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Senate Bill 638 — signed by Gov. Jay Nixon on Wednesday — covers a host of education-related topics, including requiring a civics exam for graduation, making reciting the Pledge of Allegiance daily in public schools mandatory, allowing private schools to gain A+ rating and creating a rating system for day cares and other early childhood education programs.
But the part of the bill that is most important to Madison Edwards is the part that requires schools to screen students for dyslexia and establish a way to address that and other learning disabilities in the classroom.
Madison, 11, has dyslexia and she told legislators all about it last year when she testified in Jefferson City. “I feel great,” she said of watching Gov. Nixon sign the bill into law. “It’s amazing that a little bit could go such a long way.”
A task force will soon be formed to determine how that testing and remediation will take place. Madison has some advice for them. “The most important thing is just figuring everything out and trying to get them back on reading level, helping them slowly, starting from small to big.”
Madison gets help at the Springfield Center for Dyslexia and Learning in the Turner Center on the Cox South campus. The center’s space is being donated by CoxHealth, where Madison’s father is CEO. Her mother has been an unfailing advocate for dyslexia legislation.
Jennifer Edwards and dyslexia specialist Noel Leif started a website, DecodingDyslexia-MO.org, and opened the center last year.  She has been working on the effort for three years, seeing a variety of bills, including the establishment of a dyslexia specialist at the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, passed. This one is the icing on the cake.
“It means that we can now use the word dyslexia in public schools, that teachers will be educated on what that means and how to help students with dyslexia, and the state is willing to decide what best practices are,” she said.
Rep. Eric Burlison of Springfield has been involved from the beginning. He was also at the bill signing in Springfield. “This is really a proud day,” he told the dozens of kids parents and educators gathered at OACAC for the signing. “The Missouri constitution says that for the purpose of protecting life and liberties, the state will fund public schools. We have children who are able to carry on this republic. The most amazing thing we watched, seeing students … testify on this bill, showing our generation what the next generation is going to look like … so these kids have the best chance.
Also on hand was Rep. Kathy Swan from Cape Girardeau, who has likewise been a major mover in dyslexia legislation. “One in five people has dyslexia,” she said at the signing. “We need to screen for it and we need reasonable support for these students in the classrooms.”
Later, Swan said that once the task force is in place and establishes the ground rules, required by 2018, the legislature is likely to have to reconsider budgeting more money to meet those guidelines.
Jennifer Williams, the dyslexia specialist for the Nixa school district, said the is especially interested in how the guidelines will be funded. Nixa has offered its Flight Academy program since 2013 for students with dyslexia, but the program will not be able to continue next year because it no longer has outside funding. She is hoping that the guidelines established through this legislation provide “appropriate support” for school districts and that the task force establishes successful guidelines.
“I hope that our task force really looks at the states that have already gone down this path and uses the information from Texas, Arkansas and Mississippi,” she said. Mississippi allows parents to apply for a funding voucher for dyslexia remediation outside the classroom. Arkansas has public school screening and intervention and requires each school district to have a dyslexia specialist. Texas, which has led the way in dyslexia legislation, does its own testing and provides a diagnosis.
“Let’s use these states, use the things that worked and not the ones that failed,” Williams said. “So we are not spinning our wheels.”
To learn more about dyslexia and the Missouri legislation, visit decodingdyslexia-MO.org.
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