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Summer 2016
By Martha Bridge Denckla
All of us, researchers and teachers alike, have long been dedicated to early detection of dyslexia. A growing body of evidence demonstrates that when appropriate reading instruction prevents the experience of failure, the entire life history of students with dyslexia can be substantially normalized and secondary mental health issues averted.
A growing body of evidence demonstrates that when appropriate reading instruction prevents the experience of failure, the entire life history of students with dyslexia can be substantially normalized and secondary mental health issues averted.
About forty years ago, when I became involved with the neurodevelopmental understanding of dyslexia, I did so in the context of educational systems that embraced the concept of developmental readiness. Without reference to the brain, schools tested for readiness during kindergarten round-up visits prior to kindergarten entry.
Some public school systems even had transitional classes, between kindergarten and first grade, for those students who did not even meet the modest expectations of pre-reading accomplishments required for twentieth-century entry into first grade. Some schools had K-1, 1-2, and 2-3 classrooms to accommodate the range of uneven developmental profiles (within as well as between individual differences) that existed within those early elementary school years.
Initial Purpose of RAN
So when I used my knowledge of the brain—extrapolating that knowledge to hypotheses about brain pathway development (by means of myelination supporting fast responses) to develop the Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) Tests—I did so in a welcoming environment of experienced educators who wanted to know, “Is this child showing us that his/her brain is connected from ‘see it’ to ‘say it’ in an age- and grade-appropriate way?”
That was the initial purpose of the RAN—before it was applied to the diagnosis of dyslexia and taken further by Maryanne Wolf in her Double Deficit model.
In those early decades of incorporating the RAN into readiness evaluations, there was either relaxed transitional waiting period or a reduced expectation of fluency within a differentiated instructional model for first grade. Plotting the growth curve of readiness acknowledged risk, but it did not firmly diagnose dyslexia before seven years of age.
There was also (dare I say it) a less doctrinaire reading-instruction curriculum that allowed some children to feel a certain degree of success using unorthodox methods.
Failing Kindergarten
Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, even before current testing and accountability policies became dominant, there has been a trend toward declaring that “Kindergarten is the new first grade.” Totally ignoring the child development and neuroscience literature, the rationale given for expecting kindergarten students to learn first-grade academic skills is this: Since so many children are in day care or preschool settings, they no longer need the old kindergarten socialization and play experiences.
My clinic began to receive calls from parents whose children were “failing kindergarten,” a referral that in the past would make us roll our eyes (unseen on the phone) and consider the parent to be overanxious or the school to be an outlier with unreasonable expectations.
While this awaits contemporary study, my research leads me to estimate that as many as 25% of children—mostly boys (whose brains in school-related pathways mature more slowly than do those of girls)—would not be neurodevelopmentally ready to read or write in kindergarten.
Then there is the role of handwriting, the fine-motor skill that is specifically “pencil use for letter formation.” Since much reading-related instruction involves handwriting, usually printing letters, in both classwork and homework (yes, there is assigned homework in some kindergarten classes), the frequently observed immaturity of pencil grasp and control looms large as a source of frustration with, and even avoidance of, academic tasks. As is true of readiness for the “see-it—say-it” connection, handwriting immaturity is more often a factor in boys, particularly boys with later birthdays that make them “young for kindergarten.”
A Collision
This presents us with a collision between our mission for early detection of dyslexia, or even at-risk status for dyslexia, and awareness of the developmental inappropriateness of the reading instruction and reading expectations for a significant proportion of students in kindergarten.
I am convinced that developmentally premature educational expectations can be harmful:
- for the children who experience outright failure, and
- for the children who seem to make progress but do so using suboptimal circuitous pathways in the brain that may fail to support efficient and comfortable skill utilization in later years.
developmentally premature educational expectations can be harmful:
- for the children who experience outright failure, and
- for the children who seem to make progress but do so using suboptimal circuitous pathways in the brain that may fail to support efficient and comfortable skill utilization in later years.
The emotional and motivational consequences of trying to meet premature reading-writing expectations may be long lasting. Also, the overburdening of already under-supported special education services, with the unready now becoming indistinguishable from those who truly have dyslexia, is yet another serious consequence.
We need to return to evaluating, respecting, and differentiating curricula for the range of readiness to read in the early years of education.
Dr. Martha Bridge Denckla, Ph.D., a research scientist and director of the Developmental Cognitive Neurology Department at the Kennedy Krieger Institute, is also a professor of neurology, pediatrics, and psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. In addition, she currently teaches fellows in the Kennedy Krieger Center for Innovation and Leadership in Special Education and consults with Fairfax County, VA schools. Dr. Denckla graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1962, where she trained with Dr. Norman Geschwind in behavioral neurology. In 1982, she began serving as chief of the section on autism and related disorders at the developmental neurology branch of the Neurological Disorders Program at the National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Stroke (NIH). She began her work at Johns Hopkins and Kennedy Krieger Institute in 1987. Since 2008, Dr. Denckla has focused her efforts on the transfer of information on the developing brain and its milder learning differences to educators.
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