Facts About Dyslexia

“Dyslexia is an unexpected difficulty in reading in an individual who has the intelligence to be a much better reader. Dyslexia has absolutely no connection to overall intelligence. While people with dyslexia are slow readers, they often, paradoxically, are very fast and creative thinkers with strong reasoning skills.”

~The Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity

• Dyslexia does not present exactly the same symptoms in every child but is often characterized by many symptoms including struggling to read fluently, difficulty in word decoding, difficulties with sight word recognition, difficulty and reluctance with oral reading, difficulties in spelling, and difficulties with learning a second language.

• Dyslexia is extremely common--up to one in five people have dyslexia. The Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity contends that 20% of the population has dyslexia and that dyslexics account for 80-90% of all people with learning disabilities. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates the number of people with dyslexia to be 15%.

• Dyslexia sees no boundaries in race, ethnicity, or socio-economic status but is proportionally represented among all populations.

• Dyslexia has many gifts. Studies have shown that the average IQ of a child with dyslexia is higher than that of the general population. It should then come as no surprise that, as stated by Dean Bragonier in “The True Gifts of the Dyslexic Mind”, 35% of all entrepreneurs are dyslexic; 40% of all self-made millionaires are dyslexic; and, dyslexia is called the “MIT disease.”

• People with dyslexia tend to be excellent at many things, including spatial reasoning, conceptualization, seeing the "big picture," spoken vocabulary, puzzle solving, the ability to see other perspectives and thinking outside the box. People with dyslexia commonly think in pictures or mind movies.

• People with dyslexia successfully learn to read by different methods than people without dyslexia. Scientists have developed proven, evidence-based learning interventions that help readers with dyslexia succeed in school. These structured literacy programs teach students to decode words in an explicit and systematic manner, which includes phonemic awareness, phonics and incorporates multisensory reading strategies.

• Early reading intervention is vital to a child's future academic and economic success.

  • Studies have shown that the achievement gap between students with dyslexia and typical readers can be measured in kindergarten and first grade, and without early, scientific-based reading intervention, that achievement gap will persist and even widen over time.

  • Science has also proven that dyslexia is best addressed before the age of eight at which time a portion of the language area of the brain solidifies.

• Students who struggle with reading have significant negatively correlated statistical outcomes. We have systemically failed so many students with dyslexia for so long that we can track the negative outcomes.

  • 35% of students with dyslexia drop out of school

  • 50% of all adolescents involved in drug and alcohol rehabilitation have dyslexia

  • 70% of all juvenile delinquents have dyslexia

  • A recent study found that nearly 80% of inmates in a state prison in Huntsville, Texas were functionally illiterate, and of those, 48% had dyslexia.

• If diagnosed and intervention started before the age of 8, remediation services have far better outcomes. Early intervention is the key to how we change these the negative statistics, it is how we address a larger issue of high school dropout rates, drug related problems in our schools, and how we send more children on a path to college and economic success and not prison.

Contact us at nikki@dyslexianetwork.org