reading skills.
Progress monitoring. Many structured literacy programs have built-in progress monitoring.
Intervention in the general education program. An intervention program (within MTSS tier two or three) can be embedded in your child's classroom.
One-on-one or small group tutoring. This tutoring should use an explicit, structured literacy curriculum that’s appropriate for your child's needs — ideally one that is multi-sensory.
Further evaluation or diagnostic assessment if needed. This might involve an assessment for an Individualized Education Program or a 504 plan.
In this clip, Hurd explains what a structured literacy program looks like and how to spot whether it is aligned with the science of reading:
While many in the community are describing these screeners as “dyslexia screenings,” the approved screeners are designed only to identify which students need additional help with learning the foundational skills in reading that we know, from the science of reading, are essential to becoming a strong reader. The screenings are not diagnostic and do not necessarily indicate that a child has dyslexia.
On the other hand, studies have shown that when children with dyslexia are identified early and given timely intervention, they can learn to read and avoid the all-too-common scenario where a child must first fall behind before getting intervention, and then spend all year trying to catch up. Therefore, advocates for children with dyslexia are hoping that by identifying students for intervention early, and providing that intervention within a general education classroom using Multi-Tiered Systems of Support, many children with dyslexia might succeed in education without ever needing special education.
Be sure to see our articles Dyslexia 101 and Specific Learning Disabilities (SLDs) 101 to learn more about diagnosis and school supports.
Wright explains that the main concern is how schools plan to address the risk of reading difficulty: “I would be asking my school district, and really my school, what is the plan? Help me understand what the plan is. And if they said the plan is to pull all the kids out and do a thing, I would be really critical of that. I would also wonder, how are you going to scaffold reading instruction and then make sure that students all get access to really high-quality, research-based science of reading instruction?”
More than that, if reading difficulty is your child’s only indication of a disability, it is possible that they will not qualify for an IEP, especially in California where many schools still use the discrepancy model to identify dyslexia — is there a discrepancy between academic achievement and cognition (IQ)? Hurd points out that the screeners are designed to start the intervention process in as soon as 45 days, whereas requesting assessment for an IEP will likely add another 60 days before the child is identified as being eligible for special education and an intervention is put in place.
On the other hand, if you feel that your child is not receiving an appropriate intervention, a Dear College Letter from the US Department of Education in 2013 emphasizes that schools cannot use “try it and see” or “Response to Intervention” to delay an IEP assessment. The Child Find obligation in the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) puts the onus on LEAs to identify children with disabilities.
An IEP not only provides reading intervention that is specially designed but also significant legal protections for your child against discrimination on the basis of disability. If your child is not eligible for an IEP, they may still be eligible for a 504 plan.
Some parents and education specialists (special education teachers) may worry that the screening, designed for typical five- to eight-year-olds, will not be accessible to their children in special education. Wright emphasizes the importance of discussing what accommodations and supports might make the screening more accessible with your IEP team.
Wright tells us, “The test makers have built in some accessibility features, but certainly for students who have complex communication needs, it is definitely a struggle. It is also a very big heads up that we would rather double down on making sure we have functional communication that we're working on. Functional communication should be one of the major things we're working on, especially in kindergarten, because that is going to lead to what people believe a student can do. It also impacts all the behavioral things that end up happening because [from the child's perspective] you're so frustrated because you can't tell people what you're thinking, or maybe you totally understand what everyone's thinking and doing, and you have no way to show that because you have only 20 icons on your communication device.”
Wright says that specific things need to happen with certain populations, like DHH and VI students. However, in her view, it needs to be “a partnership between general and special ed, but the majority of students are served in general ed classrooms, and should be included in any type of class-wide assessment, because it's also about ownership of students.”
On the other hand, some parents may hear that the science of reading approach — on which this screening is based — doesn’t apply to their child. For example, children with ID, autism, and significant cognitive disabilities who are learning in separate classrooms may be taught using the “functional reading” approach that focuses on recognizing a few strategic sight words. But especially for children in kindergarten through second grade, Wright recommends that parents push back on these adult-imposed limitations on a child’s literacy learning.
Wright says, “We're actually seeing that some of our inclusive college programs that are serving our students with intellectual and developmental disabilities, in particular, they're getting many students who cannot read when they're coming in, they are teaching them to read in college, which tells us that they very much can learn to read, but that we need to do a better job in K-12 giving everyone access.”
While we explained that this screener cannot be used to diagnose a disability, also built into the new law is the requirement that the results of these screeners cannot be used for any high-stakes purpose, including:
While not specifically listed in the bill, another high-stakes purpose would be using this screening for educational placement. Notably, some school districts that were already using DIBELS for ELL reclassification have to find an alternative.
The screeners are the result of a huge effort of advocacy by a coalition of organizations determined to move California up the ranking when it comes to reading scores. Along with other new legislation to promote literacy instruction and professional development, the screeners could be a game changer in introducing universally designed reading intervention in a general education environment, and genuinely leaving no child in California behind in terms of our expectations that they will be a reader.
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