Building A Dyslexia Parent Group - Step 7

STEP 7 - MONITOR IMPLEMENTATION OF CHANGES

Once you are victorious and your district is found in violation, you must monitor their progress and their follow-through, and hold them accountable.

Leverage your parent group to monitor the corrective actions required in the letter of findings. Conduct public records requests to ensure your corrective actions are being implemented. Professional development for staff is imperative. Find out which teachers are being trained, which children are being taught and share the workload among the group.

STEP 7 - REBUILD RELATIONSHIPS

Rebuild relationships in your district. You may find some district staff ‘retire early’ or ‘transfer’ from the district. As Kareem Weaver of the Oakland NAACP says, “Hard war, easy peace.” Now that the ugly part is over, quickly move to reconciliation. It’s over so embrace the district and work together for the children. No “I told you so’s” even though it is tempting, you just need to move on. A good leader allows others to take their ideas as their own. This improves buy-in. If your district thinks all of their changes are their own, they will be more likely to embrace them.

Mend all relationships. Introduce yourself to any new staff. Bring cookies, coffee etc. to meetings and control your narrative and show that you are not crazy litigious parents, but instead very determined and knowledgeable partners determined to see that all children in the district reach their full potential. Share your parent group mission and objectives with each new staff in that very first meeting so they know exactly what you are looking for. That way everyone is on the same page and knows exactly what you want the district to implement.

Initiate quarterly meetings with district administration. We meet with the district quarterly as the ‘Dyslexia Task Force.’ We told the district that the reason we got into this conflict was due to a communication breakdown. Pitch the group as a sort of focus group for the district so they can run their ideas for helping children with dyslexia by constituents and knowledgeable parents on the subject. These meetings are a place to head off conflicts with parents before they get out of hand, so it’s a win/win! Children are learning to read and the district is reducing the number of conflicts and complaints.

STEP 7 - AMPLIFY YOUR DISTRICT'S SUCCESS

Highlight when your district gets it right.

The best way to encourage the correct practices and behaviors in your district is to highlight them whenever they do the right thing. Reach out to the paper and tell the positive stories. It’s amazing to have a parent whose filed a complaint who’s willing to go on the record in the newspaper talking about how well the district is now performing for their child. See if parents can appear on the local radio and highlight what the district is doing well and make note of the positive results. Write letters of recommendation and have them put in the file for district staff who are doing the right thing. Develop presentations with your district and showcase the work you’ve done together. Invite parents and administration officials from other districts to a co-sponsored IDA event to spread the word on what a responsive district can do to not only help their children with dyslexia, but to help all of their children.

STEP 7 - OFFER SOR TO ALL INTERVENTION SPECIALISTS

To foster acceptance, encourage your district to “offer” their whole language trained IS’s another tool in their tool belt - OG training.

Don’t force IS’s to take OG, because they will resist. Simply present it as another intervention method. After they see the power of effective interventions, they will abandon ineffective whole language techniques.

STEP 7 - SPECIAL EDUCATION WILL INFLUENCE READING INSTRUCTION FOR ALL

Regular education teachers will see how well their students are doing after receiving effective remediation, and they’ll ask about the methods.

We changed the way we teach all children in our district to read partly due to regular education teachers seeing how well Wilson Fundations (WF) worked for children receiving it as intervention. In fact, they asked to pilot WF in their regular education classes. The district ended up adopting WF as a part of their core curriculum. In the Upper Arlington District, all children K-3 get 30 minutes of Fundations daily.

Dr. Louisa Moats in AFT’s newly revised ‘Teaching is Rocket Science’ 2020 states, ‘Researchers now estimate that 95% of all children can be taught to read by the end of first grade, with future achievement constrained only by students’ reasoning and listening comprehension abilities.”

Today, most of our district’s children who have received our new early literacy program don’t need remediation because our core curriculum is working.