Education Station

What if my child tests “out-of” her dyslexia?

This is a question recently posed by concerned parents. They knew that their child would continue to struggle with specific features of dyslexia even when older. Although her reading decoding was stable and reading comprehension was fine, the speed or automaticity of reading was an ongoing problem for her. She read accurately but slowly. They were concerned that the accommodation such as extended test time would not be granted if the test “numbers” obtained on a subsequent evaluation did not reveal a learning disability “discrepancy” that would support the presence of her dyslexia.

The research on dyslexia is clear: Dyslexia persists through out the life span of an individual once diagnosed with dyslexia. Longitudinal studies* support the persistence of Dyslexia in adolescents and young adults. Specifically, reading speed remains delayed. Dyslexic individuals continue to require time to input the visual word, decode the word and gain automatic meaning. Although the decoding process may no longer be an issue, the speed of decoding generally remains a slower, tedious process for the dyslexic student and adult. Dyslexia, once appropriately diagnosed, persists through life. Dyslexia does not “go away”!

*Pediatrics. 1999 Dec; 104(6) 1351-9

Persistence of Dyslexia: The Connecticut Longitudinal Study at Adolescence; Shaywitz, et al. Dept of Pediatrics, Yale University of Medicine