How does a child get tested for dyslexia?

Screenings are used to identify struggling readers and pinpoint who needs reading intervention, or response to intervention (RTI).

According to this Dyslexia Assessment Fact Sheet, “a clinical evaluation is necessary to determine a diagnosis of dyslexia if the student continues to struggle with literacy skills, despite high-quality instruction using an RTI approach. Areas to be assessed, in depth, by a team of individuals include the following: phonological awareness, phonological or language-based memory, rapid automatic naming, receptive vocabulary, phonics skills, decoding/encoding real and pseudo-words, oral reading fluency, and writing at the sentence and paragraph level.”

Assessment is key not only because it helps us pinpoint the need for intervention, but it can show what intervention will be best for a student. Anyone (parent, teacher, therapist) connected to a student who feels the child is not responding as expected to their curriculum and/or academic interventions can ask the school to evaluate them for learning disabilities.

Check out our article Dyslexia 101 for more information about who can diagnose this learning disability and what interventions are recommended.