Student Retention is one of the most popular practices for “helping” kids with dyslexia in schools. Unfortunately, student retention is a bad practice. It is NOT supported by research. Simply put, public schools commit gross failures to educate children with dyslexia. This is especially true when student retention is one of their common practices.

Why do public schools do such a bad job of teaching kids with dyslexia?

I contend the failure of students with dyslexia comes from the educational establishment’s antiquated ignorance. They are stuck in stinking thinking, limiting mindsets, and antiquated practices. They pass these beliefs and practices down from one generation of educators to the next. And it seems no one examines what is proven to be best for the child.

We’ve known for 70+ years now HOW to remediate dyslexia using Orton-Gillingham programs. It’s totally ridiculous for parents to still have to fight for proper reading instruction in so many schools.

People within the Educational Establishment DO improve educational outcomes when they do what’s BEST for the CHILD.  If your school retains kids, please reconsider the use of retention for any of the following reasons:

1) OLD WAYS of THINKING: The mindset of wanting to “wait & see” if a child is just a “late bloomer.”

Do you know what longitudinal research shows regarding “late bloomers” and student retention?

“The data from the studies are clear: Late bloomers are rare; skill deficits are almost always what prevent children from blooming as readers. This research may be counter-intuitive to elementary teachers who have seen late-bloomers in their own classes or heard about them from colleagues. But statistically speaking, such students are rare. Actually, there is nearly a 90 percent chance that a poor reader in first grade will remain a poor reader.” (American Educator)

Thus, every time a child is struggling and the parents, teachers, or administrators want to “wait and see,” there is a 90% chance the child will NOT outgrow reading struggles. The child may become a student retention statistic without ever learning to read. Therefore, there is a 90% chance the child is being harmed by letting the child fall further behind his or her peers while everyone is waiting to see if the child is “just a late bloomer.”

Statistically, student retention is highly unlikely to result in a child spontaneously blooming.  For 90% of the kids, withholding of corrective reading instruction using a “wait and see” approach amounts to educational neglect when the child clearly needs help now.

Providing help now will not harm a child who is in the lucky 10%, so why not just go ahead and provide specialized reading instruction to every child who is struggling?  That would be a much better educational practice!

2) STINKING THINKING: The Educational Establishment grossly neglects a child’s education when they take a “failure first” approach that requires a child to be 2-3 years behind BEFORE providing help.

This is one of the biggest detriments to children I see occurring at a very high rate of frequency within public schools. We’ve already established in #1 above that the vast majority of kids will NOT outgrow their difficulties with learning to read. So, why do we wait to provide a remedial reading program until after a child is already 2-3 years behind peers?

In the past, Administrators’ have told me they “Have to wait” before providing help to be SURE a child has a learning disability. They prefer student retention. They don’t want to evaluate the child or figure out what the child needs.

You don’t “Have to wait” :

IDEA Makes that CLEAR. Student retention is NOT an alternative to identifying learning disabilities.

1. IDEA makes it clear that A Response to Intervention Process Cannot be Used to Delay-Deny an Evaluation for Eligibility under IDEA (see the U.S. Gov Memorandum). Additionally, IDEA specifically states “Each State must ensure that FAPE is available to any individual child with a disability who needs special education and related services, even though the child has not failed or been retained in a course or grade, and is advancing from grade to grade.” (300.101(c)) ; and

1. A child does not have to be failing or 2-3 years behind before it can be determined if the child has a learning disability.  Learning disabilities can be identified and diagnosed by highly qualified neuropscychologists at the first signs of struggle. If there is not a school psychologist who is highly qualified to identify the root causes of a child’s learning problems, an evaluation with a neuropsychologist should be scheduled.

“Failure First”

“Failure First” thinking is similar to watching a child drowning in your backyard pool. You have a handy lifesaving ring available, so you stand there holding the ring while watching the child drown. You keep holding the life ring and watching. You’re just waiting to see if the child is going to completely drown before you throw the ring. Once the child goes under and doesn’t resurface for a minute, THEN you throw the ring because you can see that he is REALLY drowning.

Withholding a life ring may seem like a far-fetched scenario to you. However, educationally, that is exactly what the Educational Establishment is doing every time they see a child struggling with learning to read and they adopt the “The child is not two or three years behind yet” approach to providing assistance.

Once a child gets that far behind, you’ve already done irreparable educational harm to that child. Doing nothing while letting a child fall 2-3 years behind is like just like standing there watching a child drown. The purposeful withholding of needed remedial instruction amounts to educational neglect.

Again, you can easily avoid this problem by starting remedial instruction as soon as you notice a learning problem instead of using student retention as a bandage.

3) LIMITING MINDSETS: The traditional Educational Establishment limits their thinking when it comes to assistive technology for children with dyslexia.

I’ve had parents and teachers alike balk at the idea of allowing a child to have an audiobook version of a textbook or to use a calculator for math. I’ve had them say, “That wouldn’t be fair to the other kids” or  “That’s cheating!”

If you think providing audiobooks or calculators to children with learning disabilities is cheating or unfair, let me ask you–“What is the purpose of education?”

What’s the Goal of Education?

Isn’t the goal of providing an education for the child to LEARN?  If the goal is learning, and we can provide tools to enable a child’s learning, how can it possibly be “cheating” or unfair to provide learning accessibility to a child? Isn’t it unfair to the individual child to withhold accessible instruction?

There is a pervasive mindset among many educators that it is somehow “unfair” to provide a child with an audiobook. A child with dyslexia is perfectly capable of understanding science concepts, learning about history, or enjoying the language in great literature. Thus, providing that child with audiobooks enables the child to have access to science, history, and great literature, which other kids readily have through their reading abilities.

Helping or Hindering Education

Why would you want to withhold education or BLOCK a child from learning science, history, or great literature simply because the child is incapable of reading (yet)? The inability to read is a roadblock for kids with dyslexia, but audiobooks are a way around their reading disability. Audiobooks allow a child who can’t (yet) read to learn the same higher-level content as other children.

Similarly, for children who have dyscalculia or cannot remember their math facts, a calculator can provide accessibility to higher-level math. A child can understand math concepts without the ability to recall every math fact from memory. Where memory or recall of math facts is an issue, providing a calculator is a detour around the math fact memorization roadblock.

For children with written expression disabilities (dysgraphia), using speech-to-text dictation software can provide the child with a much more effective way to express themselves in writing.  Any kind of assistive technology that is available can enhance the learning experience of children with learning disabilities.

Using assistive technology is an easy way to enhance a child’s ability to remain on grade level in content-based coursework. Use it liberally!

4) ANTIQUATED PRACTICE: The Practice of Student Retention is proven to provide NO meaningful benefit to children who are retained.

Research-wise and statistically, student retention is not an effective approach to helping a child overcome academic struggles. As we know, 90% of children do NOT outgrow learning difficulties. The entire practice of Retention assumes that “another year” will allow the child to “mature.” The presumption is that the child will be able to learn as well as other kids next year.

Research shows that children who advance to the next grade actually perform better, both academically and socially. Retention is very hard on a child socially and academically. You might find it helpful to read the research and meta-analysis of retention as a practice educationally.

Repeating a grade seldom makes a meaningful difference in the educational achievement of a child. Sure, the child may do better the second year in a grade than he did the first time through. However, whenever he advances to the next grade, the child will again struggle with new content.

It may appear that student retention works on the surface. The child appears to do better in the short-run, but longitudinal research shows it is an ineffective practice. It does not serve its purpose–to let kids “catch up”.  Without meaningful educational intervention, retention does little more than delay the provisioning of the help a child needs.

Again, 10% of the kids may benefit from retention as they mature, but they mature without being retained.  And, retention harms 90% of the kids by delaying the help they need for an entire school year.

What children need is to have their education needs identified and met as SOON as a problem with learning is noted.

Let the kids advance from grade-to-grade, and begin to provide meaningful educational help immediately.

What can we all do to save kids with dyslexia from educational neglect in public schools?

If you’re a parent, educate ignorant teachers or administrators about the research.  Print off the referenced study data and educate them about why the practices they propose are poor practices. Be nice about it. They probably truly don’t know. I don’t know why they don’t know, but if they don’t know, someone needs to tell them. If they won’t listen to you, then you may have to escalate to due process to get your child an appropriate education. At least you can try to educate the educators about the ignorant ways of the Educational Establishment’s status quo. You may find it helpful to access our Special Education Guidebook for Parents of Children with LDs and follow the steps to help your child receive the help he or she deserves.

Talking to Teachers and Administrators:

If you’re a teacher, I have empathy for you. Most of the time, I find teachers have these mindsets because they’ve learned from authoritative administrators or older teachers. Many of those admins or older teachers haven’t looked at the research. Now that YOU know, it’s time to start changing the culture in your school. Start sharing the FACTS with other teachers and with your administration. It puts you in a tough political position if your administrators don’t acknowledge the facts, but you must try for the sake of the kids.  Where administrators won’t listen to the facts, help the parents know the facts and their child’s rights. If we can join forces to get the antiquated ways of thinking out of our schools, we can save future generations from these ongoing failures. Do what you can to be part of the solution!

And lastly, if you’re an administrator: You have authority to change the ways of your school beginning TODAY. Once you know the facts, there is no real excuse for continuing down the path of educational neglect within the schools. We’ve known for decades how to teach children with dyslexia to read. It is NOT rocket science.. I did it as a mom, I’ve known plenty of other moms who have done it. Is there ANY reason teachers in schools can’t teach children with dyslexia to read as soon as someone notices a problem? Give the required intensity of instruction early and everything goes better!

As a short aside for school administrators:

The needed level of intensity for direct instruction using a PROVEN Orton-Gillingham program is what is usually missing in schools.

Schools often THINK they are providing great programs in Reading Resource classes. However, student retention statistics often tell a different story. If your kids are not making progress, perform a minute-by-minute observation of the reading resource time your child has. It’s often an eye-opening experience!

You are highly likely to find “intense” direct instruction received by each child is not very intense at all. The amount of time each child spends directly practicing skills often amounts to less than 10 minutes per day.

Tracking Time on Task:

Arrival greetings, gathering belongings to depart, and other general classroom procedures, whittles a 50 minute class period down to 30-40 minutes of instruction. Direct instruction for each child is usually closer to 10 minutes or less. You’ll find this is true, even if there are only two or three kids in the room. If there are more than three kids in the class, the amount of time each child spends practicing is less than 5 minutes!

You may want to check it out in your own reading resource classes! Schedule an observation and pay specific attention to the amount of instruction each struggling child is receiving.

The easiest way to make notations for an hour observation is to make a circular pie chart with 12 slices. Have one slice for every five minutes in the classroom. Every five minutes or less, observe and jot down what is occurring in the classroom. Make notes of specific activities for each child throughout the class period. It helps if you focus on just one child. When you leave your observation, tally up the number of minutes the child spent directly practicing reading skills. An observation like this can be eye-opening as to why children are NOT progressing in spite of daily reading instruction.

I truly hope this article is eye-opening to everyone involved in educating children with dyslexia.

There is no real reason children with dyslexia should fall so far behind their peers. Homeschooling moms overcome dyslexia with an hour or two of direct instruction in reading at home. Surely schools can do the same if they jump in and start addressing reading problems EARLY. If you want additional insight, check out Ken Robinson’s thoughts on schooling.

Why wait for the late-bloomer that is likely never to bloom or retain him without remediation?

Is it really wise to wait for a child to be two to three years behind before providing help?

Why withhold assistive technology when it will keep your kids on grade-level in content-based subjects?

We CAN do better as a nation if we start eliminating limited or antiquated ways of thinking. Let’s base our educational provisioning upon research and reason instead.  We need to clear out the old ways of thinking. If schools go with proven educational practices, they can improve student retention stats by having less of it!

Please Share this post with any parent, teacher, or school administrator you think will learn from it!