The Dyslexia Life

**PCS season is here — don't let your kid's evaluation get lost in the move.** 📦✈️

If you're transferring to a new district (or a DoDEA school) and your child needs a dyslexia evaluation, timing and paperwork matter more than most parents realize. A few things to keep in mind:

✅ **You have the right to request an evaluation** — in writing, at any time, at no cost to you. Don't wait for the school to bring it up. It’s called a direct parent referral.

✅ **Send it to both** the principal AND the special education director at the district office — email *and* mail it, and keep your own copy with the date.

✅ **If your child already had an IEP** in another state, the new district owes comparable services immediately under 34 CFR §300.323(f) while they sort out whether a new evaluations or amended or new IEP is needed — your kid shouldn't lose services just because you PCS'd.

✅ **Evaluation timelines are state-specific** — know your new state's clock the moment you enroll, because it starts running whether or not the school reminds you. Otherwise the 60 day federal deadline applies for new evaluation requests.

Moving is hard enough without your child's services falling through the cracks.

Full breakdown (with the exact language to use in your request letter) is on the blog 👇

🔗 thedyslexialife.com/blogs/f/how-to-request-a-dyslexia-evaluation-at-your-childs-new-school

Tag a PCS family who needs this. 💛🇺🇸

How to Request a Dyslexia Evaluation At Your Child's New School At Your Child's New School After a Military Move

250 Years of Promise: Why the Right to Read Is an American Right

This year, our country marks 250 years since its founding — a milestone worth pausing on, not just for what we’ve built, but for who gets to fully participate in it.
At the center of that participation is something deceptively simple: the ability to read.

Reading proficiency isn’t just an academic benchmark. It’s the gateway to civic participation, to employment, to the kind of self-determination the Declaration of Independence promised in the abstract and our laws have had to make concrete, one hard-won statute at a time.

That fight didn’t start with the ADA in 1990 — it started earlier. In 1973, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act became the first federal civil rights law to prohibit discrimination on the basis of disability by any program receiving federal funds, schools included. It was a quiet but seismic shift: disability moved from a private medical matter to a civil rights issue. A few years later, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (1975) — reauthorized and renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 1990 — went further, guaranteeing eligible students a Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) and an Individualized Education Program (IEP) tailored to how they actually learn.

Those two laws are the reason a child with dyslexia today has an enforceable right to evidence-based reading instruction, not just good intentions. They’re the reason “he’ll grow out of it” is not a legal defense. They’re the reason parents have standing — administratively and, when necessary, in due process — to demand that a school district’s obligations under 504 or IDEA translate into actual, measurable progress on a page.

As we celebrate 250 years of this country’s story, I think about the kids who are still fighting for something previous generations had to fight to guarantee: the right to be taught to read in a way that works for their brain. That’s not a side issue in the American project — it’s the same promise, applied to a classroom instead of a ballot box. Literacy is opportunity. Opportunity is the whole point.

Here’s to the next 250 years making good on that promise for every kid who learns differently.

DoDEA schools don't follow state dyslexia law. Not Georgia's, not Texas's, not Alabama's — even when the school sits inside those states' borders.

Most military families don't find that out until they've already lost a year of intervention.

I wrote this piece for parents navigating a DoDEA IEP, and for the advocates, attorneys, and educators who support them:

What DoDEA actually is, and which federal regulation governs it instead of state law

How SLD and dyslexia eligibility differ, and why DoDEA's criteria can be harder to meet than some states'

Five questions to ask about your child's reading intervention before you sign an IEP.

How to request a Child Find evaluation in writing, and what to do if the district won't fund an independent one

What changes, and what doesn't, for OCONUS families

This comes from both sides of the table — as a Coast Guard spouse who sat through IEP meetings with my own daughter, and as a special education advocate who's sat in these meetings for years.

Read it here: DoDEA and Dyslexia: What Military Parents Need to Know

https://thedyslexialife.com/blogs/f/dodea-dyslexia-what-every-military-family-needs-to-know

If you work with military-connected families — as a fellow advocate, a DoDEA educator, or an attorney — I'd genuinely like to hear how this tracks with what you're seeing.

DoDEA & Dyslexia:How to Get Help with Military IEPs for Reading. DoDEA and Dyslexia: What Military Parents Need to Know

The Science of Spelling Workshop — Brennan Chandler, PhD The Science of Spelling: Assessment, Instruction, and Intervention (K–3) May 9 | 9:00–1:00 EST | Live on Zoom A research-informed, highly practical workshop designed to help you improve spelling instruction without adding more to your plate. This session focuses on what drives spelling

Yesterday Governor Brian Kemp signed the GA Early Literacy Act which places a literacy coach in every elementary school with 200 students or more. This bill is the result of countless hours of advocacy with many stakeholders around GA.

Special thanks to Dale Burns and Speaker Jon Burns, Senator Billy Hickman, Senator Scott Johnson, Representative Bethany Ballard, Senator Rashuan Kemp and the GA Board of Education.

The bill allocates 70 million for literacy coaches by providing a state funded coach in every elementary school with 200 kids or more or a part time one for schools under 200 kids.

Only 1-3 kids read proficiently in 3rd grade in the State. This figure isn’t much different in any state in the US. The literacy coach model has been very successful in Alabama and Tennessee.

Nothing is perfect but here’s hoping this Falls Kindergarten class ends up with higher proficiency rates in 2030.

Decoding Dyslexia Georgia Missy Palmer Purcell Meagan SwingleRepresentative Bethany Ballard Ericka Danielle Smith

If your kid is in K to 3rd grade I highly suggest you go ask for the results of your Characteristics of Dyslexia Screener!

Decoding Dyslexia Military

Yesterday Governor Brian Kemp signed the GA Early Literacy Act which places a literacy coach in every elementary school with 200 students or more. This bill is the result of countless hours of advocacy with many stakeholders around GA.

Special thanks to Dale Burns and Speaker Jon Burns, Senator Billy Hickman, Senator Scott Johnson, Representative Bethany Ballard, Senator Rashuan Kemp and the GA Board of Education.

The bill allocates 70 million for literacy coaches by providing a state funded coach in every elementary school with 200 kids or more or a part time one for schools under 200 kids.

Only 1-3 kids read proficiently in 3rd grade in the State. This figure isn’t much different in any state in the US. The literacy coach model has been very successful in Alabama and Tennessee.

Nothing is perfect but here’s hoping this Falls Kindergarten class ends up with higher proficiency rates in 2030.

Decoding Dyslexia Georgia Missy Palmer Purcell Meagan SwingleRepresentative Bethany Ballard Ericka Danielle Smith

If your kid is in K to 3rd grade I highly suggest you go ask for the results of your Characteristics of Dyslexia Screener!

Decoding Dyslexia Military