ResearchThe State of Dyslexia
What educators told us about screening, intervention, and the gap between them
Over the first half of 2026 we asked educators one question at a time: not what dyslexia policy says on paper, but what actually happens in their building. Classroom and special education teachers, reading interventionists, instructional coaches, school psychologists and administrators answered.
Districts can find struggling readers, but keeping them served is where the system breaks down
Screening has largely arrived. The capacity to act on it has not. Among the educators we surveyed, the bottleneck sits between the flag and the child: identification happens, and then a shortage of certified specialists, protected minutes and stable funding decides how many of those students actually get served.
Among 44 educators surveyed across 22 states. Descriptive, not a representative sample.
- 1Screening is widespread, but uneven. 54% of respondents say it is required where they work; 37% say it is not.
- 2A flag does not guarantee intervention. 27% say fewer than half of the students they identify are actually served.
- 3Specialist capacity is the binding constraint. 60% say access to certified dyslexia specialists is insufficient for the need in their building.
- 4Confidence is low, but not alarmed. Average confidence that interventions close the reading gap by third grade: 3.1 out of 5, and no respondent chose the top of the scale.
- 5The asks are about capacity, not curriculum. Interventionists, protected time, training for general-education teachers, and funding that does not expire on schedule.
A little over half of respondents say their school or district requires dyslexia screening, typically through commercial tools like iReady, DIBELS/mCLASS, FastBridge or STAR, run in kindergarten through second grade. That is the good news, and it is real progress on early identification compared to a decade ago.
The trouble starts after the flag. Most respondents say access to certified dyslexia specialists is not sufficient to meet student need, and a majority estimate that fewer than three-quarters of the students their screener identifies actually go on to receive structured intervention. Confidence that current interventions are closing the reading gap by third grade reads less as crisis than as chronic, low-grade doubt: nearly half of respondents landed on a flat 3, neither confident nor alarmed.
The reasons respondents give are consistent across states: not enough certified interventionists, not enough scheduled minutes that do not compete with core literacy blocks, screening tools that misfire for English learners, and, repeatedly, intervention funding that rode in on pandemic relief dollars and is now expiring.
A patchwork that mostly finds students but struggles to serve them
What came back was not a story of neglect. It was a story of a system that has gotten reasonably good at the first half of its job, noticing which children are struggling to read, and unevenly good, at best, at the second half: getting those children structured, sustained, evidence-based help before the window for early intervention closes at the end of third grade.
Screening tools like iReady, DIBELS and FastBridge now run in a majority of the buildings represented here. But screening requirements vary district to district and state to state, the tools disagree with each other at the margins, and, more consequentially, a positive flag does not reliably mean intervention is provided. Respondents describe waitlists, understaffed intervention blocks, specialists stretched across too many schools, and funding for small-group support that arrived with pandemic relief dollars and left when they did.
This report lays out what educators told us, organized around four moments in a struggling reader’s path through the system: getting screened, getting served, getting support delivered by someone qualified to give it, and, ultimately, becoming a stronger reader. We close with what respondents said would actually move the needle, in their own words.
A mandate is not an implementation
As of 2026, all 50 states have enacted legislation specific to or inclusive of dyslexia, 194 dyslexia-focused laws nationwide, and universal K–3 screening is the hallmark provision of most of them. Set that against what our respondents describe and a distance opens up.
Some of that gap is timing. Michigan’s screening mandate does not take effect until the 2027–28 school year, and Colorado’s annual K–3 dyslexia screening begins the same year. But much of it is not. Arizona reinforced universal dyslexia screening in kindergarten and grade one and requires every K–3 school to designate a trained Dyslexia Training Designee; our Arizona respondents still describe identification landing in second or third grade. Georgia created a Dyslexia Endorsement and requires K–3 teachers to complete it as one of four pathways; a Georgia respondent still reports that not all staff running pull-out intervention are certified.
The explanation is the least satisfying one available: statutes create screening requirements, training hours and notification duties, but they rarely fund the interventionist who has to act on the flag, which is precisely what our respondents name, over and over, as the thing they need most.
State legislation and teacher-requirement figures in this section: The State of Dyslexia in the United States, Annual Report 2026, National Center on Improving Literacy (stateofdyslexia.org). Those are national policy counts from a third party, not findings from our survey.
Screening has spread, but on the district’s own terms
Screening is no longer the exception. iReady, DIBELS and its mCLASS variant, FastBridge and STAR are the tools respondents name most often, usually layered with a second or third measure: a phonics check, a phonemic-awareness screen like Heggerty, or teacher progress-monitoring data. Several respondents described genuinely thorough, multi-point systems.
But "screening happens" and "screening is required" are different claims. Just over half of respondents say their school or district is formally required to screen; the rest say it is not, or described partial mandates, screening only in certain grades, or screening only once a concern has already been raised. A Georgia teacher’s district screens only kindergarten through third grade. An Arizona instructional coach described a screener that flags reading difficulty broadly but gives teachers no next step.
Several respondents flagged a subtler problem: the tools themselves. A Maryland special educator at a bilingual school described her screener over-identifying students who simply had not had enough English instruction yet, forcing a second round of assessment by hand for every flagged child, two full instructional days lost per screening cycle. A California interventionist had the opposite worry, a screener that flagged two or three students in an entire school when she could name others who plainly qualified.
“If a child is flagged in that assessment, the classroom teacher does not know what interventions the child needs or what to do to get the child screened further for dyslexia. It really isn’t until around 2nd or 3rd grade, when the child has not made adequate growth, that dyslexia is diagnosed.”Instructional Coach, Arizona
say they work where screening is not required at all
Multi-select; most respondents named two or more measures.
A flag is not a promise: the intervention gap
Ask respondents what happens after a student is flagged, and the answers split roughly into thirds. 40% say three-quarters or more of the students they identify go on to receive intervention, a genuinely good outcome. But 29% put that figure between half and three-quarters, and another 27% say fewer than half of flagged students are actually served. That is not a rounding error; it is more than a quarter of respondents describing a system where the majority of children identified as at-risk never receive the help the screening was supposed to trigger.
The reasons are structural, not a lack of will. Several respondents pointed to staffing math that simply does not close: too few certified interventionists, or too few scheduled minutes that do not collide with the core literacy block a struggling reader also needs. Others described a sequencing problem, students waiting for a full evaluation before formal intervention starts, even though the screener already told everyone where the need was.
And several respondents in California pointed to a funding cliff. One teacher described a highly successful small-group K–3 program that ran almost entirely on one-time federal pandemic relief dollars. When the money was temporary, so was the coverage.
“We prioritize our red and orange students for intervention services. Due to limited intervention capacity, some students identified by the screener receive classroom supports and progress monitoring rather than formal intervention services.”2nd Grade Teacher, California
say fewer than half of flagged students are served
“The best dyslexia intervention program I know of… is a two-year training program for teachers. My district couldn’t justify the cost.”SPED Teacher, Texas
Who actually delivers the help, and whether there are enough of them
When intervention does happen, small-group and pull-out delivery is the default mode, well ahead of one-on-one sessions and in-classroom-only support. That is broadly consistent with the structured-literacy research base, which favors small, homogeneous groups. The problem respondents raise is not the model; it is who is running it.
Most respondents say access to certified dyslexia specialists is not sufficient to meet student need in their building. That shortage shows up as scope creep: a Georgia teacher noted plainly that not all teachers who conduct pull-out interventions are certified dyslexia specialists, this in a state that established a dedicated Dyslexia Endorsement for exactly that role. A North Carolina special educator wished aloud for at least one general education teacher, per grade level, trained in providing dyslexia interventions, an acknowledgment that specialist staffing alone will not scale to the need.
A few respondents described creative workarounds. One Arizona school psychologist noted her principal had begun deploying art, PE and music teachers to push into small groups for students needing lighter support, freeing certified staff for higher-need cases. It is a stopgap, and respondents know it, but it is also a signal of just how stretched dedicated intervention staff already are.
“We have strong materials but we don’t have the manpower, training, or time in our teaching schedules/school day schedule to meet the need.”Reading Interventionist, California
say certified specialist access is insufficient
Delivery-model rows are respondent counts, not percentages.
Confidence in outcomes: not a crisis, but not trust either
Asked how confident they are that current reading interventions are meaningfully improving outcomes by third grade, respondents landed, on average, at 3.1 out of 5. That number understates how flat the distribution really is: 48% of all respondents chose a neutral 3, and no respondent chose the top of the scale. This is not a system respondents believe is failing outright. It is one where almost no one will vouch for it working well, either.
Two threads recur in the open-ended responses. The first is timing: several respondents, echoing the screening findings above, said meaningful identification and support routinely arrive after second or third grade, precisely the window structured-literacy research treats as most valuable. A Michigan classroom teacher put the diagnostic problem plainly, and Michigan’s own K–3 screening mandate does not take effect until 2027–28.
The second is capacity to sustain what has already been started. A North Carolina fifth-grade teacher, describing her district’s genuine investment in LETRS-aligned instruction, still named the strain directly. Good tools, in other words, still need enough hands and enough minutes to run.
“‘Initiative fatigue’ for classroom teachers is real. Balancing the 90-minute literacy block with mandated interventions for Tier 2 and Tier 3 students is a constant logistical challenge. We need tools that are high-impact but low-friction for the teacher to manage.”5th Grade Teacher, North Carolina
average confidence that interventions close the gap by third grade
No respondent chose the top of the scale.
The asks are specific, consistent, and rarely about curriculum
Asked directly what would help, respondents converged on a short, repeated list: funding for interventionist positions now that pandemic relief dollars have lapsed; enough certified staff and protected minutes to actually run intervention at scale; structured-literacy training extended to general-education teachers, not reserved for specialists; and screening tools that catch risk earlier and hold up for English learners.
They were not, for the most part, asking for another curriculum. They were asking for the capacity to deliver support consistently and at scale.
“What people and resources can we utilize to educate parents and families at Title I schools like mine?”3rd Grade Teacher, Virginia
Taken together, these responses argue for four shifts:
- 1Make universal K–2 screening a state requirement paired with a mandated response timeline. A flag without a deadline is just data.
- 2Fund interventionist positions as a recurring line item, not a one-time relief grant that expires on schedule.
- 3Start intervention at the screener flag, not after a full evaluation clears.
- 4Extend structured-literacy training to general-education teachers, and validate screeners for multilingual learners.
We publish this because it describes the problem we are working on
Poppins Learning is an educational app built for students with dyslexia and reading difficulties. It uses rhythm, language and literacy activities to work on the phonological processing and sequencing skills that reading depends on, in short daily sessions a student can do on their own.
It is not a structured-literacy curriculum, and it is not a replacement for specialist-led intervention. It is supplemental practice designed to run alongside the reading support a school already provides, which speaks to one specific thing respondents described: a student can keep practicing between direct sessions without a specialist leading every minute of that practice.
That is a narrow claim on purpose. This survey measures what educators perceive about their own practice, not what any program achieves. Our trial evidence, including what it did and did not show, is set out separately.
- A screener, an assessment or a diagnosis.
- A structured-literacy curriculum, or a substitute for one.
- A replacement for a certified specialist.
How we ran this survey, and what it can and cannot tell you
- The instrument was a 14-question form mixing closed-ended and open-text questions, distributed to US K–12 educators. Respondents were compensated for their time.
- Respondents were self-selected. This is a descriptive picture of the buildings these educators work in, not a representative sample of US schools or districts, and no figure here should be read as a national rate.
- Roles skewed toward elementary: classroom and special education teachers, reading and intervention specialists, instructional coaches, school psychologists, building administrators, and a small number of district-level and higher-education respondents.
- Answers about whether screening is required are self-reported perceptions, and in a few cases differ from the respondent’s own state mandate. We report them as educator awareness of the mandate, which is itself a finding.
- Open-text answers carry most of the analysis. Quotes are verbatim, lightly bracketed only for readability, and attributed by role and state only. No respondent is identified.
Based on 46 responses from 44 educators across 22 states, surveyed January to July 2026. Self-selected respondents describing their own buildings, not a representative national sample.
Questions about the data, or want to talk about what it looks like in your district? Talk to our team.