RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - The N.C. Department of Public Instruction has been ordered to make changes that advocates hope will improve services for children with dyslexia.
The department has found that it and a number of school districts were not in compliance with federal requirements for identifying children eligible for special-education services, The News & Observer of Raleigh reported. DPI is requiring changes designed to reduce the roadblocks that may have kept some children from getting the help they need.
Literacy Moms N.C., a collection of advocacy groups, filed 18 complaints against the state and individual school systems, accusing them of not being in compliance with the Child Find provisions in the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
Among the actions to be taken by DPI is requiring school problem-solving teams to include an explicit question regarding whether or not a disability is suspected as part of each level of intervention.
Virginia Sharpless, co-founder of Literacy Moms N.C., said she hopes the changes will help address disparities between affluent and less-affluent parents of dyslexic children. Sharpless paid for her dyslexic daughter, who’s now in college, to go to a boarding school in Connecticut after fighting with the Chatham County school system.
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