Over the past 20 years, nearly every state in the United States has passed legislation aimed at helping schools identify and support students with dyslexia. These sweeping policy changes have not consistently changed the way schools diagnose students with the disease, nor have they reliably improved students’ reading test scores. An analysis of national education data found that while reading comprehension improved in a small number of states after new policies, many states saw reading and writing skills stagnate or decline for students with learning disabilities. The study was recently published in the journal Annals of Dyslexia.
Dyslexia is a learning disability that results from differences in the way the human brain processes language. This condition interferes with the ability to decode words accurately, making reading fluently and effortlessly especially difficult. Academic researchers estimate that learning disabilities affect between 5 and 15 percent of school-age children nationwide.
For these students, early reading struggles, if left unchecked, often continue throughout their school years. Children who struggle with reading early in life often have lower academic achievement. These early challenges can also have long-term effects on social life, mental well-being, and future professional success.
To address these perceived challenges, policymakers and advocacy groups have pushed for targeted government intervention. Until the turn of this century, state education policy rarely mentioned dyslexia in public statutes. This situation began to change over the past decade as grassroots advocacy efforts raised public awareness and prompted dozens of state legislatures to take action.
Currently, nearly every state has passed some form of education law aimed at directly addressing dyslexia. These measures vary widely in their actual requirements. Some states require early screening for all students, require special training for public school educators, and require specific phonics-based literacy interventions. Other states have simply added a formal definition of dyslexia to their education codes without strict requirements for classroom instruction.
Despite widespread political action, education experts have struggled to determine whether these new rules directly benefit young students. Lead author Eric Hengyu Fu, a researcher at the University at Albany, along with colleagues Kristin L. Sieski and Paul L. Morgan, wanted to map out exactly how legislative efforts have shaped real-world school practices. The team set out to track two key metrics before and after each state passed these laws. They investigated changes in diagnostic yield and changes in interpretation performance.
Assessing the impact of special education policies on a national scale presents unique data challenges for researchers. Federal education databases do not feature dyslexia as a separate diagnostic tracking category. Instead, schools tend to categorize these struggling readers into a broader category of specific learning disabilities. Because of this administrative overlap, counting overall rates of specific learning disabilities provides a practical way for researchers to observe diagnostic trends in public schools over time.
Hu and his research team analyzed student records from the National Assessment of Educational Progress to build their study. Also known as the national report card, this extensive federal dataset assesses the reading and math skills of a representative group of fourth graders across the country every two years. The researchers examined reading assessment records collected from these students between 2003 and 2022.
Researchers examined data from 47 states to establish a timeline for when each state would enact its own dyslexia laws. They excluded a small number of states, such as Hawaii, that had not enacted specific laws at the time of data collection, as well as states such as Texas, which had enacted laws decades before the tracking timeline began. The researchers modeled the odds of a student receiving a disability diagnosis by comparing the time periods before and after the law was formally passed.
The anticipated surge in disability diagnoses did not materialize in most regions of the country. The researchers found that in 26 states, or about 55% of the states studied, the change in specific learning disability certification rates was not statistically significant after the new law was passed. While 13 states saw a measurable increase in identification rates, eight states actually saw a decline in the percentage of students falling into this category.
When we looked at the average reading scores of students classified as having specific learning disabilities, we found a similar mix of trends. Only four states saw a statistical improvement in average reading performance after the legislative action. These academic advances emerged in Arizona, Mississippi, Nevada, and Oklahoma.
In most parts of the country, academic performance remained flat or declined. After the new bill was passed, 20 states recorded measurable declines in reading proficiency among students with specific learning disabilities. Twenty-three states had statistically nonsignificant changes in reading scores. In many jurisdictions, reading outcomes declined immediately after new regulations were introduced.
These disparate results highlight how loosely the term “dyslexia law” is applied across the country. Some states may simply codify a formal definition of internal reading struggles in law without providing additional funding. Mere recognition of a word in a book of state statutes is no guarantee that a school district will change the way it tests or teaches children in regular classrooms.
The lack of an increase in special education classification rates is consistent with the expectations of many education experts. Most states do not legally require students who exhibit characteristics of dyslexia to be formally placed in a special education program. Because students can receive targeted reading support without a formal disability label, this plateauing rate may simply mean that schools are addressing mild reading difficulties within general education settings. This decrease may even suggest that early intervention was successful in keeping students out of special education altogether.
Broad educational trends have also complicated student reading performance data. Reading proficiency scores across the country have declined across the board over the past few years, a trend exacerbated by pandemic-era learning difficulties. The widespread decline in literacy rates observed in this study is more likely a reflection of these national headwinds than evidence that new dyslexia mandates are actively harming student learning. Still, the data suggest that policy changes alone are insufficient to broadly reverse negative momentum in academia.
The research team found some limitations in data collection. Their analysis relied on cross-sectional survey data that capture snapshots of different students at different times, rather than tracking the same individual students continuously over their educational careers. This approach limits the ability to directly link state laws to specific causal student outcomes. Instead, this study highlights a broader link between the timing of the law and overall trends in schools.
In addition, the researchers used the year the law was passed as a benchmark for comparing statistical models. Passing laws on paper is often years ahead of implementation in actual classrooms. The true benefits of recent programs may simply be delayed as school districts take time to purchase new reading materials and train teachers.
To properly assess the policy’s success, state departments of education will need to overhaul the way they track student progress. The study authors note that separating dyslexia diagnoses from general learning disabilities in the federal reporting system would give lawmakers a clearer picture of who needs help. Without accurate monitoring, institutions will continue to struggle to ensure that early screening programs are working as intended.
Ultimately, this study shows that screening mandates require commensurate investments in teacher training and specialized classroom resources. The act of identifying students at risk for reading disabilities is only beneficial to children if that screening is immediately followed by structured, highly effective instruction.
The study, “Dyslexia Method Identification and Evaluation of its Impact on Reading Performance: An Empirical Analysis,” was authored by Eric Hengyu Hu, Kristin L. Sayeski, and Paul L. Morgan.
