The Real Dyslexia Challenge Starts After Screening

For years, much of the dyslexia conversation has focused on early identification, and for good reason. Screening has expanded. Awareness has grown. More schools are using tools designed to identify reading difficulties earlier.

But our new State of Dyslexia educator survey surfaced another challenge: once students are identified, providing consistent support can be much harder. Finding the students who need help is only the beginning.

Screening is growing. Intervention capacity has not always kept pace.

54% of the educators who responded said their school or district requires dyslexia screening. Schools have more ways than ever to recognize when a student may need additional reading support.

But identification does not always translate quickly into intervention. 27% of respondents said fewer than half of the students identified as needing support actually receive it. And 60% said they do not have enough access to certified dyslexia specialists to meet the needs in their building.

That raises an important question: what happens after a student is flagged?

A screening result does not create more time or more people

Screening can identify risk. What it cannot do is add another interventionist, create more minutes in the school day, or reduce an already-full specialist caseload.

Educators described waitlists, specialists working across multiple schools, intervention blocks competing with core instruction, and students waiting for additional evaluation. This is not a lack of commitment. It is a capacity challenge.

Educators are asking for capacity

When we asked educators what would help, their answers were remarkably consistent:

• More interventionists.
• More protected time.
• More training for general-education teachers.
• Better tools for multilingual learners.
• More stable funding.
• More family support.

They were not primarily asking for another curriculum. They were asking for the capacity to deliver support consistently and at scale. That distinction matters.

Specialist time is especially difficult to stretch

Small-group intervention was the most common support model reported in our survey. But even small groups depend on specialist availability.

60% of respondents said access to certified dyslexia specialists was insufficient. And when asked how confident they were that current interventions were meaningfully improving reading outcomes by third grade, the average response was 3.1 out of 5. No respondent chose the top of the scale.

For schools, the practical question is clear: how do you give struggling readers enough high-quality support when specialist time is already stretched thin?

The next dyslexia challenge starts after identification

Early identification should remain a priority. But screening alone cannot improve a child’s reading. Once a student is identified, schools still have to answer:

• Who will provide the intervention?
• How quickly can it begin?
• How often can the student practice?
• What happens between direct intervention sessions?
• And how do you maintain consistency when specialist time is limited?

Earlier identification matters because it gives schools more time to act. The real value comes from what happens with that time.

Poppins can help extend the work already happening

Poppins is designed for students with dyslexia and reading difficulties, using rhythm, language and literacy activities to work on the processing skills that reading depends on, in sessions of about 20 minutes.

It does not replace specialist-led intervention. It is designed to give students more opportunities to practice between direct sessions. Through structured rhythm, phonological, decoding and reading-fluency activities, students can keep working on important skills without requiring a specialist to lead every minute of that practice.

For schools, that speaks directly to one of the challenges educators described: how do we give students more meaningful practice when specialist time is limited?

What Poppins is not: a screener, an assessment or a diagnosis; a structured-literacy curriculum, or a substitute for one; a replacement for a certified specialist. Our clinical-trial evidence, including what it did and did not show, is set out on the science page.

Screening was a major step forward. Now comes the harder part.

More students are being identified earlier. More educators understand what dyslexia can look like. More schools are building systems to recognize reading difficulties sooner.

The next challenge is making sure identification leads to action. That means enough trained people. Enough protected time. Enough opportunities to practice. And intervention systems that can realistically reach the students who need them.

Because identifying a struggling reader is not the finish line. It is where support has to begin.