Senate Enrolled Act (SEA) 217
Effective beginning the 2019-2020 school year, SEA 217 requires that Indiana’s public and charter schools identify, as early as possible, struggling readers who show risk factors for dyslexia.
- In practice, that means that all kindergarten through second grade students participate in a universal screener to check six different skill areas. These areas are:
- encoding (spelling)
- rapid naming (quickly name common objects), and
- decoding (reading words),
- sound symbol relationship (phonics),
- alphabet knowledge (identify and name letters),
- phonological and phonemic awareness (ability to separate and change sounds in words),
- Students who fall below benchmark on the universal screener may be “at risk” or “at some risk” for the characteristics of dyslexia and need extra help to learn these skills.
- Schools inform families if students score below benchmark, sharing the child’s scores, information about the characteristics of dyslexia, and next steps to acquire more specific information on the student’s skills and where to start intervention lessons.
- Intervention lessons use multiple approaches for learning the skills needed to be a successful reader. Throughout the year, schools inform and update parents on student progress.
- This does NOT mean a child is receiving special education support. Instead, schools use strategic and multi-sensory approaches to build skills needed for reading.
- At any point during this process, parents or the school may request a full special education evaluation to see if their child may qualify with a specific learning disability.
The following data shows the number of K-2 students who participated in the digital iRead Foundational Reading Intervention Program.
1,676 students screened for dyslexia
195 students Identified at risk