I have high IQ kids with SLDs and I just want to say that severity of dyslexia aside, that huge gap between intellectual ability and reading skill is *unbelievably* frustrating for the kid and they are smart enough to know it. Futhermore, classroom staff often do not understand what is going on when a bright child has such low skill areas and often miscast the problem as lack of motivation, disobedience or laziness, making the life of the child in the classroom even more difficult.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are no official criteria or cut-offs to classify dyslexia by severity. As a psychologist, I wouldn't indicate mild/moderate/severe in the diagnosis, I would just say specific learning disability in reading/dyslexia.

I would descriptively use mild or severe labels to indicate the functional impact on academics. A high schooler struggling to decode early elementary level words - severe. A fourth grader with decoding/fluency at third or second grade level - mild.

It probably doesn’t matter in practice, but that high schooler may have less-severe phonological deficits but may have never gotten any remediation, whereas the fourth grader could have severe phonological deficits but have received really good phonological training in K and 1st. The severity of the causal deficit may not be the same as the eventual impact on reading, in other words.

I agree! Severity specifiers are most often based on functional impact of the disability rather than underlying deficits. Severe would be a severe impact on functioning, regardless of the contributions of underlying cognitive processes and access to intervention. However, the most severe processing deficits are also the most resistant to intervention, and students with milder processing deficits respond more quickly and strongly to intervention.

Anonymous wrote:There are no official criteria or cut-offs to classify dyslexia by severity. As a psychologist, I wouldn't indicate mild/moderate/severe in the diagnosis, I would just say specific learning disability in reading/dyslexia.

I would descriptively use mild or severe labels to indicate the functional impact on academics. A high schooler struggling to decode early elementary level words - severe. A fourth grader with decoding/fluency at third or second grade level - mild.

It probably doesn’t matter in practice, but that high schooler may have less-severe phonological deficits but may have never gotten any remediation, whereas the fourth grader could have severe phonological deficits but have received really good phonological training in K and 1st. The severity of the causal deficit may not be the same as the eventual impact on reading, in other words.

There are no official criteria or cut-offs to classify dyslexia by severity. As a psychologist, I wouldn't indicate mild/moderate/severe in the diagnosis, I would just say specific learning disability in reading/dyslexia.

I would descriptively use mild or severe labels to indicate the functional impact on academics. A high schooler struggling to decode early elementary level words - severe. A fourth grader with decoding/fluency at third or second grade level - mild.

School Psychologist here just came across this by chance. If it's helpful... The WIAT-4 dyslexia index is a screening tool only. For pre-k to grades 3 it made up of the Word Reading and Phonemic Proficiency subtests. The sentence composition subtest is not part of the screener.
There should be a separate "Dyslexia Index" score that is generated. That score determines the likelihood of the presence of dyslexia, not it's severity. That is what the image the OP attached is referencing. Anyway, I agree with the earlier posts - the scores definitely suggest a learning disability in reading, very likely dyslexia.

The WAIT-IV Dyslexia Index is just a screener. You would need a fuller reading work up to actually diagnose a Dyslexia.