Dyslexia Evaluations
At the READ Center, I follow the International Dyslexia Association's (IDA) recommended areas of assessment for an educational evaluation of dyslexia. The following areas are assessed:
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Phonological Awareness
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Phonological Memory
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Rapid Automatic Naming
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Receptive Vocabulary
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Phonics Skills
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Decoding
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Oral Reading Fluency
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Spelling
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Writing​
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Sentence Level​​​
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Paragraph Level (4th grade and up)
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In addition to the IDA recommendations, I also assess the following areas:​​
+ Reading Comprehension
+ Listening Comprehension
+ Oral Expression
Finally, if parents wish for their child's math skills to also be assessed, I offer the following add-ons:
* Problem Solving
* Numerical Operations
* Math Fluency
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In addition to the formal testing, background information and school records are gathered and included as part of the evaluation. Following the evaluation, an appointment will be scheduled to review the findings and to provide the evaluation report to the family. The report given to the family is theirs to use as they wish, whether that be for their own personal knowledge, to share with a private interventionist, or to bring to their child's school. The report itself is typically 12-15 pages in length.
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It is important to know that for older students, cognitive testing (IQ testing) is still typically required for accommodations for high stake tests such as the ACT and SAT. Many college and university programs also require cognitive testing to qualify for support in college. For this reason, I typically do not conduct evaluations on high school students. (I will not deny a family an evaluation if they understand this limitation, but I routinely refer families of older students to a testing center that has a psychologist on staff who can complete the cognitive testing.)