Transcript
“A psychoeducational evaluation is conducted. And typically this has two main parts to the test. One, we’re looking at their overall IQ or capacity for learning. Is the child or the individual capable of learning to read. Do they have the capacity for learning? Second, then we measure their reading ability. So we’ll look at their ability to decode words, their ability to spell words, their ability to read quickly and easily, called reading fluency, and then their ability to comprehend the written word or reading comprehension. So measuring all of those. And the way we look at a reading disability is we have this ability for reading and then the capacity for learning, and then the ability to read. So if it’s the same, then there’s no reading problem. If there’s a capacity for learning, say average IQ or above, but then their reading is really down here, lower.
It’s an unexpected under achievement. Then we can say that there’s a possible reading disability that exists. And that’s really how we measure for a reading disability. Now, often parents will come into the schools and say to the school psychologist or the learning specialist. I want you to test my child for dyslexia. And the schools will say, we don’t test for dyslexia. There’s no single test for dyslexia. Well, dyslexia is a medical term or a medical model type term that many schools don’t recognize what’s important is not the term dyslexia, but that it is a reading disability. And so we say, can you test my child for reading disability? So once that school determines that there is a reading disability, then they qualify for special education services and are provided special instruction in reading. There’s lots more to that, but that’s the basic part about the evaluation that the school process.”