How did you know if a dyslexia-oriented school was best for your kid?

[Anonymous]

My kid is in 3rd grade, and she's generally happy in her DC public school. While her reading seemed fine in 1st and 2nd grade, she sort of stalled out in 3rd--while her friends started reading novels, she seemed stuck on the same material from 2nd grade (simple graphic novels, picture books, etc.) We had a nueropsyche done this year, and it revealed dyslexia.

She's very good at math, and while she *can* read, her pace is slower than her peers. Up until this month, she's felt good about her school work because she was able to keep up with her friends. She continues to do well in math and writing, but she now notices the difference in reading and she's started to say things like, "I'm SO much less smart at reading than my friends," "I'm never going to catch up!" "I'm such a slow reader that I'm ALWAYS the last person to finish my work, so everyone gets to play on ipads besides me!" We also just started 3 hours of intensive tutoring each week, and while she likes the tutor, she's upset that she has extra work that her friends don't have.

She has no other learning disabilities besides dyslexia (which appears to be relatively mild, in that in 1st and 2nd grade she was reading on grade level...her progress just seemed to drop off in 2nd grade).

Pros of dyslexia-focused private
--no more private tutoring, as remediation happens in school.
--no social stigma or negative comparisons with peers.
--I'm worried that her self confidence will take a nose dive in 4th grade in public school when the differences in reading ability between her and her friends becomes even more apparent.

Pros of public
--she has great friends in the neighborhood and we feel part of the community.
--diverse population of learners (i.e. some kids have learning differences and some don't, and I wonder if that mix is good for kids?)
--no commute

Putting cost aside, would you send a kid with this profile to a dyslexia-focused private? Are those schools focused on kids with more profound disabilities than my kid?

[Anonymous]

We sent our kid to a dyslexic focused private school. The first thing to think about is that it doesn’t have to be forever. Our kid attended for 5th grade and that’s it. He went back to public after that.

He’ll tell you that the school was life changing for him. He had already had hours and hours of 1:1 tutoring from great experienced people and had made tremendous progress. But the school was able to round things out.

It wasn’t perfect. Class sizes were tiny so social options were limited. And extracurriculars were limited where he went. There were some kids with different behaviors that he navigated. And of course he still has dyslexia.

It helped though. You could think of it more of a stop on the journey and not the destination.

[Anonymous]

Regardless of what school you decide, I would get her started on audiobooks for pleasure, so that she can continue growing her vocabulary and comprehension skills and feel like she's reading the same books as her peers. My daughter likes Bard: https://nlsbard.loc.gov/nlsbardprod/login/NLS

If she stays in public, she needs an IEP/504 to access the assistive technology she needs to stay caught up in content.

[Anonymous]

The points in your post that stood out to me were that she has good friends and no commute. You’d be trading that for loss of neighborhood friends, or at the very least feeling different from them (still), and more time in the car. Those things would give me serious pause.

We didn’t choose a private for our kid, and maybe we should have. He could have used the support, particularly in math where his working memory was a real problem.

If you decide to stay you might help your daughter see that while her 3 BFFs read faster, maybe they don’t do math as well. Or maybe they don’t kick a soccer ball as well. Or maybe they are supergirls, but if she looks around her…there are other kids with dyslexia in her class. Guaranteed. There are also kids with ADHD, autism, math challenges, and a dozen other brain quirks. One of the things we have to help our anxious kids with high achievement expectations learn is that you don’t have to be perfect or even good at everything. It is worthwhile to do something hard and do it poorly! That is what grit is - doing something hard, failing, getting back up, and doing it again.

No worries, our dyslexic kids come out plenty gritty. You don’t need to keep your kid in her current school to develop grit - the world will provide. But you don’t have to spare her every experience of struggle, either, if she is otherwise doing well.

[Anonymous]

Our kid realized in first grade that he was different than other kids in terms of reading and writing - and he began to internalize it and feel bad about himself. Even at that age he, on his own, explicitly said to me that he knew he was as smart as other kids so why couldn’t he write like other kids? (Reading disorder NOS and dysgraphic).

We chose to put him in a school for kids with dyslexia because it was obvious by 3 rd grade that he did not have the skills to read unfamiliar multi-syllabic words and it was deeply affecting his education. Even in 1st grade, his specific deficits in rapid-naming were misinterpreted by teachers as “not smart enough” for the advanced math class. And he was exhibiting avoidance behaviors when confronted with tasks he didn’t like - asking to go to the bathroom during writing tasks.

At first he didn’t want to go to a new school but he quickly blossomed both socially and academically. We maintained old neighborhood friendships and made new friends in the new school.

He learned to read in a way that he never would have if he’d remained in his public MCPS. Frankly, MCPS does not know how to provide dyslexia appropriate reading instruction, and they barely know how to teach reading to neurotypical kids and don’t at all teach spelling, handwriting, vocabulary acquisition, grammar or punctuation to any one.

HE would not have become the functioning college graduate considering grad school man he is today without getting dyslexia-appropriate instruction.

Maybe that could have been done with intensive private instruction, but he would have needed that 4 days a week for several years, plus all the other elements above. All of that was provided in the school day in our dyslexic school.

[Anonymous]

Our child also has dyslexia, though co-morbid with ADHD, inattentive. She's very bright though, social, and good in math. We toured Siena, McLean, Lab, and ultimately chose McLean. While I know Siena's only focus is on dyslexia (and it was a strong contender for us), we felt that it was 1. too small 2. too narrowly focused on dyslexia and our daughter needed to be around a population of learners that didn't ALL just have challenges with reading. We also found McLean to have students that just thrived in a smaller environment and didn't necesarily have a learning challenge. For us, they've done wonders for her reading. She's confident, doesn't feel stigmatized (which for us started in 4th grade), and isn't spending hours after the school day doing tutoring. I would honestly just start to tour schools and get a sense of things.

[Anonymous]

I know this isn’t exactly what you asked, but I wanted to share why we ultimately decided not to move our child to a dyslexia-focused private.

We did a ton of research and spoke with a psychologist who specializes in dyslexia and really understands the different school options in the DC area. After evaluating our child, she actually advised against switching. Her perspective was that our child is very social and thriving in her current environment, and that a dyslexia-focused school might feel more like a punishment than a support—especially since she strongly identifies with her current peer group.
She also pointed out that the social fit can be tricky. Our child has a solid group of friends, is engaged in activities, and feels part of the community at her neighborhood school. Leaving that behind could have been a significant loss. Another concern she raised was re-entry—she’s seen that transitioning back to public school later (especially around middle school) can be hard socially, since friend groups have already formed and kids may feel like outsiders.

That said, she emphasized that this really depends on the individual child—both academically and socially. For some kids, a specialized environment is exactly what they need. But in our case, the recommendation was to support our child where she already felt confident and connected, and to address the dyslexia through targeted interventions rather than a full school change.

[Anonymous]

The book “Overcoming Dyslexia” has a special chapter on figuring out the right educational setting for your child. Ultimately we chose a dyslexia-specific school for our DD for many of the same reasons as PP 12:06.

[Anonymous]

DC hated lab and I regret sending there where DC became demoralized and impacted sense of self esteem etc to a painful degree. Didn’t thrive there out of being so depressed from being there.
Think these things depend a lot on the kid. Wish we’d done public and continued tutoring.

[Anonymous]

We hemmed and hawed and hemmed and hawed. Ultimately, we stayed in public. DC’s dyslexia is profound and the dyslexia school seem to want more moderate levels. DC also had a flair for math, and our local public school do much better in math.

We ended up getting a private tutor 2-3 times a week and fighting for whatever we could get in the IEP. Audio books at his cognitive level were key. They helped him keep up with his peers with language, vocabulary, increasing character and plot developments, background knowledge….. We also supplemented what the tutor was doing on the non-tutoring days (she gave us material to work on). It was slow and steady progress. We also helped read homework and scribe at home- until he was adept on the technology - which took much longer than expected.

If you haven’t read Sally Shaywitz’s book, “Overcoming Dyslexia” please do. It really helps you form a plan. I also recommend wrightslaw.com for learning about IEPs and 504s.

[Anonymous]

We got a surprise diagnosis of dyslexia for our kid when he wasn’t second grade and opted to move him to Siena. It was very clear to me that while his teachers and atmosphere were kind, there was no way he was going to get the remediation he needed in school or even with all of the tutoring. This may not be the same for everyone’s kid.

I wanted to note that it meant giving up a neighborhood school for a further commute and that he maintains his relationships with his neighborhood friends and even developed them further. I sort of feel like the argument of, “I don’t want to move them away from their friends” is giving the kid a little too much power and also indicating that they will not be OK with change. There’s a lot of research that when anxious people avoid things out of anxiety, their brain gets a message that avoidance is good, but that’s not a healthy strategy in the long-term. I know we are lucky that our kid is adaptable and makes lots of friends, but if your kid needed to go to a school for Deaf students because their elementary school didn’t have enough sign language supports in fourth and fifth grade, you would probably make the change. Just because dyslexia isn’t as obvious a difference, it’s still a difference that’s important to consider.

[Anonymous]

I would try intensive tutoring first and staying in your current school and reassess in the fall. Try to do really intensive tutoring this summer. Our DS is at a dyslexia focused school, and it's been great for him but the commute and no neighborhood friends is a drawback.