The Santa Barbara Unified School District has been under fire in recent months for students’ low math and reading scores , but Tuesday night, it will roll out some long-overdue positive news: the results of its dyslexia pilot program. The program, which is largely successful by its early-intervention tool, produced significant improvement in kids’ reading abilities across the board.
“Dyslexia is incredibly complex; it comes in different forms and there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution,” said Sierra Loughridge, director of elementary education at the district. Loughridge will present the results of the pilot program to the school board and the public on Tuesday, October 22. “But what we have found is that early intervention is the key to success with any type.”
Early intervention is aligned with the California Department of Education’s Dyslexia Guidelines , a framework that serves as a recommendation the district is not legally mandated to adopt. Students struggling with reading are given the Basic Phonetic Skills Test III at the beginning of 1st grade, and then those students with the lowest scores are given three additional tests, all administered by trained literacy specialists.