Two weeks ago, for the first time ever, Madelyn, a fourth grader in Mobile County, raised her hand to read aloud in class.

“I know that doesn’t sound huge, but that’s been a confidence builder,” said Christa Morrison, Madelyn’s mother. “Because it is hard to go to school every day and sit in a classroom with kids that, for all you know, they all do things you can’t do.”

Madelyn has dyslexia, a reading disability that affects her ability to recognize letter sounds.

When she was first learning to read, Madelyn’s school used a reading curriculum based on balanced literacy, which focuses less on phonics and more on cueing. The method works for about two-fifths of children, but can cause big struggles for students with dyslexia or other learning disabilities. Morrison had to pay for a professional assessment in order to get a dyslexia diagnosis and get the ball rolling on better support for Madelyn, she said.

Starting this summer, Alabama will add stricter guidelines for reading curriculum, in a push to make all schools use literacy programs that align with the science of reading, a body of research that stresses the need for explicit instruction in foundational skills like phonics. Each of the two reading assessments approved by the new state Literacy Task Force, Amplify mCLASS and Aimsweb Plus, are guaranteed to screen for the characteristics of dyslexia. It’s the latest step since the passage of the 2019 Alabama Literacy Act to provide proper support for struggling readers.

Read more Ed Lab: See how many students at your school are judged proficient in reading.

Some Alabama lawmakers, though, say schools should be able to retain flexibility in curriculum and training, and question whether recommended literacy programs are best.

A new bill, HB430, filed by Rep. Danny Garrett, R-Trussville, would allow some districts to keep their current literacy programs, even if they aren’t proven to be effective for children with reading disabilities.

Literacy experts warn that putting the brakes on changes now will dampen the program’s effectiveness.

“We need to let the process work, and it is,” said Jackie Zeigler, a state board of education and Literacy Task Force member.

‘The struggle has been hard’

All of Morrison’s children were taught to read with the three-cueing method, which involves prompting students to draw on context, like pictures in a book or sentence structure, to identify certain words.

The practice works for some children, who can pick up vocabulary easily. But for Madelyn, and many other children with reading disabilities, cueing methods don’t always work.

“To this day, if she comes across a word that she doesn’t know, she just puts in a good guess,” Morrison said. “And not only does it not teach them how to phonetically read, it’s teaching them horrible habits.”

Mobile County Schools say on its website that schools now provide instruction based on the science of reading and screen for issues early, but stress that “teachers – not programs or products – teach children to read.”

According to the international Dyslexia Association, as many as one in five people display some symptoms of dyslexia. In Alabama, about 16,000, or about 6%, of public K-3rd graders demonstrated characteristics of dyslexia last year.

Just 15% of children statewide were screened for dyslexia last year, down from 17% in 2020-21, according to state reports. Officials say those numbers are low because districts are intervening quicker.

All three of Ashley McCurdy’s daughters were diagnosed with dyslexia. Two – a fifth-grader and a kindergartner – have a more difficult time connecting letters to sounds.

But the Demopolis mom noticed improvement after the district changed its literacy curriculum. Her kindergartner, unlike the oldest, is learning to read with Amplify CKLA, one of the two core reading programs approved by the Literacy Task Force.

The program allows her teacher to drill down on specific topics, like breaking down letter sounds and letter naming. McCurdy said her youngest child now tests above benchmark.

“I just pray that it’s going to be a different story for my kindergartner, since she has received instruction based on the science of reading and has surpassed her goals, which gives her a strong foundation,” she said. “And that is something that is life changing to parents and to families like mine, because the struggle has been hard, very hard.”

‘Why should they have to change?’

In 2019, Alabama ranked 49th in national reading scores for fourth graders. In 2022 it ranked 39th, and scores improved by nearly two points even as most states saw losses during the pandemic.

The percentage of kindergarten through third-grade students who were retained this year has also gone down slightly, according to a recent report from the Alabama Reading Initiative. The 2023-24 year is the first year that third-graders who are not proficient in reading might be held back.

Garrett’s bill would help districts that aren’t using the recommended programs buy time to adapt to the law.

It would also restructure the Literacy Task Force, a group of literacy experts who are charged with vetting those programs, and put more responsibility on the group to make sure the content is “age-appropriate” and aligns with Alabama’s “core values.”

Other supporters, like Rep. Jamie Kiel, R-Russellville, questioned why districts should change if they are getting good scores.

“Why should a system that is performing well on a score basis, and has an assessment program that is working, why should they have to change just because you have a task force that says you have to change?” Garrett said.

According to the Alabama State Department of Education, no school districts are currently out of compliance with the law, but several could be next year when the state adopts stricter guidelines.

Currently, about two-thirds of school districts are using recommended core reading programs, about three-quarters of districts are using recommended interventions, and less than a third of districts are using assessments approved for the upcoming school year.

Garrett said other changes, like requiring the task force to vet content and include input from state officials, add more accountability.

But advocates worry that will only thwart recent progress.

“We’re taking a whole lot of authority away from folks who have actually shown us that they can help increase the reading scores for our children in Alabama,” said Rep. Barbara Drummond, D-Mobile. “They’ve got success behind their names right now, and I just see efforts in this bill that are going to minimize that.”

A+ Education Partnership, in a recent petition, said the bill would “slow the momentum toward ensuring every child can read.”

Three years into the law’s implementation, more Alabama teachers than ever now are trained in research-based reading instruction, and more school districts also have dyslexia-trained staff. All school districts are required to regularly test students on their reading skills.

Efforts to change literacy instruction, on the school level, aren’t easy, said Shelley Vail-Smith, a literacy consultant who has directed teaching and learning efforts at several Alabama school districts. She said it often takes time to shift course.

“There are plenty of people sitting in central offices in districts that are very convinced that they are right about using specific assessments,” Vail-Smith said. “But what we know is that, for the dyslexia community, some of them are going to miss life-altering issues.”

‘The cost is too high’

If an Alabama student shows a consistent reading deficiency, they are supposed to be given an intervention plan, which, in theory, would reduce the number of students needing further screening, officials said in a statement to AL.com.

Morrison said proper, and frequent, screenings could help catch issues earlier – and help get children like hers back on track faster.

Madelyn’s school never screened her for dyslexia, Morrison said, and it took years to get her child a proper diagnosis.

“Some parents don’t want to put a label, but if you don’t know, then you don’t know what you’re asking for,” she said.

After a diagnosis, and with the help of the state’s literacy law, Morrison was able to advocate for her daughter to get the support she needed, including a certified academic language therapist and an intervention program that is based on dyslexia-specific research.

In the past year, Madelyn’s reading has improved by two grade levels. She can now sequence the alphabet and string whole words together – foundational skills that are often difficult for children with reading disabilities to master without lots of practice.

For Kathryn Mitchell, it took until her son, Walker, was in middle school to get a dyslexia diagnosis.

“They didn’t do it because his grades were too good and the teachers just didn’t really feel that it was applicable for him,” she said.

Walker, who attended Homewood City Schools at the time, was a bright kid, Mitchell said, but he always struggled to read. He learned geography by building Lego sculptures of different countries, and could ace a test if it was read to him.

Mitchell paid for a 10-week $10,000 reading intervention program that taught Walker some critical skills, but still, nobody ever said anything about dyslexia. In seventh grade, Mitchell decided to get Walker tested.

Once he was diagnosed, Mitchell homeschooled him for a period of time, and then in ninth grade she enrolled him in Spring Valley, a private school in the area that specifically serves students with different reading challenges.

“At the end of ninth grade he said, ‘You know, I think I’m actually pretty smart,” Mitchell said. Walker has graduated, and is now applying for college after traveling the world for a year.

Homewood has made changes since then, Mitchell and other parents said. Elementary schools now use a universal screener, called STARS, which are supposed to catch some signs of dyslexia.

The STARS program is one of several that are currently approved by the state, but won’t be next year. District officials did not respond to questions about their plans to adapt.

At Spring Valley, nearly all teachers are trained in the science of reading and dedicate time throughout the day to work on specific reading and math skills. They also use a reading assessment, Aimsweb Plus, that’s recommended by the Literacy Task Force.

The school’s leaders have worked with state officials to provide input on the literacy law, and say those are all things that can be used in traditional public schools.

“What we do every day as educators is going to impact generations and generations of individuals,” said Gladys Shaefer, a CALT at Spring Valley. “And if we don’t do it right, the cost is too high.”

HB430, Garrett’s bill, was passed in committee and will head to the House floor for a vote.

Read more from the Ed Lab:

Why do so many US, Alabama children struggle to read?

This Alabama school battled pandemic reading woes through paraprofessionals, training.

How did Alabama improve reading scores when so many states struggled?