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DYSLEXIA AND THE NEED TO READ: 

H.R. 3033, THE RESEARCH EXCELLENCE 

AND ADVANCEMENTS FOR DYSLEXIA ACT 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND 

TECHNOLOGY 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

September 30, 2015 

Serial No. 114–41 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY 

HON. LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas, Chair 

FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma 

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., 

Wisconsin 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois 

BILL POSEY, Florida 

THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky 

JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma 

RANDY K. WEBER, Texas 

BILL JOHNSON, Ohio 

JOHN R. MOOLENAAR, Michigan 

STEPHEN KNIGHT, California 

BRIAN BABIN, Texas 

BRUCE WESTERMAN, Arkansas 

BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia 

GARY PALMER, Alabama 

BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia 

RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana 

DARIN LAHOOD, Illinois 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland 

SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon 

ERIC SWALWELL, California 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

AMI BERA, California 

ELIZABETH H. ESTY, Connecticut 

MARC A. VEASEY, Texas 

KATHERINE M. CLARK, Massachusetts 

DON S. BEYER, JR., Virginia 

ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado 

PAUL TONKO, New York 

MARK TAKANO, California 

BILL FOSTER, Illinois 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

September 30, 2015 

Page 

Witness List ............................................................................................................. 2 

Hearing Charter ...................................................................................................... 3 

Opening Statements 

Statement by Representative Lamar S. Smith, Chairman, Committee on 

Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives ..................... 5 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 6 

Statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Ranking Member, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives .... 11 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 12 

Witnesses: 

Ms. Barbara Wilson, Co-Founder and President, Wilson Language Training 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 14 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 16 

Dr. Paula Tallal, Senior Research Scientist, Center for Human Development, 

University of California, San Diego; Adjunct Professor, Salk Institute for 

Biological Studies; Founder and Director, Scientific Learning Corporation 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 24 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 27 

Dr. Rachel Robillard, Assistant Director, 504 Services and Response to Intervention, Austin Independent School District 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 42 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 44 

Discussion ................................................................................................................. 56 

Appendix I: Additional Material for the Record 

Letter submitted by Representative Lamar S. Smith, Chairman, Committee 

on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives ................ 74 

Documents submitted by Ms. Barbara Wilson, Co-Founder and President, 

Wilson Language Training .................................................................................. 76 

Slides submitted by Dr. Paula Tallal, Senior Research Scientist, Center for 

Human Development, University of California, San Diego; Adjunct Professor, Salk Institute for Biological Studies; Founder and Director, Scientific 

Learning Corporation .......................................................................................... 111 

Document submitted by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Ranking 

Member, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of 

Representatives .................................................................................................... 154 

Prepared statement submitted by Representative Elizabeth H. Esty, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives .... 157 

(1) 

DYSLEXIA AND THE NEED TO READ: 

H.R. 3033, THE RESEARCH EXCELLENCE 

AND ADVANCEMENTS FOR DYSLEXIA ACT 

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2015 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY, Washington, D.C. 

The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:07 a.m., in Room 

2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Lamar Smith 

[Chairman of the Committee] presiding. 
2 
3 
4 
5 

Chairman SMITH. The Committee on Science, Space, and Technology will come to order. 

Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare recesses of 

the Committee at any time. 

Welcome to today’s hearing, ‘‘Dyslexia and the Need to READ: 

H.R. 3033, the Research Excellence and Advancements for Dyslexia 

Act.’’ 

Let me say we welcome everyone here today but particularly 

those who are under 18, and it’s nice to see them represented in 

the audience. 

I’m going to recognize myself for an opening statement, and then 

the Ranking Member. 

Today’s hearing is on H.R. 3033, the Research Excellence and 

Advancements for Dyslexia, or READ, Act, and the need to 

prioritize investments in dyslexia research conducted by the National Science Foundation. 

I want to thank the many co-sponsors of the READ Act, especially former Science Committee Member, Representative Julia 

Brownley. We co-chair the bipartisan Congressional Dyslexia Caucus. The caucus now has more than 100 Members of Congress. Together, we champion an increased public awareness of dyslexia, 

which affects an estimated 8.5 million schoolchildren and one in six 

Americans in some form. 

Despite this huge number, many Americans remain undiagnosed, 

untreated and silently struggle at school or work. Too many children undiagnosed with dyslexia have difficulties in the classroom 

and sometimes drop out of school and face uncertain futures. 

In a hearing last year on the science of dyslexia—one of the bestattended hearings of this Committee—experts testified how research in the area of neuroscience has led to practical ways of overcoming dyslexia and why more research was necessary. Parents 

and teachers both must receive training in how to identify and test 

students for dyslexia. And the development of special curricula and 

educational tools can better enable students to read at their fullest 

potential. 

The expert witnesses at our hearing were clear, Dyslexia is the 

most common reading disability, yet those who suffer from it often 

have normal or above-average intelligence. There is no proven correlation between dyslexia and intelligence. Albert Einstein had dyslexia, and Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Nicholas Tesla, Thomas Edison and Steve Jobs are a few of the most recognized, brilliant 

innovators and inventors who overcame dyslexia. 

With more research, greater awareness of how to identify 

dyslexic students, better curricula and more resources in the hands 

of parents, teachers and students, we can develop the potential of 

many of those students who might become the next Einstein. But 

if you can’t read, it’s hard to achieve. 

The READ Act is a step in the right direction to help those with 

dyslexia. The bill ensures that our children have the means to succeed. 

The READ Act requires the National Science Foundation budget 

to include a specific line item for the Research in Disabilities Education program. The bill authorizes at least $5 million annually for 

merit-reviewed, competitively awarded dyslexia research projects. 
6 

It uses funds already appropriated for the NSF Research and Related Activities account or the Education and Human Resources Directorate for those projects. It does not increase overall federal 

spending at the NSF. 

The READ Act supports the practical research our expert witnesses said is most needed: early identification, professional training for teachers and administrators about dyslexia, and evidencebased educational tools and curricula. This is well within the scope 

of NSF’s current science, technology, engineering, and mathematics 

education programs. 

Our witnesses today have personal experiences with this issue. 

They routinely help students with dyslexia in the classroom and 

identify students who can benefit from additional instruction tailored for their unique situation. They develop practical curricula to 

help children and adults with dyslexia. And some are parents of 

dyslexic students who want to make a difference not only in their 

children’s lives but also in the lives of others. 

And we’ll put something up on the big screen right now. October 

is Dyslexia Awareness Month. One year ago, in conjunction with 

our Science of Dyslexia hearing, the Web site Understood.org was 

launched. This Web site provides some tests for dyslexia and other 

resources. Since Understood.org went live, over six million people 

have visited the Web site and it now attracts about one million different visitors each month. 

After today’s hearing, I would like to welcome Members of the 

Committee to a reception in room 2325 down the hall being hosted 

by the National Center for Learning Disabilities along with the 

International Dyslexia Association, Decoding Dyslexia, the Learning Disabilities Association of America, Dyslexia Advantage, and 

Learning Ally. By the way, I said just Members of the Committee, 

I mean everybody in this room is welcome to that reception down 

the hall in that direction. 

For many people, dyslexia is considered a disability. But if we 

change the way we approach this subject, we can turn that disability into an opportunity for a brighter and more productive future. 

[The prepared statement of Chairman Smith follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN LAMAR S. SMITH

Welcome to today’s hearing on H.R. 3033, the Research Excellence and Advancements for Dyslexia or READ Act, and the need to prioritize investments in dyslexia 

research conducted by the National Science Foundation (NSF). 

I thank the many co-sponsors of the READ Act, especially former Science Committee Member, Representative Julia Brownley. We co-chair the bipartisan Congressional Dyslexia Caucus. 

The caucus now has more than 100 Members of Congress. Together, we champion 

an increased public awareness of dyslexia, which affects an estimated 8.5 million 

school children and one in six Americans in some form. 

Despite this huge number, many Americans remain undiagnosed, untreated and 

silently struggle at school or work. Too many children undiagnosed with dyslexia 

have difficulties in the classroom and sometimes drop out of school and face uncertain futures. 

In a hearing last year on the science of dyslexia—one of the best-attended hearings of this Committee—experts testified how research in the area of neuroscience 

has led to practical ways of overcoming dyslexia and why more research was necessary. 
7 

Parents and teachers both must receive training in how to identify and test students for dyslexia. And the development of special curricula and educational tools 

can better enable students to read at their fullest potential. 

The expert scientists at our hearing were clear: Dyslexia is the most common 

reading disability yet those who suffer from it often have normal or above-average 

intelligence. There is no proven correlation between dyslexia and intelligence. 

Albert Einstein had dyslexia. And Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Nicholas Tesla, 

Thomas Edison and Steve Jobs are a few of the most recognized, brilliant innovators 

and inventors who overcame dyslexia. 

With more research, greater awareness of how to identify dyslexic students, better 

curricula and more resources in the hands of parents, teachers, and students, we 

can develop the potential of many of those students who might become the next Einstein. 

But if you can’t read, it is hard to achieve. The READ Act is a step in the right 

direction to help those with dyslexia. The bill ensures that our children have the 

means to succeed. 

The READ Act requires the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) budget to include a specific line item for the Research in Disabilities Education program. The 

bill authorizes at least five million dollars annually for merit-reviewed, competitively awarded dyslexia research projects. 

It uses funds already appropriated for the NSF Research and Related Activities 

account or the Education and Human Resources Directorate for these projects. It 

does not increase overall federal spending at the NSF. 

The READ Act supports the practical research our expert witnesses said is most 

needed: early identification, professional training for teachers and administrators 

about dyslexia, and evidence-based educational tools and curricula. This is well 

within the scope of NSF’s current science, technology, engineering, and mathematics 

(STEM) education programs. 

Our witnesses today have personal experiences with this issue. They routinely 

help students with dyslexia in the classroom and identify students who can benefit 

from additional instruction tailored for their unique situation. 

They develop practical curricula to help children and adults with dyslexia. And 

some are parents of dyslexic students who want to make a difference not only in 

their children’s lives but also in the lives of others. 

October is Dyslexia Awareness Month. One year ago—in conjunction with our 

Science of Dyslexia hearing—the website Understood.org was launched. This 

website provides some tests for dyslexia and other resources. 

Since Understood.org went live, over six million people have visited the website 

and it now attracts about one million different visitors each month. 

After today’s hearing, I would like to welcome members of the Committee to a reception in room 2325 down the hall being hosted by the National Center for Learning Disabilities along with the International Dyslexia Association, Decoding Dyslexia, the Learning Disabilities Association of America, Dyslexia Advantage, and 

Learning Ally. 

For many people, dyslexia is considered a disability. But if we change the way 

we approach this subject, we can turn that disability into an opportunity for a 

brighter and more productive future. 

[The bill follows:] 
8 
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Chairman SMITH. That concludes my opening remarks, and the 

Ranking Member, the gentlewoman from Texas, Ms. Johnson, is 

recognized for hers. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, 

and good morning. I appreciate that you are holding this hearing. 

I want to thank all of our witnesses for being here today, and I look 

forward to hearing your testimony. 

I have known several people who have dyslexia. Although dyslexia is a lifelong condition, if someone gets proper diagnosis and 

instructions, they can succeed in school and go on to have successful careers. I would not be surprised if we didn’t have some examples in this room today. I know some very personally who are very 

successful. 

The Science, Space, and Technology Committee oversees most of 

the federal nondefense R&D, but we do not directly oversee the 

lead agency for dyslexia research, which is NIH. Moreover, we do 

not oversee the Department of Education, which supports educational programs and provides services for students with learning 

disabilities, including dyslexia. However, we do oversee the National Science Foundation, which supports fundamental research 

that provides a foundation for dyslexia research as well as educational research. Although several of the directorates at NSF fund 

research that contributes to the science of dyslexia, the majority of 

the NSF-funded research relating to dyslexia is supported by the 

Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Directorate, and the 

Education and Human Resources Directorate—two important NSF 

Directorates. For example, the Social, Behavioral, and Economic 

Sciences Directorate funded the Science of Learning Centers program, which supported six large-scale, long-term, interdisciplinary 

centers that have made significant contributions to learning research. 

I look forward to hearing from Dr. Tallal about the Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center of which she is a co-Director. This Center focuses on understanding the role that timing plays in learning 

and applying that research to improving educational tools and 

practices. Since processing language is one of the fastest things 

that we do, it is clear that timing plays a critical role in understanding speech and language. While the Centers program is not 

awarding new grants, SBE continues to be a leader in funding the 

science of learning research. 

Today we are going to talk about H.R. 3033, the Research Excellence and Advancements for Dyslexia, or the READ Act. This bill 

would require NSF to have a line item for the Research in Disabilities Education program in NSF’s Education Directorate and to 

fund at least $5 million a year on dyslexia research. The research 

would be on the science of dyslexia, including the early identification of individuals with dyslexia, professional development for 

teachers and school administrators, and curricula development and 

educational tools. I fully support funding more research in language-based learning disabilities, including dyslexia. 

But I do have to point out that this bill does not provide NSF 

with additional money to fund that research. Rather, it requires 

NSF to use existing funding. Although I support more funding for 

dyslexia research, in the current environment of flat research budg-
12 

ets, I would have liked to see additional money provided for the 

priority in the bill. 

But with that said, I do support the goals and intentions of the 

legislation, and I want to thank our witnesses for being here today. 

I look forward to the testimony, and I thank you, Mr. Chairman, 

and I yield back. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Johnson of Texas follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF COMMITTEE RANKING MEMBER

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing. I want to thank the witnesses 

for being here today. I look forward to hearing your testimony. 

I have known several people who have dyslexia. Although dyslexia is a lifelong 

condition, if someone gets proper diagnosis and instruction, they can succeed in 

schools and go on to have successful careers. I would not be surprised if we have 

some examples of that in the room today. The Science, Space, and Technology Committee oversees most of the federal nondefense R&D, but we do not directly oversee 

the lead agency for dyslexia research, which is NIH. 

Moreover, we do not oversee the Department of Education, which supports educational programs and provides services for students with learning disabilities, including dyslexia. 

However, we do oversee the National Science Foundation, which supports fundamental research that provides a foundation for dyslexia research as well as educational research. 

Although several of the Directorates at NSF fund research that contributes to the 

science of dyslexia, the majority of the NSF-funded research relating to dyslexia is 

supported by the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Directorate and the 

Education and Human Resources Directorate-two important NSF Directorates. 

For example, the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Directorate funded 

the Science of Learning Centers Program, which supported six large-scale, longterm, interdisciplinary centers that have made significant contributions to learning 

research. 

I look forward to hearing from Dr. Tallal about the Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center of which she is a co-Director. This Center focuses on understanding the 

role that timing plays in learning and applying that research to improving educational tools and practices. Since processing language is one of the fastest things 

we do, it is clear that timing plays a critical role in understanding speech and language. While the Centers program is not awarding new grants, SBE continues to 

be a leader in funding the science of learning research. 

Today we are going to talk about H.R. 3033, the Research Excellence and Advancements for Dyslexia or the READ Act. 

This bill would require NSF to have a line item for the Research in Disabilities 

Education program in NSF’s Education Directorate and to fund at least $5 million 

dollars a year on dyslexia research. The research would be on the science of dyslexia, including the early identification of individuals with dyslexia, professional development for teachers and school administrators, and curricula development and 

educational tools. 

I fully support funding more research in language-based learning disabilities, including dyslexia. But I do have to point out that this bill does not provide NSF with 

additional money to fund that research. Rather, it requires NSF to use existing 

funding. 

Although I support more funding for dyslexia research, in the current environment of flat research budgets, I would have liked to see additional money provided 

for this priority in the bill. 

But with that said, I do support the goals and intentions of this legislation. 

I want to thank the witnesses for being here today. I look forward to your testimony and the Q&A. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back the balance of my time. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mrs. Johnson. 

Before I welcome our witnesses, I want to note that unfortunately Geraldine Tincy Miller from the Texas State Board of Education is not able to testify today due to a death in her family late 
13 

last week. Ms. Miller shepherded bills through the Texas State 

Legislature to help students with dyslexia and has been an advocate on the issue for many decades. 

Without objection, I would like to include in the hearing record 

the history of dyslexia law that Ms. Miller wrote and provided to 

the Committee. 

[The information appears in Appendix ] 

Chairman SMITH. I would also like to include in the hearing 

record a letter we received yesterday from Dr. Sally Shaywitz of 

the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity. Dr. Shaywitz testified 

last year before the Science Committee. Her letter states, in part, 

‘‘The READ Act will help to put knowledge into the science of dyslexia and to action more quickly. Everyone who is a parent, teacher 

or researcher working with a dyslexic child should support H.R. 

3033, the READ Act.’’ And without objection, that’ll be made a part 

of the record as well. 

[The information appears in Appendix I] 

Chairman SMITH. Let me go to our witnesses. 

Our first witness, Ms. Barbara Wilson, is the Co-founder and 

President of Wilson Language Training, which provides professional support to American educators. Ms. Wilson oversees graduate and clinical courses to help students with language-based 

learning disabilities. She has over 30 years of experience in working with people with dyslexia. Ms. Wilson received her bachelor’s 

degree from Fitchburg State University and her master’s in education from Simmons College in Massachusetts. 

Our next witness, Dr. Paula Tallal, is the Senior Research Scientist at the Center for Human Development at the University of 

California San Diego. She also serves as an Adjunct Professor at 

the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and is the Founder and Director of the Scientific Learning Corporation. Dr. Tallal is a Cognitive Neuroscientist and board-certified Clinical Psychologist who 

has authored over 200 professional publications and holds several 

patents. Dr. Tallal received her bachelor’s degree from New York 

University and her Ph.D. from Cambridge University. 

Dr. Rachel Robillard, our final witness, is an Assistant Director 

in the Austin Independent School District where she helps to provide accommodations to students with disabilities. She is recognized for the many improvements she helped implement in how the 

school district approaches dyslexia evaluation and intervention. 

She previously taught in several Austin Schools and has taught in 

the Teacher Preparation program at the University of Texas as 

well as in the Educational Psychology Departments at both the 

University of Texas and Texas State University. Dr. Robillard remains an Adjunct Faculty at both universities. Dr. Robillard received her bachelor’s degree in elementary education and Spanish 

and her master’s and Ph.D. in educational psychology from the 

University of Texas in Austin. 

We welcome you all, and Ms. Wilson, if you’ll begin? 
14 

TESTIMONY OF MS. BARBARA WILSON, 

CO-FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT, 

WILSON LANGUAGE TRAINING 

Ms. WILSON. Thank you, Chairman Smith, for your dedication to 

individuals with dyslexia and to all here working for the betterment of their lives. 

This is a critical time as many states are recognizing the existence of dyslexia but need further guidance on how to prepare their 

teachers to effectively teach these students and how to implement 

the instruction with success. 

Thirty years ago, I was hired to test students in grades K–12 referred for an educational evaluation. I quickly realized that by far 

the most common reason for referral was the inability to read. Following testing, I led the team meeting to determine an instructional plan. At first, I enthusiastically shared what we would do to 

teach the child to read. Unfortunately, that soon changed as I did 

many three-year reevaluations that demonstrated that what we 

were doing was not working. In fact, after three years without 

progress, the students became even more desperately behind. 

My search to help these students led me to Massachusetts General Hospital’s Language Disorders Unit, where I did clinical training with individuals diagnosed with dyslexia using a methodology 

called Orton-Gillingham. I was excited to see that it worked, and 

also discouraged that this teaching knowledge was limited in reach, 

often only available in private schools costing $20,000 or more per 

year. 

For five years I continued at Mass General Hospital part-time, 

teaching adults diagnosed with dyslexia. Concurrently, I founded 

the Wilson Learning Center with my husband, Ed. Students who 

had long struggled despite IEPs and teachers’ efforts came to the 

Center to learn to read. 

During this time, I developed the Wilson Reading System. Soon 

I was invited to meet with special-education directors from 10 nearby school districts who asked me to work with their staffs. Parents 

were demanding that they teach like we did at the Center. Thus, 

I shifted focus in 1988 to provide both curricula and professional 

learning to teachers in public schools. 

My work with adults taught me that it was possible to teach 

these individuals to read, but if they don’t learn to do this while 

still in school, too often their paths in life are filled with significant 

failure and distress. 

I wish I could tell you that the beginning of my story could not 

be repeated in 2015 because all teachers are now well prepared to 

teach students with dyslexia. Sadly, that is not true. The same scenario plays out over and over again across this country today. A 

student cannot read and is referred to special education where 

teachers are unprepared to teach them. 

It should not be this way. Research has identified the necessary 

instruction the individuals with dyslexia need, as the previous 

panel on the science of dyslexia shared with you. 

Teachers desperately want to teach their students how to read, 

but most teaching degree programs do not include the in-depth 

practical work needed to gain the skills to do this with their most 
15 

challenged students. School districts throughout the country have 

recognized this gap and contract with us to provide the necessary 

training. At times, we are brought in as the result of a due-process 

hearing for a student who is desperately behind. Our extensive 

training yields a certification and includes expert supervision of 

teachers as they work with a student who has a significant reading 

disability. Teachers who previously had earned their reading or 

special-education degrees often express, ‘‘Why didn’t I learn to do 

this before?’’ 

Wilson has certified 25,000 dyslexia specialists in public schools 

in 50 states, and we now partner with six universities that embed 

the certification into their teaching degree programs. 

Individuals with dyslexia can absolutely learn to read if working 

with a knowledgeable teacher under the right conditions. I’ve witnessed thousands of students who were unable to reach even basic 

words when they were past elementary grades later learned to read 

with a well-trained teacher, go on to college, and often chose careers in engineering and science. 

Technology aids such as audio books can assist these students, 

but they should not replace instruction that will actually teach the 

student how to read independently. Further advances in technology 

will help us scale effective instruction to students, but teachers are 

also an important part of the equation. Providing teachers with 

knowledge and skills is necessary but not sufficient. Implementation science informs us that successful results will only be realized 

if a school is structured to enable these students to provide the 

needed instruction. 

I believe that the READ Act is important to bridge the gap between what research says and what we should do for students with 

dyslexia and what is actually done in our schools today. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Wilson follows:] 
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Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Ms. Wilson. 

And Dr. Tallal. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. PAULA TALLAL, 

SENIOR RESEARCH SCIENTIST, 

CENTER FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT, 

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO; 

ADJUNCT PROFESSOR, 

SALK INSTITUTE FOR BIOLOGICAL STUDIES; 

FOUNDER AND DIRECTOR, 

SCIENTIFIC LEARNING CORPORATION 

Dr. TALLAL. Good morning. I’m Paula Tallal, and I’m a Research 

Scientist and Co-founder of Scientific Learning Corporation, a neuroscience-based educational software business that has been actively translating research aimed at remediating language and 

reading problems for almost two decades. 

Today I’ll testify to the fact that there is an epidemic of reading 

failure that we have both the scientific evidence and novel interventions to treat effectively. What we do not have is an effective 

roadmap for implementing evidence-based tools and technologies on 

a broad scale or a mandate for our schools to use these evidencebased advances to help millions of struggling readers. 

The heartfelt message I wish to convey to you today is that while 

failing to learn to read is not life-threatening, it certainly can be 

life-destroying. 

There’s ample research that demonstrates that the factors that 

cause reading failure begin well before the child enters formal education. This research has shown that even in infancy, the precursors to reading failure can be identified reliably in the form of slow 

and inconsistent auditory processing. This auditory-processing constraint cascades over the early years of life, disrupting the development of succinct phonological representations in the brain, oral language and ultimately reading. 

Processing the individual sounds or phonemes inside of words is 

the fastest thing the human brain has to do. In order to learn to 

read, a child must become aware that words are made up of individual phonemes and it is the sounds that the letters represent. 

This process is called phonological awareness. Decades of research 

has demonstrated that failure to become phonologically aware is at 

the heart of reading failure. 

Put simply, when it comes to auditory processing, children with 

language learning problems are operating on the equivalent of dialup speed while good language and reading skills require a child to 

operate on the equivalent of high-speed internet. 

Traditional tools for teaching reading, regardless of how expertly 

or how often they’re applied, will not work for most struggling 

readers until these more foundational skills are remediated. 

Throughout life but especially early in life, the brain is literally 

shaped anatomically and physiologically by experience. This experience-driven organization of the brain is called neuroplasticity. Understanding neuroplasticity and the variables that drive it has the 

potential to absolutely revolutionize interventions for struggling 
25 

readers by directly remediating their auditory perceptional phonological awareness and language problems. 

In 1994, I began a collaboration with Dr. Michael Merzenich, a 

world expert on neuroplasticity, with the goal of integrating advances in neuroplasticity and learning disorders. In the ensuing 20 

years, both behavioral and neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that the foundational auditory processing and language 

skills known to lead to reading failure are highly modifiable and 

can be brought into the normal range in just a few months using 

intensive neuroplasticity-based training exercises disguised as computer games. 

We founded Scientific Learning Corporation to translate these research advances into practice in classroom tools that could broadly 

be scaled and efficacy tested in real-world classrooms. These evidence-based educational tools are distributed under the brand 

name Fast ForWord and Reading Assistant and have been used in 

over 12,000 U.S. schools with as many as 70,000 students a week. 

The cumulative efficacy data obtained when schools implement 

these programs rigorously is very positive, especially when compared longitudinally to students’ previous performance using traditional methods. 

Thomas Gibbs Elementary School in St. Mary’s Parrish, Louisiana, is one of the many schools that have used Fast ForWord 

and Reading Assistant. Before implementing these tools, only 19 

percent of fourth-grade students scored basic or above in language 

arts on their statewide achievement tests, placing the school in the 

bottom quartile statewide. After two years of use, Thomas Gibbs 

School had moved into the top quartile statewide with 81 percent 

of students now scoring basic or above in language arts. 

So here’s my news flash. Research shows that reading success relies on a solid foundation of rapid and consistent auditory process 

and oral language. Traditional reading approaches presuppose that 

a child has these foundational skills, but this is just not the case. 

Not providing educators with evidence-based tools to remediate the 

foundational processing skills that are well known to be precursors 

to reading failure is equivalent to demanding that a builder construct the third floor of a school without having the tools to build 

a sufficiently strong first and second floor, and then wondering why 

the school keeps collapsing. 

I’d like to close with some recommendations for H.R. 3033. As 

Ms. Johnson mentioned, NSF has already recognized the gulf between scientific knowledge and translation into education and set 

out to bridge this gulf by creating six Science of Learning Centers 

including the Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center at the University of California San Diego, which I co-direct. The ten years of 

funding of these Science of Learning Centers is coming to a close. 

My first recommendation is to capitalize on the advances these 

Centers have already made to design professional development 

courses on the new science of learning specifically as applied to 

early identification and remediation of learning impairments. We 

must leverage existing federal investment. 

My second recommendation focuses on improving the 

translational method itself. Translation and dissemination into 

classrooms on the scale needed to address our epidemic of reading 
26 

failure is painfully and frustratingly slow. What is urgently needed 

are actionable methods that result in determining the equivalent of 

a one-lane country road from the laboratory into the classroom into 

a bidirectional superhighway to improve the prospects of the millions of children with reading impairments for decades to come. 

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to this important bill, 

and I look forward to your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Tallal follows:] 
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Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Dr. Tallal. 

And Dr. Robillard. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. RACHEL ROBILLARD, 

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, 

504 SERVICES AND RESPONSE TO INTERVENTION, 

AUSTIN INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT 

Dr. ROBILLARD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member 

Johnson, and distinguished Members of the Committee for inviting 

me to testify today. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before 

you to discuss the importance of focusing on the issue of dyslexia, 

a disability affecting one in six students that unfortunately goes 

largely unnoticed in federal policies. 

I currently coordinate all student 504 services for the Austin 

Independent School District, where I oversee our district’s Dyslexia 

Services program. Our department works with each of the 129 Austin campuses to provide professional development and guidance to 

help teachers understand the indicators of dyslexia, so we can identify students as early as possible and provide the intervention 

that’s needed. This is a significant change from the previous model, 

and progress is still not as swift as we would like. 

We had approximately 2,000 students identified with dyslexia 

when I began this process in 2013. With concerted effort, we’ve now 

identified around 5,000 students, but that is still only about five 

percent of our overall student population in AISD. 

In May of 2014, at the urging of a member of our Board of Trustees, we began allocating funds to provide teacher training so that 

some teachers could become certified academic language therapists, 

or CALTs. A CALT can provide the most advanced and efficacious 

type of dyslexia intervention available. Our goal is to have at least 

one CALT for every campus. Eighteen months into the program, 

we’re now 61 teachers toward that goal. This effort, fully funded by 

local dollars, comes at great cost to the district and only provides 

training for one teacher per school. However, additional professional development including training and materials is made available for all K–12th grade teachers so they can better understand 

dyslexia and how to deliver curriculum in an accessible manner for 

all of the identified students. 

Dyslexia impacts 10 to 20 percent of students in K–12 with varying levels of severity. Ideally, teacher preparation programs would 

include coursework dedicated to identifying and teaching students 

with dyslexia, a disability which has a high rate of impact on literacy acquisition regardless of socioeconomic status or race. 

Ultimately, the greatest impact would be provided by training all 

pre-service teachers to identify and teach dyslexic students, making 

the possibility of having specialized reading task forces for dyslexia 

at each campus a natural byproduct. 

In my position coordinating 504 services as well as in my private 

practice as a neuropsychologist, I strongly encourage support for 

the READ Act. Having specified annual funds devoted to dyslexia 

research that focuses on best practices in early identification, professional development for teachers and administrators, and curriculum development and evidence-based educational tools for children with dyslexia can only improve the opportunities of all stu-
43 

dents to have access to an education that allows each of them to 

learn to read. 

At the university level, this would lead a shift toward increased 

pre-service development in areas that address basic reading deficits 

and their neurobiological etiology as well as the understanding of 

language development and how it’s influenced by dyslexia. A few 

universities have such programs but most do not address dyslexia 

in any format during pre-service training. Lack of teacher training 

and understanding the indicators of dyslexia causes students to be 

missed or even misidentified as having other learning issues. 

Teachers deserve this training. 

Identifying dyslexia is only the first step of the process. To fully 

address learning difficulties for dyslexic students, we must keep 

the disorder in mind when designing classroom instruction, implementing technology plans, planning for social and emotional learning, understanding how to provide parent support and engagement, 

and training our administrators to be knowledgeable about appropriate identification and intervention. 

Dyslexia is not a disorder that can be compartmentalized. It is 

not just a deficit but it carries with it inherent strengths that have 

been recognized for decades. These might include other areas of 

academic strength, creative ways of thinking, more acute perceptual reasoning, and many other traits. 

When dyslexia goes unidentified and undiagnosed, these 

strengths are often suppressed and the lack of understanding frequently leads to both student and staff frustration. It is not uncommon for unidentified dyslexic students to become unmotivated or to 

have behavioral problems, and they often perform significantly 

below potential academically. Unidentified, their underlying 

strengths may never be discovered. 

The READ Act is a necessary flotation device to bring scientific 

knowledge about dyslexia up to a more universal understanding 

and to enhance our ability to make the practical application of 

science to practice more seamless for educators and students. Policies such as found in the READ Act will allow dyslexic students access to early identification as well as appropriate literacy instruction and the opportunity to develop their potential to the fullest. 

Our prison population is replete with dyslexic individuals who 

have been identified too late. While dyslexia identification and 

intervention is not likely to be the entire answer to the school-toprison pipeline, it certainly seems to be a key factor that if better 

understood could be addressed in a systematic and effective manner. We will all benefit at every level by investing in research concerning dyslexia and all issues related to that disorder. 

Thank you for inviting me to testify. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Robillard follows:] 
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Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Dr. Robillard. 

It’s my understanding that the gentleman from California, Mr. 

Takano, has an urgent need to get to another meeting, so I’m going 

to recognize him first for questions with the understanding, of 

course, that he join the caucus and cosponsor the bill. 

The gentleman from California is recognized. 

Mr. TAKANO. Mr. Chairman, I am already a member of the caucus, I discovered, and I will announce my support and cosponsorship of the bill. 

Chairman SMITH. The gentleman is recognized for an extra 

minute. 

Mr. TAKANO. Thank you. 

Mr. Chairman, I am so grateful for this hearing. I am so grateful 

for the work you’ve already done and your leadership. If we can do 

something about dyslexia in this country, we will have done a great 

thing to help alleviate so much unnecessary suffering among all 

sorts of people in our country. So I thank you, thank you, thank 

you as a former teacher of 22, 23 years. 

I’ve got to tell you, I began my teaching career armed with an 

Ivy League degree, and I could analyze literature but I was little 

prepared for the first ten years of my teaching career to deal—I 

didn’t even know I had dyslexic children in my classroom and kids, 

and it wasn’t until I did a literacy training that I began to even 

scratch the surface. And once I began to identify them—profoundly 

dyslexic students—I would try to get them into special ed, but special ed was not equipped—the teachers did not know how to address it. They had no more knowledge about what to do with dyslexia than I did. 

I had to try to teach myself but of course with all the other 

things that are going on with a classroom teacher, that sort of 

training—I mean, I needed training, and I’m just eager, Mr. Chairman, to go visit—I hope that we might have a chance to go visit 

some of these facilities and what they’re doing. I would like to 

know what it is—I mean, I learned things like the inside-out strategy, you know, with blended sounds at the beginning. I had a kid 

that could not read the word ‘‘strip’’ because there were three consonants that begin that word, and they struggled with it, but if we 

began from the inside out and said ‘‘rip, trip, strip,’’ that was a 

strategy that improved their ability to decode those words. I 

learned about phonemic awareness. There is a science to this stuff, 

and so I am excited. 

I’ve asked my staffer to take a look at how we can review the 

prison population and figure out how many of our prisoners are 

dyslexic. That is an important thing for us to know. 

So I am just so excited about this hearing, and there’s so much 

that can come of this. 

So Dr. Tallal, I want to ask you a question. Why do so many 

English-language learners and children from poverty struggle with 

learning to read? 

Dr. TALLAL. Thank you for that really insightful question. 

There’s a good deal of research which I have covered directly in 

my written testimony that I would ask you to review, specifically 

on children from poverty and English-language learners. I would 

like to say that children from poverty also have linguistic impover-
57 

ishment. That is, that research has shown that the difference between children from high-socioeconomic-class families and low-socioeconomic-class families is a 30-million-word gap in the sheer 

number of words they have ever been exposed to. 

What we know from neuroplasticity research is that we literally 

have to set our own brains up based on experience, and the most 

important experience we get as an infant is the sounds of our own 

native language. Language experience is what we have to use to establish these basic phonological categories to build our efficient and 

automatic auditory, rapid auditory processing systems, and if we 

don’t hear words, we’re just not going to have them, and so the end 

product is a problem with rapid auditory processing, language developmental delay, subsequently not having the foundations for literacy. 

For children who are English-language learners, they have not 

heard the sounds, the phonological sounds, that are important for 

learning English, so they have to be given these sounds in a very 

systematic way. 

Mr. TAKANO. Systematic? 

Dr. TALLAL. Yes. 

Mr. TAKANO. So the phonemic awareness, it’s often very tedious. 

It takes a lot of creativity for the teacher to be able to develop that. 

Dr. TALLAL. This is where technology can come in. 

Mr. TAKANO. Ah. 

Dr. TALLAL. Now, what technology has to offer is the ability to 

offer more intense learning trials per unit time than can ever be 

provided by a teacher no matter how well trained they are because 

computers just can deliver much more information with stimulus, 

response, correction and timely rewards. So, what we often say at 

Scientific Learning Corporation is let computers do what computers 

do best, which is the repetition, repetition, repetition that the brain 

needs to set up its own auditory and linguistic systems, so that 

teachers can do what teachers do best. We need to focus on giving 

teachers these new and improved technological tools that allow 

them to build these fundamental processing and linguistic skills so 

that by the time they try to use their more traditional methods, 

they will actually have the ability for them to work. 

Mr. TAKANO. So the technology is really the basis—the foundation, the physical foundation, the stimulus response, the neural 

pathways in the brain—— 

Dr. TALLAL. Right. 

Mr. TAKANO. —to develop that fluency in being able to decode 

words at the very physical level. We all have this phenomenon— 

we know this phenomenon of ‘‘I read it but I don’t understand it,’’ 

and that’s where the teacher comes in to be able to—after the student is able to physically decode the words to be able to work with 

that student in comprehension and the critical thinking. So we 

need the teacher in the process but at the very—— 

Dr. TALLAL. Absolutely. 

Mr. TAKANO. But at the very—but this—I hear what you’re saying because for the teacher to be able to do this with every single 

student in a very tedious, systematic way, too much labor involved 

and not the best use, but if there’s a technology, that’s really promising news. 
58 

I have taken my six minutes, Mr. Chairman. I’ve got to ironically 

get to Education and Workforce Committee. We’ve got to do supplemental—I hope you will urge Chairman Kline and the Subcommittee Chairman to also delve into this is great bipartisan 

project. I love this, so thank you. 

Chairman SMITH. Great. I thank you, Mr. Takano. And also, let 

me say I think Mr. Takano may be the only former teacher on this 

Committee, so we appreciate the perspective that he brings. By the 

way, if he’s not the only former teacher, I will be hearing about it 

shortly. 

I’ll recognize myself for questions, and let me address my first 

one to Ms. Wilson. 

You developed a reading system that led to ‘‘rewiring of the brain 

to function similarly to the brain of a good reader.’’ That is amazing. Can you describe that to us briefly? 

Ms. WILSON. Yes. The reading—do you mean describe the reading system briefly? 

Chairman SMITH. Yes, if you can. 

Ms. WILSON. Yes. The Wilson Reading System is based on OrtonGillingham principles of instruction, or multisensory structured 

language instruction. MSL programs work with students to build 

up their understanding of the language structure right from the beginning. So as you heard earlier, the student needs to understand 

how to process sounds and understand from what they hear how 

sounds work in words, and so you go right back to the very beginning and do that with your students. 

That’s the beginning step. The students really need to understand how that sound system relates to the structure of words in 

syllables and understanding prefixes and suffixes. Phonology is one 

piece and morphology another. Morphology is the study of the 

smallest units of meaning within words. 

Chairman SMITH. Right. 

Ms. WILSON. So students need to understand everything about 

language structure and its words, its sentences and text structure. 

Chairman SMITH. Okay. Thank you. 

By the way, you’re familiar with a Shakespeare quote that says, 

‘‘All’s well that ends well’’? 

Ms. WILSON. Yes. 

Chairman SMITH. It sounds like you’re saying all’s well that begins well. 

Chairman SMITH. Dr. Tallal, let me ask you a question, and that 

is, what is the best way to detect dyslexia earlier, just kind of what 

we’re talking about across the board. 

Dr. TALLAL. Well, interestingly, the precursors to dyslexia can be 

detected quite reliably even in infancy in the form of slow auditory 

processing, and my colleague, Dr. April Benasich at Rutgers University found that children that were born into families with a family history of language learning problems were 50 percent more 

likely to develop reading problems later in life. She subsequently 

showed that the speed of auditory processing of simply detecting 

differences between two brief tones separated by small gaps of time 

was the single best predictor in 7-month-old babies to subsequent 

oral language development. Oral language development subsequently is the single best predictor for reading and reading failure. 
59 

So there’s this cascade which I call the language-to-literacy continuum, which begins with slow auditory processing, which interrupts the brain’s ability to effectively and efficiently process the 

sounds of language which are necessary, are the necessary components, as we’re hearing, for being able to hear the small sounds in 

words and learn that those are the letters that are in the words, 

and you can’t really learn to read without that. 

Chairman SMITH. Great. By the way, I liked your earlier metaphors between the dial-up versus the high-speed internet and the 

country road versus the superhighway. That’s a nice description. 

Dr. TALLAL. Thank you. 

Chairman SMITH. Dr. Robillard, this is really just following the 

trend here, but what do you think is the quickest and most efficient way to test and identify those with dyslexia? 

Dr. ROBILLARD. We have good tools. I think that we need to be 

applying them a lot earlier than we typically do. The tools that we 

have I think could be improved upon, and I thoroughly agree that 

that oral language, our speech pathologists that identify our students at 3 and four years old for PPCD programs in schools would 

certainly be our allies in really identifying these students very 

early. The screening that they do for that process could be expanded on fairly easily to identify these students that are needing 

this early intervention. 

Chairman SMITH. Okay. Good. 

I’d like to ask you all a question, and we can start with Ms. Wilson. If you will each give me two strengths that you all think are 

inherent with those with dyslexia? Ms. Wilson? 

Ms. WILSON. Absolutely the perceptual strengths. So often they 

make wonderful architects and have incredible ability to see in different ways visually. Also, I think that they are often intuitive and 

are great at reading people and reading situations, and I have seen 

that in so many students who are dyslexic, that they are great at 

perceiving other people’s emotions and strengths. 

Chairman SMITH. Okay. Dr. Tallal? 

Dr. TALLAL. Yes, I would agree that visual perceptual strengths 

are often characteristic of individuals with dyslexia. I don’t know 

which came first, the inability to process the rapid auditory signals 

and so the brain had to compensate by developing stronger visual 

processing, but I never cease to be amazed at the number of cameramen who come to do interviews or whatever. It’s not the person 

doing the interview, it’s the cameraman who will often come up to 

me after the interview often with tears in his eyes about his own 

personal struggle with dyslexia and the shame, so that’s one. 

The other is perseverance and hard work. I mean, don’t ever tell 

me that these kids aren’t trying or don’t care. They try so hard. 

They just don’t have the neural capacities set in place, and we can 

give that to them. I mean, that’s what’s exciting. We have the tools 

now to help them build this foundational structure, and then everything else we’re hearing about is going to work better. 

Chairman SMITH. Absolutely. 

Dr. Robillard? 

Dr. ROBILLARD. So I would agree with the perceptual reasoning. 

I think that they’re typically very creative thinkers too. They have 

to think differently. They’re typically very bright and they figured 
60 

out ways to compensate for not being able to read, and so that 

helps them be very creative thinkers, so they’re often the people 

that come up with that solution that nobody else thought of. And 

I think the second characteristic that I see over and over again 

that I think helps partially with that perseverance piece too, is 

they have a great sense of humor. 

Chairman SMITH. Excellent. Thank you all very much. 

The Ranking Member, the gentlewoman from Texas, Ms. Johnson, is recognized for her questions. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

I have not yet signed on to this bill, not because I don’t believe 

in it but because I need some clarifications on how extensive the 

research is going to be. 

And so Dr. Tallal, I’d like to know, you talked about some research that you were doing and where some of it is coming to a 

close. What we’re proposing here, is that going to extend your research or make it more comprehensive so we’ll get all students ailments involved in the research? Or tell me where you are. 

Dr. TALLAL. Well, this might seem unusual for a research scientist who has depended on government grants for a long time for 

my research, but I would agree with Dr. Sally Shaywitz last year 

that we have the knowledge that we need to improve the outcomes 

of millions of children. We’re just not using it effectively. We don’t 

have an appropriate roadmap so my suggestions that I put into my 

longer report as well, my written report, is that we capitalize on 

what we already know, and that we really focus on the 

translational path itself because it’s so slow and tedious. We’ve 

been at this 20 years, and we have very effective methods, but it’s 

only been used at 12,000 schools, and that’s just a drop in the 

bucket. We know that we can do better but the translational method itself needs a lot of work, and NSF can help with that. First of 

all, when someone proposes to do a research study that says that 

it aims to improve translation to education, show me the plan for 

where it shows how it’s going to be scaled up to the heterogeneous 

schools, teachers with different kinds of training, and students 

that’s going to work because that is not a simple thing. 

Doing it in your own laboratory with well-trained scientists is 

one thing. Getting it to work in the hands of Mrs. Smith or Mr. 

Jones in the Thomas Gibbs School, that’s a very different thing, 

and to do that over and over again in 55 countries, which we’ve 

done, takes a lot of knowledge. We need to use some of that knowledge. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Have you read the bill? 

Dr. TALLAL. Yes, I have. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. What would you do to improve it? 

Dr. TALLAL. I would focus on this translational process itself and 

including the professional development part, and I would recognize 

that we need a two-way highway, a two-way superhighway. Too 

often as researchers, we think our job is to do outreach and teach 

everyone what we know. I’ve learned as much from educators who 

are sitting in classrooms every day that are struggling with the 

process as I can teach them. It’s got to be a two-way and a twodirectional street, so I would put something in the bill that really 

reinforces and gives teachers and educators themselves the oppor-
61 

tunity not only for professional development but I’ve even suggested the possibility of training grants or degrees for higher education where teachers can do their own Ph.D.’s in their own classrooms to try out some of the methods that are already coming from 

research. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you very much. 

Ms. Wilson, would you like to comment? 

Ms. WILSON. I agree that implementation is the gap that we need 

to address, and the more we can focus on that aspect of the bill, 

I think that would be ideal because research has told us what we 

need to do and we have seen what works in schools. It is possible 

in public schools. 

I recently coauthored with Dr. Michelle Duda a white paper for 

Literature Nation that talked about the policy to implementation 

gap. There is a science to implementation called implementation 

science, and it talks about you can have an effective intervention 

but that’s only a small piece of it. You need to have effective implementation and enabling context so there’s actually a formula that 

has been proven by implementation science and it takes those 

three pieces of the formula to get the intended results. I would like 

to have some of the research look at looking at putting into practice 

that formula. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you very much. 

Yes? 

Chairman SMITH. Would you yield me the balance of your time 

quickly? 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Yes—— 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you. I wanted to get—— 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. —reluctantly. 

Chairman SMITH. Ms. Wilson, a question I didn’t get to ask you 

a while ago is, what’s the difference in your approach to young people versus adults when it comes to dyslexia? 

Ms. WILSON. That’s a wonderful question. I am so glad you asked 

that because I would also love to see research focus more on ‘‘it’s 

never too late,’’ because as important as early intervention is, and 

we know how important that is. In fact, if you do not identify a student early and start teaching an intervention in fourth grade as opposed to first grade, it takes four times as long to teach that student how to read. So, what happens as the student gets older? 

There’s a lot more failure that you’re working to overcome. We 

know that IEPs after fourth grade often do not include the types 

of things that students with dyslexia need. 

Chairman SMITH. By the nodding of heads, everybody else agrees 

with you. Good point. Thank you. 

The gentleman from Arkansas, Mr. Westerman, is recognized for 

his questions. 

Mr. WESTERMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Mr. Chairman, 

I would also like to thank you for your lead that you’ve taken on 

this issue. I know I’m a freshman here, but we talked about this 

earlier, and I was excited that you’re working so hard on this. I 

told you about my wife, who’s a special-ed teacher, and the biggest 

advocate for me is her asking if I would sign on to the Dyslexia 

Caucus, have I sponsored this bill yet. 
62 

I’m also happy that we’ve got a great bipartisan issue that we 

can work on because it’s for children in this country, and it’s really 

for our future, and it’s so important that we teach children to read 

at an early age because it helps them out all through life. We all 

understand that. 

As a matter of fact, as has been mentioned today, there’s a large 

body of research on dyslexia. We know what it is, we know how to 

fix it, we know how to identify it. We’ve even got fabulous technology that we can use in the process to help correct dyslexia. But 

it’s almost as if we’ve found the cure for cancer, we’ve developed 

the drugs to heal cancer but we can’t get those drugs into the pharmacy and out to the people who need them. 

So I see this huge issue with implementation, and I can tell you 

a personal story on this. I was in the state legislature and I helped 

sponsor a bill in Arkansas to create our dyslexia law much like 

Texas has done, and the bill passed. Then we found out that the 

schools were totally unprepared to implement this law. The teachers were not trained for it. We found out that this training is not 

in the institutions of higher education. I was glad to see, Ms. Wilson, that you said there are six universities that are implementing 

your program into their training, but I think we’ve got a huge gap 

at the higher education level in training teachers, and actually I 

think we’re training teachers in reading programs that may even 

be detrimental to helping children with dyslexia. 

So I want to put a plug in for my home state. We’re doing a 

forum next March. Dr. Shaywitz is going to be there as a keynote 

speaker. I’m doing this in conjunction with our Department of Education. I’m going to have a forum there, and the focus of my forum’s going to be how do we improve this implementation gap, and 

I just want to get your ideas on the areas we need to address to 

help the implementation, to get the teachers and the schools and 

the administrators trained and motivated to apply these fabulous 

tools that we’ve got so that we can help these kids and reap all the 

benefits of that, and I’ll start with Ms. Wilson. 

Ms. WILSON. I find that special-education teachers are very motivated. They themselves recognize that they don’t have the skills, 

and I think we heard that earlier as a teacher when you’re working 

with students and you’re not making a difference, you know it. So 

I think the motivation is there. They just don’t know what to do, 

and so the work with schools and school districts really has to 

begin with the administration and educating the administration as 

to what is needed for the professional learning. 

We develop plans with school districts called COMPASS plans 

which are comprehensive plans that occur over one or two years to 

help train teachers. We first work with the school district to see 

where there are gaps, do they have teachers that are trained 

and—— 

Mr. WESTERMAN. I don’t have a lot of time. I talked too much. 

I understand there are ways you can go into individual schools, 

but in the bigger picture, we’ve got to train teachers at the highereducation level, and I’ve seen a resistance for the departments of 

higher education to take in these new—take on these new programs. How do we infiltrate that and get teachers taught this so 

that when they come out of college, they’re ready to help children? 
63 

Ms. WILSON. That is a major gap. The International Dyslexia Association (IDA) has also taken on that issue. A paper was written, 

The Knowledge and Practice Standards for Teachers of Reading, 

and it’s a great document that really outlines both the knowledge 

and the skills that teachers need. It really specifies that this is 

what we should be doing in colleges of education. I was one of the 

coauthors of that papaer and IDA is now working to get the word 

out to universities. There’s so much need absolutely at the university level. 

Mr. WESTERMAN. Thank you, and I guess I’m negative on yielding. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Westerman. 

The gentlewoman from Connecticut, Ms. Esty, is recognized. 

Ms. ESTY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Ranking 

Member Johnson, for holding today’s hearing. 

As the mother of three who’s been in those first-grade classrooms 

and seen very bright kids who are struggling, as somebody who 

comes from a state where our Governor, Dan Malloy, by his own 

admission is profoundly dyslexic, was the first person in the State 

of New York to have an oral bar exam as a level of his dyslexia, 

had his wife read his law books to him, is an example of the kind 

of stellar people we have who happen to also be dyslexic. 

And to your category, Dr. Robillard, I would add every 

tradesperson I know who is supercreative is terrible at reading, 

and they put their creativity into working with their hands and 

that spatial ability. So we have enormous innovators who are hampered and oftentimes beaten down, discouraged, told they’re stupid, 

made to feel unsuccessful. So I see an enormous opportunity for 

this country, and I’m so delighted that, as you can tell here, there’s 

a lot of enthusiasm on the part of this Committee and elsewhere 

in Congress to do a better job. So let’s figure out how we do that. 

I was encouraged, Dr. Tallal, by your discussion about 

neuroplasticity, and particularly when we look at prison populations, we look at people looking for retraining. Can you talk a little bit about the research we might need to do on that? In addition 

for children, how do we get this neuroplasticity training at work for 

adults who need this help as well? 

Dr. TALLAL. Well, the good news is that neuroplasticity lasts a 

lifetime, and the same variables that drive neuroplasticity, which 

are repetition, repetition, repetition, individually adapting from 

easier to harder items, sustained attention, and timely rewards to 

release neurochemical feedback saying that was a good one, save 

it, are the same throughout life. 

Yes, it may be harder because people have—older people have 

developed more alternate strategies but we have developed 

versions of Fast ForWord for all ages. It’s been shown to work in 

colleges, it’s been shown to work in prisons. The big problem that 

we have getting our methods into prisons is the fact that we require the computer and the internet to give feedback on a mouseclick-by-mouse-click basis so we can individually adapt. These are 

highly technological methods, and many prisons don’t allow the 

internet. But you can get around that by having servers. 

Nonetheless, the results are very encouraging that 

neuroplasticity lasts a lifetime. You just have to know how to drive 
64 

it, and it needs to be driven by computers first and then backed 

up by what teachers do best. Let computers do what computers do 

best, which are also much more scalable at a more economical level 

so that teachers can do what teachers do best. 

Ms. ESTY. That makes a great deal of sense. The Chairman and 

I have worked a lot on STEM education and support for teachers, 

and I hear a lot of the same issues that we face in the STEM field. 

We have great programs that work. We need to scale them and we 

need to get that information out in a way. 

So one thing I would ask you, because we’ve seen this on the 

STEM field with the Noyce master teacher program, is whether we 

need something like that to help show—I think part of it is to show 

teachers how effective this is, to get them into classrooms and see 

what the teacher who’s trained with these skills to see what a difference they can make so that they embrace it—not as a requirement, but rather as an opportunity to help students who are otherwise struggling. 

Dr. TALLAL. If you don’t understand neuroplasticity or how the 

brain actually learns, which is what these Science of Learning Centers are all about. If you don’t understand that children who are 

struggling, or adults who are struggling, to read have not built the 

foundational first and second floor and you keep hammering away 

at trying to give them more time to build the third floor and you 

have never been taught that in your educational programs, you’re 

not going to understand why these programs when you look at 

them could possibly work. So you need the professional development or changes within the teachers’ colleges themselves, which is 

much harder to come by in order for people to even understand 

why something might need to be done, what the science shows and 

then why these tools might be effective. 

Ms. ESTY. A final question. As we try to figure out how to scale 

up, and we all are talking about the scale-up issue, do you think 

that in this legislation or perhaps in other legislation we need to 

be having research that demonstrates the effective teaching skills 

that would lead to faster dissemination and acceptance? 

Dr. TALLAL. What I mean by scaling up is that if we say that our 

goal for getting funding from NSF is translation to education, I 

think the bill could ask for explicit criteria for evaluation and priority to those methods and approaches that have more potential to 

actually be scaled up for use in a wide variety of classrooms, and 

many of them do not. I mean, I see—as scientists and as NSF 

starts to evaluate, they’re always looking at the theory, the science, 

the double-blind control study. I think we also need to really reevaluate whether a double-blind control study is ecologically or 

morally sound for an educational environment as the only gold 

standard for determining efficacy. I think cumulative data over a 

lot of different approaches is what really will help move this bar 

for education rather than demanding that there’s only one kind of 

evidence that works. 

Ms. ESTY. Thank you, and that’s a provocative one we can follow 

up on later. Thank you. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Ms. Esty. 

The gentleman from Alabama, Mr. Palmer, is recognized for his 

questions. 
65 

Mr. PALMER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to thank all 

the witnesses for being here. My daughter is finishing her graduate 

degree at Auburn University in speech pathology—— 

Ms. WILSON. Fabulous. 

Mr. PALMER. And she had to have speech therapy when she was 

little, so I know how important this work is. 

Dr. Tallal, we have a school, Spring Valley School in Birmingham, that specializes in teaching children with learning disabilities, and according to information from that school individuals 

affected by dyslexia are often affected by other disabilities as well. 

Can you discuss the interaction of dyslexia and other disabilities 

and the challenges that this presents for students and the teachers? 

Dr. TALLAL. That’s an excellent point. Our brain is not divided 

easily into compartments. When you have a problem in one area, 

it often will cascade into other areas. When you have a problem 

with how the brain can efficiently process incoming sensory information, that is going to cascade in a number of ways into other 

functions, cognitive functions, linguistic functions that subsequently impact reading. So I think that is—basically the finding is 

that there’s a tremendous overlap when you get right down to it 

and great heterogeneity in children whose final common denominator is they cannot learn to read. But there are many subskills 

that could have led them there. 

Many of these children are diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, and at a scientific level did you fail to pay attention because 

you couldn’t process fast and efficiently, or are you failing to process fast and efficiently because you can’t pay attention? So we do 

need to still understand that. 

Many children are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. 

That is a language-based learning disability. 

Mr. PALMER. So when we talk about increasing funding for research on dyslexia, I think we need to also be talking about some 

overlap with—in the research in this area, how these other disabilities interact and follow that out. 

Dr. TALLAL. The diagnosis you get often depends on just who you 

got sent to see. 

Mr. PALMER. Right. 

Dr. TALLAL. Okay. If you got sent to see a psychiatrist, you’re 

going to get one diagnosis. If you got sent to see a speech pathologist, you could get a different diagnosis. If you got sent to see a 

reading specialist—and it also depends on the age at which your 

disability is finally diagnosed. But that doesn’t mean they’re all 

mutually exclusive from each other. 

Mr. PALMER. It really sounds like we need to be able to have a 

one-stop-shop when we’re dealing in these areas because you could 

get misdiagnosed. It’s kind of like firing a rifle at a target. If you’re 

off a little bit at the front end, you’re off a lot at the back end. 

Dr. Robillard, in your testimony, you highlighted the approach 

you’re taking in Austin to better serve students with dyslexia. 

What are you doing in Austin that’s different than approaches 

taken in other schools? 

Dr. ROBILLARD. I think what we did in Austin was, we took that 

science to practice seriously the last two years. I left the ivory 
66 

tower to come back and do this because I would diagnose them as 

a neuropsychologist and I would send a lovely report to the school 

district, and nothing would happen, and so I got a little frustrated 

and finally decided to put my money where my mouth was and 

went back to try to see what I could do with it and had wonderful 

backing of our board of trustees. That’s where our process started 

was getting their support and then getting our superintendent on 

board, and teaching. I actually would go teach our board of trustees. They invited me to come teach them about dyslexia, teach our 

superintendent about dyslexia, and from there we were able to— 

we now have in every school in Austin, 129 of them, 85,000 kids 

in our school district, we have what’s called a dyslexia designee on 

every campus, and that person has been taught what these ladies 

have been talking about all afternoon and they have—they understand now on that level. We’ve also brought in evidence-based 

multisensory Orton-Gillingham-based programs for all grade levels. 

We have changed the diagnostic process. We used to have classroom teachers doing this diagnosis. Many kids went misdiagnosed. 

So sadly, I’m diagnosing students that are in high school now that 

never got diagnosed early, but we’re diagnosing them now and 

we’re intervening now because the neuroplasticity is there, and if 

you have the right tools, you can make a huge difference in their 

lives by getting the right diagnosis and getting those intervention 

materials. 

So we’ve made a concerted effort to not only get those highly 

trained CALTs but to get training for all of our teachers K–12 in 

at least the understanding of dyslexia and then at every grade 

level have teachers trained who are both special education, and we 

address a lot of dyslexia in Texas by 504 under the ADA. So we 

do it in the regular education setting with teachers that are trained 

on the materials to deliver them in the gen-ed classroom. 

Mr. PALMER. Mr. Chairman, would you allow me to ask a question of Ms. Wilson? 

Chairman SMITH. Yes. The gentleman continues to be recognized. 

Mr. PALMER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Ms. Wilson, you were talking about your reading program. One 

of the things that I wanted to ask you is, is there a distance learning component for this when children are out of school so that parents can continue to be involved with their kids and continue to 

help them learn. 

Ms. WILSON. Yes, there is distance learning actually for teachers 

and so the teachers can learn. 

In terms of teachers who are trained, they will often do distance 

learning because of technology. That’s one of the things that technology has brought with the fast internet and the ability to do 

work in observations online. So there are some teachers who are 

actually providing instruction to students distantly. 

Mr. PALMER. So they’re providing the instruction to the students 

when the students are out of school, and is it programs where parents can participate in this program with their kids? 

Ms. WILSON. That is—it’s not something that we organize because we focus on teacher training, and so that would be something 

that the school or the teacher themselves would organize. But if 

that were the case and they were working, yes, the parents could 
67 

be involved with that at home, parents work at home is just in a 

support role as opposed to an instructional role. 

Mr. PALMER. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Palmer. 

The gentlewoman from Maryland, Ms. Edwards, is recognized for 

her questions. 

Ms. EDWARDS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank 

you to the witnesses today. 

I have to tell you, I was sitting here a little bit earlier, I think 

it was the Chairman who asked, you know, what the positives are 

for young people, for people who have dyslexia, and it made me 

tear up because you were describing my son, and it was a reminder 

as a parent and as educators how important it is to value all of the 

person that these young people are and how that can contribute to 

their eventual learning success. 

And I was really curious, Dr. Tallal. In your testimony, you 

talked about a description that wasn’t—didn’t say dyslexia but a 

language-based learning problem, a more inclusive way of thinking 

about the way that some of our children are learning differently, 

and I think that that’s really helpful because I think it’s important 

for us to say what it is and for people, especially our young people, 

to feel like we’re talking about them and that we’re trying to work 

on strategies that help them to learn the best way that they can. 

It was also a reminder that in the READ Act, of which I’m a cosponsor, that we may have some tweaking to do to try to make 

sure that we’re capturing the elements of research and of teacher 

training and other aspects that you’ve identified and the knowledge 

gap from the action gap. And so I thank you for that. 

I just came from a celebration of 50 years of Head Start. I love 

Head Start. But it was also another reminder that for children not 

of means, and Dr. Tallal, you talked about this 30-million-word deficit, that being able to identify learning-based conditions is really 

important in that early period, especially among young people not 

of means. And so I wonder if you can describe for me what we 

might begin to think about programs like Head Start where we 

know when people get a good head start that they really can succeed but what we can do in teacher training, in working with educators to give them the tools and something like Head Start that 

will enable us to identify these conditions earlier and to deal with 

ways that we can make sure that young people have the tools that 

they need. And I’ll just give you the rest of the time and all of you 

the time to talk about that. 

Dr. TALLAL. Well, I love what Head Start has done. I completely 

agree with you on that. And I would just say that if we now could 

also add some of these new technologies, they will even further 

boost the advantage of Head Start. We need to get more words and 

more consistently pronounced words. 

There’s a reason that a child, a young child, when asked to have 

a storybook read to them, despite the fact that they may have several books, they always want to pick the same book. Have you ever 

experienced that? The parent’s going, oh, not again, but why does 

a child want the same book? Because the brain is reinforced by 

being able to predict what is about to come next and then have it 

happen, and books are great for that, and repetition is great for 
68 

that. So there are also some wonderful technologies that can allow 

children to receive more consistent reading patterns through books, 

either through a human giving them to them, if they’re available, 

or just by being able to have some books that are being read to 

them. 

Our second product is Reading Assistant, which I haven’t talked 

much about, but what Reading Assistant is, is it is a scientifically 

based state-of-the-art voice recognition software that allows a child 

to read out loud to the computer and get real-time one-on-one feedback like a virtual tutor. There’s a tremendous amount of research 

that shows that if you want to build reading fluency, the only way 

to do that is to allow a child to read more out loud with corrective 

feedback. but who has the time to give each child that individual 

attention? Again, we can use some of these technological advances 

to add to what teachers are able to do, and it’s a partnership, I 

think, at this point between technology—let technology do what 

technology can do so that teachers can do what they can do. 

So I would say adding some of these new technologies—iPads, 

you know, what are you going to put on your iPad. Let’s get some 

programs that are very well identified and researched and evidence-based to provide to some of these younger children. 

Ms. EDWARDS. Thank you very much. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Ms. Edwards. 

The gentlewoman from Virginia, Mrs. Comstock, is recognized. 

Mrs. COMSTOCK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you. I 

join the enthusiastic response of the other Members of the Committee. 

I’m from a family of educators. My husband was in school. He 

was an assistant principal, certainly saw this issue quite a bit oftentimes with the children who might be, since he was the assistant principal, some of the kids who would get in trouble, right because acting out in some ways. My sister’s a guidance counselor. 

My mom was a librarian. So I’ve seen a lot. 

I was interested in following up on the technology now that I 

have three grandchildren also. How can we make parents sort of 

be partners and what are some of the good things that are already 

online? Are there things on iPads? Are there things that you can 

start doing with young children that help you identify if there are 

early problems and help the parents be partners with you and with 

others, you know, and their contemporaries? 

Dr. TALLAL. Well, we have actually come out with a distance 

learning component, as you might call it, speaking to Mr. Palmer’s 

question earlier, that is a direct—it’s Fast ForWord that is run by 

parents in their own home with children across the many ages in 

collaboration with a trained therapist who talks to—or teacher that 

talks to the parents once a week. So there’s a lot that parents can 

do to use these technologies. 

But the beauty is that they don’t have to have the educational 

level of a trained professional to be able to implement. What parents can do is implement something when it’s really running individually and individually adapted for a child and just keep them 

motivated to do it and help with reinforcement that way. So there’s 

a lot that parents can do with these technologies. 
69 

We also have kind of forayed a little bit into early math learning 

and developed a program called Eddie’s Number Party, which is 

just a little app, and it teaches the number line. So research is 

coming out with all this information as is education, and the question is, how do you work together with the people who know how 

to motivate kids now through developing computer games to do 

something with their time which is more valuable, and I think 

that’s a great way also to focus in the future of how do we make 

what kids are going to be doing and wanting to do anyway—playing with these computers—something that could actually teach 

them the fundamental skills that are going to set them up early 

in life for success in math, in oral language, in written language, 

et cetera. 

Mrs. COMSTOCK. And with the online and then also maybe in— 

you talked about the language exposure and having kids exposed 

to more words, things like that, I hear from my kids now when 

they’re dealing—having their children, they won’t put them in front 

of television. I was a big Sesame Street lover. I did park them in 

front of that at the arsenic hour at four o’clock and let them watch, 

and they were all very early readers. I thought that Sesame Street 

did a very nice job on the alphabet and having them understand 

that. But now they’re oh, we can’t let them in front of the TV before they’re 2 years old. Is that true? Did I totally mess up my 

early reading children? 

Dr. TALLAL. Well, there’s a difference, I think. I think the question is interactivity between adults and children. In the best of situations, the very best thing you can do is have parents who are 

talking to children and reading with children in a clear, consistent 

way, but that’s not going to happen in most environments. 

So then what else can you do? Passive observation does not work 

to drive neuroplasticity. That’s one of the factors that we do know. 

You have to actively pay attention. So if a child is actively paying 

attention to what’s going on on an educational program like Sesame Street, it’s going to be helpful, but if they’re just passively listening, it probably isn’t. 

Where computers again can be better than that is that they can 

provide similar information but give one-on-one individually realtime feedback so it’s much more interactive. It much more closely 

simulates the parent-child or teacher-child interactions in real 

time, and that’s the clue, in real time and personally individually 

adapted to your brain so you’re moving at the speed that your 

brain is getting about 80 percent correct. 

Mrs. COMSTOCK. Any other comments from the others? 

Dr. ROBILLARD. I think the assistance technology pace is key, and 

we have an assistive technology person that’s on our staff that goes 

out and works with our students as they get explicit instruction to 

start, and then as they’re getting better at reading, we use more 

and more assistive technology, not only for their reading but for 

their writing, which is dysgraphia is really connected to this reading, this issue of dyslexia, and so we find that man of our students 

who are dyslexic or dysgraphic as well, and there’s wonderful apps 

for that and wonderful assistive technology applications for that. 

The University of Edinboro actually has some great apps that we 

put on our kids’ iPads that help them out in schools with dyslexia 
70 

and dysgraphia and decoding and incoding and immediate feedback 

sorts of things and helps them with their writing as well. 

So I think assistive technology, the explicit multisensory systematic sequential teaching, the Orton-Gillingham method, I think is 

always going to be inherent in helping our dyslexic kids get to that 

place where they can read but the technology of the repetition that 

they need in order to build those new neural pathways that are 

more successful for reading than the ones that they came to us 

with I think is really key. 

Mrs. COMSTOCK. And I wanted to ask the Chairman if for our 

record we can maybe include a lot of those apps and Web sites and 

anything that you think might be good just sort of as a demonstration so we can sort of put them on our Web sites, let people know 

about them and any way we can be promoting this information and 

help them, and thank you a lot and look forward to working with 

you. 

Chairman SMITH. Good idea. Thank you, Mrs. Comstock. 

And the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Beyer, is recognized for 

his questions. 

Mr. BEYER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I’d like to begin by thanking the Chairman and the Ranking 

Member for having this hearing this morning, and Chairman, 

thank you for your leadership on this issue. It’s very important. 

And I’d like to thank you for showing up. I want to pile on assistive 

technology too. 

My oldest has this wide variety of learning disabilities, and in 

fourth grade he could still not read at all until I brought a PC 

home with Sierra Games, which were text-based, and you could 

only get through the adventure if you could type and spell the 

words correctly, and in six months, he went from barely being able 

to read to reading on grade level, and now he’s got a townhouse 

full of books. So it’s really terrific stuff to do that. 

Dr. Robillard, in your written testimony, you said—and probably 

you’ve spoken to—that ‘‘Dyslexia is not a disorder that can be compartmentalized; it is not just a deficit, but carries with it inherent 

strengths that have been recognized for decades.’’ 

In his school, the Oakwood School out in Fairfax, they had big 

pictures of Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Winston Churchill, and 

the most fiery political speaker I’ve ever known who was Majority 

Leader of the Virginia House who never had a note because he 

couldn’t read them because his learning disabilities were so bad. 

But he was an incredible orator. 

How do we make sure that these strengths, these inherent 

strengths, are not suppressed? How do we recognize them and celebrate them? 

Dr. ROBILLARD. Well, I think we have to really do that piece, that 

part that we’re teaching our teachers to recognize this. Our universities—and I have to say, I’ve been a part of our universities that 

have not taught our pre-service teachers about dyslexia as well we 

should have. We fortunately in Texas now have since House Bill 

5 a little piece in there that says all higher-education entities that 

are training teachers will teach about dyslexia now, and we’re 

starting to do that. I think that getting at that basic level of making sure all educators, all administrators recognize that just be-
71 

cause a student has dyslexia, that they are still able to do so many 

other things and they are so capable in so many other areas that 

contribute to their non-dyslexic counterparts that may not be able 

to see the world or understand the world as well as they can in 

other ways I think is really key in making that happen. 

And I think it’s an education from the ground up. It’s not just 

our teachers but our principals, our assistant principals who are 

often disciplining these kids because they often have creative ways 

of thinking about doing things. I think that our administrators 

really need to understand it as well, and that’s been a grassroots 

effort in our district to help our administrators understand that. 

Mr. BEYER. Thank you very much. 

Dr. Tallal, the READ Act provides a definition for dyslexia that 

captures everyone who has difficulty reading despite normal intelligence, and again, I think of my son, who never had the reverse 

letters dyslexia. It was soft vowel differentiation, sequencing difficulties, specific word recall. It was always that red stuff in the refrigerator rather than ketchup, you know. 

How broadly or narrowly should we define dyslexia, and does it 

matter in terms of intervention? 

Dr. TALLAL. That’s an excellent question. The research I think 

primarily by Martha Denckla and many other well-established and 

well-respected dyslexia researchers have shown despite tremendous 

research and study that there seems to be no difference between 

children who have a frank diagnosis of dyslexia and those who for 

research purposes are called garden-variety poor readers. So there’s 

no difference in their symptomatology and, importantly, there does 

not seem to be a great difference or any difference that we can discern about what works to improve their outcomes. 

One of the things that is often used in definitions of dyslexia is 

that children have failed to learn to read despite normal intelligence and opportunity to learn to read, and that’s an important 

statement as well, but there usually is a word that says unexpected 

reading problems, and what concerns me about that is that if a 

child comes from a high socioeconomic family of successful people 

and they are failing to learn to read, that’s quite unexpected. But 

if a child is coming from poverty or from family that doesn’t have 

English as their primary language and that child fails to learn to 

read, people aren’t that surprised. Well, the truth is that even 

though they got to their reading problem in very different ways 

along different avenues, they all seem to need the same kind of intensive repetition at the auditory-process and spoken-language 

level to break the code for reading. 

So if we want to use a definition of dyslexia, I think there is 

value to bringing attention to the fact that there’s so many children 

failing to learn to read. But it also can have the effect of limiting 

the school’s sense of responsibility for children who don’t have a 

frank diagnosis, and you may want to speak to that. 

Dr. ROBILLARD. And we run a camp in the summer for high 

school kids who are still struggling readers. We have now also 

interjected all of our English-language learners who have some capacity for English, and we’re finding that our dyslexic students 

have the opportunity to help these kids learn to read as well and 

that they are benefiting from the same methodology—the same rep-
72 

etition, the same assistive technology—and are moving ahead and 

reading much quicker than their counterparts who are English-language learners who don’t come to the summer program. Furthermore, in six weeks, we have statistically measurable differences in 

their fluency and their comprehension scores. 

Mr. BEYER. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Beyer. 

Let me recognize myself for a final quick question to Dr. 

Robillard. 

One area we haven’t covered today is the possibility and connection between adults with dyslexia and adults that had behavioral 

problems, and I know you’ve been aware of some research at the 

University of Texas about that. Can you comment real quickly on 

anything we need to address or anything we need to know? And 

then we’ll finish up. 

Dr. ROBILLARD. Well, I think it’s significant that we have this 

school-to-prison pipeline that is full of dyslexic students who are either undiagnosed or misdiagnosed or just struggling readers even 

who are misdiagnosed or undiagnosed, and the research about ten 

years ago, in 2004, I believe, Dr. Falbo at UT did quite a bit of research on this population and found about 80 percent of our prisons 

in Texas had prisoners who had dyslexia or some form of reading 

disorder. 

Recently this summer, in July of this year, current year, new research came out, similar research, says 85 percent of our prisoners 

have dyslexia or related disorder. That is a huge, huge number of 

people. 

Chairman SMITH. And the logical conclusion is, if we could have 

helped them earlier, we may not have had the kind of problems 

that they’ve exemplified later in life. 

Dr. ROBILLARD. I think there is a correlation. I don’t know that 

we can say it’s a cause and effect but I think there’s a very high 

correlation. 

Chairman SMITH. Thanks for that answer. 

Also, let me thank you all for your testimony today. This has 

been very, very informative. 

I have to end with a little bit of a plug for the State of Texas 

because I think we’re a little bit ahead of the curve or we’re certainly ahead of a number of other states because of legislation that 

has been passed, and we mandate the recognition of dyslexia in our 

school districts and mandate that the school districts have a program of early detection, and I only wish all school districts across 

the country had that as well. 

So again, thank you. Just a reminder, the reception is down the 

hall this way to my left at the very end of the hall. I look forward 

to seeing you all there. 

And we stand adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 11:36 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.] 
(73) 

Appendix I 

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL FOR THE RECORD
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LETTER SUBMITTED BY CHAIRMAN LAMAR S. SMITH
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DOCUMENT SUBMITTED BY RANKING MEMBER EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON
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PREPARED STATEMENT SUBMITTED BY ELIZABETH H. ESTY

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