The Dyslexia Life

This Fall GA is putting their money in education.

Georgia is kicking off the new school year with a $70 million literacy overhaul, and it goes deeper than a curriculum swap.

The Early Literacy Act puts 1,300 trained coaches inside elementary classrooms, where they are required to spend 70% of their day working directly alongside teachers.

The instructional approach is also shifting away from memorization and toward phonics-based
reading.

Nearly two-thirds of Georgia third-graders cannot read at grade level, according to state data.

Lawmakers modeled the bill on successful programs in Alabama and Mississippi.

I’ve spent the last 8 years loudly advocating to make sure what happened to my kid in K-8 grade didn’t continue to happen for other military kids around the US.

Military kids move more than any other kids in the country. For a dyslexic kid, every PCS is a real risk of losing ground.

I've lived this with my own child, and I've spent 8 years advocating for military and Georgia families on exactly this issue. DoDEA schools are behind on reading instruction — no universal screening, no systemwide training in the science of reading — while states like Georgia have banned outdated methods and are seeing real results (schools with state literacy coaches saw a 15% improvement in reading, with gains up to 29 percentage points on the Georgia Milestones).

I wrote up exactly what needs to change, and what you can do right now if your kid is at a DoDEA school or anywhere else:

https://thedyslexialife.com/blogs/f/dodeas-dyslexia-gap-waiting-to-fail-is-a-policy-choice

📚 If your DoDEA school says they're testing your child for a learning disability with "just a WISC and a Woodcock-Johnson" — stop and ask more questions.

That combination can tell you your child is behind. It usually can't tell you why. And under DoDEA's own new compliance manual (AI 2500.15), the eligibility team is required to name the specific cognitive processing deficit behind a reading struggle — something a standard cognitive + achievement battery often doesn't measure.

I broke down exactly what's missing, which specific tests to ask for by name, and what to do if your school says they "don't have that test locally." 👇

Read it here: https://thedyslexialife.com/blogs/f/dodea-tests-for-sld-with-minimum-tests-and-heres-why-its-not-ok

If this sounds like where you're at right now, I'm happy to hop on a free 30-minute call and help you figure out what to request in writing. 💛

DoDEA tests for SLD eligibility with minimum tests-it's not okay! By Hilary Reese, Special Education Advocate, The Dyslexia Life

Opinion: An unexpected driver is forcing elite operators to hand in their uniforms: a broken defense healthcare policy that penalizes their special-needs children. 🔗 Link to article in comments ⬇️

**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