Policy and Advocacy Julie Collins Oklahoma Education Legislative, Policy, and Advocacy Updates The second regular session of the 58th Oklahoma State Legislature is just wrapping up from its Spring 2022 session. This column will summarize important education legislation and information about advocating for your views with legislators. Legislation One of the most immediate areas for attention in reading education stems from a previously passed bill, House Bill 2804, authored by Representatives Sanders, Albright, Conley, Townley, Davis, and Hill, and Senator Bice in 2020, This school year, 2022-2023, is the year this legislation begins to require that any child in kindergarten through third grade found not to be meeting grade-level targets in reading following the beginning of the year assessments under the Reading Sufficiency Act be screened for dyslexia. Screening for dyslexia may also be requested by a parent or guardian or certain school personnel. Districts are required to provide annual professional development regarding dyslexia. You should ask about this if your district is not providing you with information to meet these requirements. The Oklahoma State Board of Education was charged with developing policies for the screening and adopting a list of approved dyslexia screening tools to address these components of dyslexia: phonological awareness, advanced phonemic awareness, sound-symbol recognition, alphabet knowledge, decoding skills, encoding skills, rapid naming, and developmental language. Districts will report data regarding the implementation of the screening, as well as the identification of students and interventions provided, annually to the Oklahoma State Department of Education (OSDE) beginning in June 2023. Information about the screening instruments to be used beginning this school year can be found on the OSDE Special Education Dyslexia Resources Page. You can find more information about dyslexia, assessing students, and providing intervention for students with dyslexia in Oklahoma on the OSDE Special Education Dyslexia Page. House Bill 2768 authored by Representatives Randleman and Mize and Senator Standridge during this 2022 session adds dysgraphia to the Oklahoma Dyslexia Handbook, which was developed and made available to schools in 2019. Beginning January 1, 2024, this resource will be known as the dyslexia and dysgraphia handbook. The review committee designated for this addition to the handbook will study how to effectively identify students who have dysgraphia through possible reading and broad written language scores; study the responseto-intervention (RTI) process, as well as other effective research-based approaches in writing, reading, and literacy to identify the appropriate measures for assisting students with dysgraphia; and make recommendations for appropriate resources and interventions for students with reading or writing difficulties, including dysgraphia and broad written language disorder, in order to make schools aware of the significance of dysgraphia. You can find the full text of this bill here.
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