Several education groups – the Idaho School Boards Association, the Idaho Education Association, Idaho Business for Education and the Idaho Rural Schools Association – took turns praising the bill. Only one group, the Idaho Freedom Foundation, spoke against it.
The bill cleared the committee easily, but not unanimously. Sen. Lori Den Hartog, R-Meridian, voted against the bill. Sen. Carl Crabtree, R-Grangeville, voted yes, but said he might reconsider when the bill hits the Senate floor. While noting rural schools struggle to hire and retain teachers, small communities also struggle to convince farmers and ranchers to return home. Should we forgive loans for them as well?
Senate’s dyslexia bill moves forward
A bill that would require the State Department of Education to ramp up its efforts to help students with dyslexia cleared the Senate unanimously Wednesday.
- Give the Idaho Reading Indicator, a K-3 standardized test, to fourth- and fifth-graders.
- Give a second screening to K-5 students who are struggling on the reading test, looking for signs of dyslexia.
- Train teachers to intervene and help students who have dyslexia and train those teachers to perform the above screenings.
A batch of lawmakers told personal stories of how dyslexia has affected their families before voting for the bill. But some questioned the bill’s approach.
This bill focuses essentially on the specific learning disability areas of basic reading skills, reading comprehension and reading fluencies, said Sen. Carrie Semmelroth, D-Boise, who holds an education doctorate with an emphasis in special education. One of my concerns about this bill is a possible over emphasis and over-identification in these three areas, by focusing on the characteristics of dyslexia.
The SDE opposes the bill, in part because it fails to provide any added funding to support new testing and teacher training requirements. The State Department proposed its own competing bill in the House Education Committee Tuesday. Continue reading »