The Dyslexia Foundation

10/08/2026

Which comes first — the reading struggle, or the anxiety?

For many children with dyslexia, it's a painful loop. Reading is hard, so school becomes stressful. The stress makes focus and performance harder still. And the cycle tightens.

Research confirms what many families know firsthand: anxiety is significantly elevated among children with dyslexia — and much of it stems not from the reading difficulty alone, but from the accumulated experience of struggle and stigma.

The implication for educators and clinicians is profound: you can't fully address the reading without addressing the child's emotional experience of reading.

This is exactly the kind of connection TDF's Fall Conference — eight days away — will explore.

📅 October 16 | 🔗 https://events.zoom.us/ev/Aq0bOlkpfZ8GE6CM0ym29WAf8rbBA-O-TJ8hOeQQgRmzmEqbV872~AmpfiHby7StXZxnOy1OrM2GsfeiaMVe8eqsAhhd6pd3QvatgkzCgbt3oNQ

10/01/2026

Two weeks until TDF's Annual Fall Conference. ⏳

Dyslexia in Schools: ADHD, Anxiety, and Dyslexia
📅 October 16, 2026 | 📍 Boston University | Live & Virtual

If you work with students who learn differently, this is the conversation you don't want to miss. Leading researchers and clinicians, one focused day, strategies you can use Monday morning.

Virtual attendance means you can join from anywhere.

🔗 Register: https://events.zoom.us/ev/Aq0bOlkpfZ8GE6CM0ym29WAf8rbBA-O-TJ8hOeQQgRmzmEqbV872~AmpfiHby7StXZxnOy1OrM2GsfeiaMVe8eqsAhhd6pd3QvatgkzCgbt3oNQ

09/28/2026

Why is it so hard — and so expensive — to get a dyslexia evaluation?

For many families, a private evaluation runs thousands of dollars. Insurance often won't cover it. Waitlists stretch for months.

And the burden isn't shared equally. Children in well-resourced schools have far greater access to reading specialists than children in under-resourced ones — meaning the children who most need early identification are often least likely to get it.

There's a structural piece too: federal special education law contains exclusionary criteria stating that children shouldn't be identified as learning disabled if their difficulties stem primarily from environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage. In practice, researchers have noted, that language can become a way to exclude the very children who need help.

This is why a growing number of advocates describe dyslexia as a civil-rights issue, not only an educational one.

What's been your experience with access? 👇

09/26/2026

It’s great to see Education Week picking up this conversation.

There’s an important backstory to this article. In 2024, The Dyslexia Foundation brought together a small group of researchers and practitioners in Malta for our 20th Extraordinary Brain Series Symposium around a question we thought deserved more attention: With everything we’ve learned from decades of research on reading and dyslexia, why haven’t we seen the changes in practice and outcomes we might have expected?

The special issue of International Mind, Brain, and Education Society's Mind, Brain, and Education that grew out of that meeting offers different perspectives on that question. Elizabeth Tipton and Nicole Patton Terry’s “engineering of reading” proposal, featured here by Education Week, is one of them.

The purpose of bringing people together in Malta wasn’t to establish a TDF position or arrive at a single answer. It was to ask a difficult question and create the conditions for serious thinking about it.

I’m glad to see that conversation continuing and reaching a much broader audience. For anyone interested in the broader conversation, the full Mind, Brain, and Education special issue that grew out of the symposium can be found here:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1111/(ISSN)1751-228X.Treatments-Students-Dyslexia

We hear a lot about the "science of reading," but the research doesn't always translate easily to real-world schools.

That's why some researchers argue an "engineering of reading" could help turn evidence into actual classroom practice.

📖 Read more: https://bit.ly/4yStpzV

09/25/2026

Can teaching children to tell better stories make them better readers?

Dr. Ron Gillam, Dr. Sandra Gillam and colleagues put this to the test in TDF's Mind, Brain, and Education Special Issue.

In a randomized trial with 357 students in grades 1–4, their narrative intervention (SKILL) improved children's oral storytelling — and those gains carried over into written narrative skills.

The most striking finding: for children with weaker decoding, gains in narrative ability drove meaningful improvements in reading comprehension. Oral language and decoding work together.

Real-world support for a powerful idea — that reading is language, and building one can strengthen the other.

(One for conference-goers: this is the same SKILL intervention connected to Dr. Phil Capin's work — a featured voice at our Fall Conference on Oct 16.)

🔗 Read it: https://doi.org/10.1111/mbe.70024

09/23/2026

What if you could measure the stress of reading?

Dr. Augusto Buchweitz did — in children's saliva.

🎓 TALK: "The Neuroscience of Anxiety and ADHD"

ABOUT DR. BUCHWEITZ: An Associate Professor of Psychological Sciences at the University of Connecticut, Dr. Buchweitz studies the neural bases of learning, learning disorders, and the interplay between stress, environment, and brain development.

In one striking study, his team asked children to read aloud during a controlled stress task while measuring their stress hormones. Children with dyslexia showed significantly elevated stress hormone levels — during the task and afterward, in recovery.

It's one of the clearest demonstrations we have that the anxiety surrounding reading isn't imagined or exaggerated. It's physiological. It's measurable. And it lingers.

His research also focuses on early literacy and brain development in populations underrepresented in neuroscience — including leading the Brazilian Portuguese version of GraphoGame.

📅 October 16, 2026
📍 Boston University | Live & Virtual
🔗 Register: https://events.zoom.us/ev/Aq0bOlkpfZ8GE6CM0ym29WAf8rbBA-O-TJ8hOeQQgRmzmEqbV872~AmpfiHby7StXZxnOy1OrM2GsfeiaMVe8eqsAhhd6pd3QvatgkzCgbt3oNQ

09/17/2026

Less than one month out. 🗓️

TDF's 2026 Annual Fall Conference is nearly here:

Dyslexia in Schools: ADHD, Anxiety, and Dyslexia
📅 October 16, 2026
📍 Boston University | Live & Virtual

Whether you're an educator, clinician, school psychologist, or advocate — this is your chance to learn from leading researchers about one of the most important intersections in dyslexia today, and to leave with strategies you can use immediately.

Don't wait.

🔗 Register: https://events.zoom.us/ev/Aq0bOlkpfZ8GE6CM0ym29WAf8rbBA-O-TJ8hOeQQgRmzmEqbV872~AmpfiHby7StXZxnOy1OrM2GsfeiaMVe8eqsAhhd6pd3QvatgkzCgbt3oNQ

09/16/2026

Why haven't decades of progress in dyslexia research reached the students who need it most?

That's the question at the heart of a new Special Issue of Mind, Brain, and Education — just published, and drawn from The Dyslexia Foundation's Extraordinary Brain Symposium.

Over the past 30 years, we've made real progress screening, identifying, and teaching young children with dyslexia. But interventions aimed at improving reading beyond basic word-reading — especially for older students — have too often produced underwhelming results.

So TDF did what it does best: brought leading scientists together for a rigorous debate — with educators and practitioners in the room to hear the science firsthand and engage with it directly. Two hard questions anchored the conversation:

1️⃣ Why haven't our interventions had the impact we hoped for, especially beyond the early grades?
2️⃣ What underlying assumptions do we need to reexamine?

The result: 16 articles that move the conversation forward. We'll be sharing them, one question at a time.

Follow along. 👇

🔗 Read the Special Issue: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1111/(ISSN)1751-228X.Treatments-Students-Dyslexia

09/11/2026

Do you grow out of dyslexia?

It's a hopeful idea — that a child who struggles now will simply catch up with time. The science tells a different story.

Dyslexia is lifelong. Research following people into adulthood shows the reading gap that appears in first grade can persist into the 40s.

Here's the part that genuinely is hopeful: "lifelong" doesn't mean "unchangeable." With evidence-based instruction, people with dyslexia become strong, capable readers. Many develop powerful strategies and thrive at the highest levels.

The goal was never to cure dyslexia. It's to give people the tools to flourish with it.

Managed, not outgrown. Share to spread the word. 👇

09/09/2026

You understand the science. But what do you actually do on Monday morning?

That's the question Dr. Phil Capin will answer at TDF's Annual Fall Conference.

🎓 TALK: "Practical Strategies for Managing ADHD and Anxiety for Students Who Also Have Dyslexia"

ABOUT DR. CAPIN: An Assistant Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Dr. Capin directs the BRIDGES Lab — Building Reading Instruction to Drive Growth in Every Student — dedicated to closing the gap between research and classroom practice.

His work is squarely on this year's theme: integrating social-emotional and attention supports directly into reading intervention for students with co-occurring difficulties. He's run randomized trials testing whether reading instruction paired with attention support works better than reading instruction alone.

Before academia, he was a special education teacher in El Centro, California. He knows the Monday morning problem from both sides.

📅 October 16, 2026
📍 Boston University | Live & Virtual
🔗 Register: https://events.zoom.us/ev/Aq0bOlkpfZ8GE6CM0ym29WAf8rbBA-O-TJ8hOeQQgRmzmEqbV872~AmpfiHby7StXZxnOy1OrM2GsfeiaMVe8eqsAhhd6pd3QvatgkzCgbt3oNQ