LD Blog

In “Screening may become norm: Funding still needed to detect Mississippi students with learning disabilities,” Rebecca Helmes of the Jackson (MS, US) Clarion Ledger provides the latest on efforts to screen systematically for dyslexia among school children in Mississippi. The state department of education plans to develop screening tools despite the fact that the legislature has not appropriated funds to support the effort.

Mississippi schools could have mandated screening available in 2008-09 to test young students for learning disabilities such as dyslexia.

But first the state has to find the estimated $3 million in funding and develop the tools to do the testing required by a law that went into effect Sunday.

The state Department of Education must develop screening materials to help schools identify students with dyslexia characteristics and other related disabilities. Although the Legislature did not allocate money for the program during the 2007 session, the department plans to start developing its screening tools this fall.

This is an important mandate that deserves funding. Mississippi and many other political entities responsible for education could save substantial amounts of money by simply identifying children at risk for dyslexia early and providing effective instructional practices. The costs of doing so would surely be out-weighed by the costs, both educationally and socially (to say nothing of the personal-social costs for students and their families) of not doing so.

I hope that people in Mississippi contact their state legislators and encourage them to fund this mandate.

Link to Ms. Helmes’ article. See the current status of the bill in the Mississippi legislature. LD Blog covered earlier developments in this story last year (see here). Flash of the electrons to James Brauer (Kansas City, MO, US) of Ripples to Rapids for alerting me to this story in his entry “Mississippi to Screen All Students.”