Midwest Neuroeducational Services

10/04/2025

Linking Dyslexia Assessment Results to Targeted Instruction

A dyslexia evaluation isn’t just about identifying a reading difficulty—it’s about understanding why a student struggles and how to teach more effectively. Each cognitive and linguistic area tested provides a roadmap for intervention. By linking assessment results to instructional targets, teachers can design lessons that directly address each student’s unique learning profile.

How to Adjust Science of Reading Instruction Based on Skill Deficits

Below is a guide for how remediation should shift depending on which foundational skill shows weakness during assessment.

1. Phonemic Awareness Deficit

Description: Difficulty identifying, blending, segmenting, or manipulating individual speech sounds.
Instructional Focus:
• Begin with oral-only sound manipulation before introducing letters.
• Provide explicit, daily practice in phoneme segmentation and blending (e.g., Heggerty, Kilpatrick).
• Move to phoneme–grapheme mapping once sound-level skills are firm.
• Reinforce phonological sensitivity across activities (say, stretch, tap, write).
Goal: Establish a strong foundation for decoding by automating awareness of speech sounds.

2. Orthographic Processing Deficit

Description: Struggles to recognize familiar letter patterns and store word spellings in long-term memory.
Instructional Focus:
• Explicitly teach spelling patterns and common orthographic conventions (e.g., -tch, -dge, vowel teams).
• Use word sorts to strengthen pattern recognition.
• Incorporate daily cumulative review of known words through reading and spelling practice.
• Avoid relying solely on memorization; link every pattern to its phoneme–grapheme base.
Goal: Build a mental storehouse of automatic word forms and spelling patterns.

3. Working Memory Weakness

Description: Difficulty holding and manipulating information—sounds, syllables, or directions—while reading or spelling.
Instructional Focus:
• Keep instruction chunked and scaffolded.
• Use visual cues (Elkonin boxes, color-coded graphemes) to reduce cognitive load.
• Teach routines and scripts that allow repetition and predictability.
• Provide overlearning opportunities—revisit and rehearse previously taught material.
Goal: Minimize working memory demands and promote automaticity through structure and repetition.

4. Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) Deficit

Description: Slow retrieval of familiar symbols (letters, numbers, words), leading to reduced fluency.
Instructional Focus:
• Incorporate timed naming drills for letters, sight words, and simple text.
• Provide repeated oral reading of short passages to build rate and accuracy.
• Pair fluency work with phrasing and expression training.
• Ensure decoding is automatic before focusing heavily on speed.
Goal: Improve efficiency in word retrieval and overall reading fluency.

5. Processing Speed Deficit

Description: Accurate but slow processing that impacts comprehension and endurance.
Instructional Focus:
• Offer short, frequent sessions to reduce fatigue.
• Use cumulative review and automaticity drills (rapid word recognition, repeated readings).
• Provide opportunities for overlearning with immediate feedback.
• Avoid overwhelming pace; track incremental gains.
Goal: Strengthen automatic processing and reduce the cognitive effort required for decoding.

6. Visual–Verbal Associative Memory Deficit

Description: Difficulty connecting what is seen (letters, words) with what is heard or understood.
Instructional Focus:
• Use multisensory instruction that links visual, auditory, and kinesthetic channels.
• Practice reading and spelling the same words to reinforce cross-modal connections.
• Introduce morphology (roots, prefixes, suffixes) to build meaning-based retrieval.
• Include imagery and verbal labeling tasks (“See it, say it, spell it, use it”).
Goal: Strengthen integration between print, sound, and meaning for automatic word recognition.

Putting It All Together

A well-designed dyslexia evaluation tells educators exactly where to start and what to emphasize. The results guide:
• The entry point for instruction
• The pace and intensity of intervention
• The methods most likely to produce progress

When teachers align instruction with diagnostic data, reading improvement accelerates—and students finally begin to experience success.

Avner Stern, PhD
Midwest Neuroeducational Services
Overland Park, KS
drstern@neuroeducational.com
913-214-1180

10/04/2025

Clinician-Led Diagnosis, Teacher-Led Monitoring — What Works and Why
• Who diagnoses? Trained clinicians (school/clinical psychologists, SLPs with literacy expertise, educational diagnosticians). They look under the hood—phonological processing, rapid naming, orthographic learning, working memory/attention—to explain why reading is hard and to rule in/out dyslexia and comorbidities.
• Who monitors? Teachers and reading specialists. They run universal screeners and frequent progress checks (e.g., oral reading fluency, word and nonsense-word fluency, curriculum-based measures) and ensure interventions are delivered with fidelity.
• Teachers aren’t “just about scores.” Many are trained in structured literacy and can collect process-relevant data; they typically don’t run full diagnostic batteries, which is appropriate.
• Best practice statement: Diagnostic evaluation—and periodic process-level check-ins—belongs with clinicians trained in the neuropsychology of reading. Screening and ongoing progress monitoring are led by teachers/reading specialists, and the team integrates both to guide instruction, IEP/504 decisions, and intervention tweaks.
• When to re-probe processes: At re-evals or big decision points, include phonological manipulation, RAN, decoding efficiency (real and pseudowords), orthographic choice/word recognition, irregular-word reading, spelling error patterns, and working memory/attention as indicated (common tools: TOD, CTOPP-2, TOWRE-2, PAST). Recheck every 12–16 weeks if growth is unclear.

Bottom line: Clinicians diagnose and analyze processes. Teachers screen and track growth. The team uses both streams of data to steer instruction—accurate, defensible, practical.

Avner Stern, PhD
Midwest Neuroeducational Services
Overland Park, KS
drstern@neuroeducational.com

09/27/2025

How effective is Phono-Graphix for dyslexia?
Phono-Graphix is a structured way to teach the code of written English—how sounds map to letters and letter groups. Research shows it can help struggling readers, including many children with dyslexia, especially in the early grades. It builds the core skills dyslexic students often lack: phonemic awareness, blending, segmenting, and flexible decoding.

How does it fit the Science of Reading model?
• Strong alignment: It clearly addresses the word recognition strand of the Reading Rope (phonological awareness, phonics, and decoding).
• Partial coverage: It does not directly target the language comprehension strand (vocabulary, background knowledge, syntax, etc.). Teachers using Phono-Graphix will need to provide those elements separately.
• Simple View of Reading: Phono-Graphix supports the “decoding” side of the equation very well, but you’ll need other instruction to build the “language comprehension” side.

Who benefits the most?
• Early learners (K–3): Children who are just learning the code and need strong, direct teaching in how sounds and letters work together.
• Students with weak phonemic awareness: Kids who struggle to hear, pull apart, and blend sounds.
• Students who get lost in rules: Since Phono-Graphix uses a “sound picture” approach instead of heavy rule teaching, it often clicks with students who feel overwhelmed by complex spelling rules.

Who may need more than Phono-Graphix?
• Older students with entrenched reading and spelling problems—because they also need morphology, advanced spelling instruction, and comprehension work.
• Students who need lots of cumulative review and multi-sensory practice (where OG or Wilson might be stronger).

So: Phono-Graphix is a good fit for cracking the code quickly and effectively, but most dyslexic students will need it supplemented with morphology, fluency practice, and comprehension instruction to cover the full Science of Reading.

Midwest Neuroeducational Services
Overland Park, KS

09/01/2025

08/30/2025

Screening and assessment live in two different worlds, but the dyslexia field often blurs them—sometimes to the child’s detriment.

Why screeners are leaned on so heavily
• Cost and scalability: Screeners are quick, cheap, and can be administered to whole classrooms in minutes. Schools under pressure to meet state dyslexia mandates often default to screeners because they don’t have the personnel, time, or budget to run full assessments on every at-risk child.
• Policy requirements: Many states passed “dyslexia screening laws” without allocating funding for actual assessments. That means schools are legally obligated to screen, but not necessarily to test.
• False sense of security: Screeners are marketed as research-based, “catch-all” tools, so educators feel they’re fulfilling their responsibility. But as you note, they can’t measure the discrepancy between reading and cognitive ability, nor can they parse whether memorization, environmental factors, or underlying processing weaknesses are driving performance.
• Early intervention push: Advocates argue “screen early, intervene early,” which is absolutely true in spirit. But in practice, screening often substitutes for real diagnostic assessment, creating gaps and misidentification.

Why this is a problem
• Screeners miss nuance: They can flag kids as “at risk” who really just need instruction, while overlooking children with more subtle dyslexic profiles (like those with strong phonemic awareness but weak orthographic mapping).
• They don’t answer the crucial “unexpected difficulties” question, which is the heart of a dyslexia diagnosis.
• They can delay real assessment because schools say, “We screened, we’ll wait and see.”

The bottom line
The “dyslexia world” leans on screeners because they’re easy to scale and check policy boxes. But an actual assessment—a structured, standardized, cognitive and academic evaluation—is what determines if difficulties are unexpected and guides targeted, effective intervention. Screeners raise flags; assessments provide answers.

Avner Stern, PhD
Midwest Neuroeducational Services
Overland Park, KS
drstern@neuroeducational.com

08/20/2025

Why is spelling harder than reading for kids with dyslexia?

Many parents notice that their child can read a word but still struggle to spell it. That’s because reading lets kids use context and clues to figure out words—but spelling doesn’t give any shortcuts. Every sound has to be remembered, every letter has to be in order.

English spelling makes it even harder, with words like said, one, and enough that don’t follow the rules. For children with dyslexia, holding all those sounds and letters in memory is tough, which makes spelling a bigger challenge than reading.

✨ What helps?
• Step-by-step teaching of sounds and letters
• Learning and practicing patterns and rules
• Multisensory practice (say it, write it, trace it, tap it)
• Extra practice with tricky words
• Using spelling in real writing, not just worksheets
• Memory tricks (color, pictures, chunks)
• Lots of review and repetition

With the right support, kids can become stronger spellers—it just takes more time and practice than reading.

Avner Stern, PhD
Midwest Neuroeducational Services
Overland Park, KS

08/12/2025

Early Dyslexia Testing: The Best Start for a Bright Future

Reading is the foundation of learning—and for some children, it doesn’t come easily. Dyslexia is one of the most common learning differences, yet it often goes undetected until struggles become significant. The good news? Early testing can change that.

Our Early Dyslexia Testing is designed to identify signs of dyslexia in young children—often as early as age 5—when the brain is most responsive to intervention. Early identification means we can provide the right strategies before frustration, anxiety, or low self-esteem set in.

What makes our approach different?

✔️ Comprehensive, evidence-based screening
We use trusted, research-backed tools to evaluate early literacy skills, phonological awareness, rapid naming, and other key indicators of reading difficulties.

✔️ Child-centered, supportive environment
Our assessments are designed to be engaging and low-stress, tailored to your child’s age and developmental level.

✔️ Clear answers and actionable next steps
You’ll receive a detailed explanation of your child’s strengths and areas of concern, plus guidance on how to support them—at home and at school.

Early support changes everything. When children understand how they learn and receive the help they need, they become more confident, capable, and ready to thrive.

📅 Now accepting appointments for early dyslexia screening

Midwest Neuroeducational Services
Overland Park, KS
913-214-1180

08/09/2025

08/08/2025

Why a Dyslexia Evaluation with the Test of Dyslexia (TOD) Matters

When a child struggles with reading, it’s not enough to “wait and see.” A dyslexia evaluation using the Test of Dyslexia (TOD) offers a powerful, research-based way to understand why your child is struggling—and what to do about it.

What makes the TOD different?
Unlike many reading tests that only show how far behind a student is, the TOD identifies why the difficulties are occurring. It assesses the key areas most associated with dyslexia, including:
• Phonological Awareness – recognizing and manipulating sounds in words
• Decoding & Word Recognition – accurately and fluently reading real and made-up words
• Rapid Naming – quickly retrieving names of letters, numbers, or colors
• Spelling & Orthographic Processing – understanding how written language works
• Vocabulary & Comprehension – ruling out language-based explanations for reading problems

Why this matters for your child:
✅ Clarity – Understand whether your child meets criteria for dyslexia based on multiple lines of evidence
✅ Direction – Get specific, targeted recommendations that are backed by science—not guesswork
✅ Early Help – Identify signs before they become long-term school struggles
✅ Credibility – The TOD was developed by leaders in dyslexia research and is one of the most up-to-date tools available today
✅ School Support – A clear diagnosis can guide school accommodations (e.g., IEP or 504 plans) and help ensure your child gets what they need

We don’t just tell you if your child has dyslexia—we explain what kind, how it affects them, and what to do next.

Avner Stern, PhD
Midwest Neuroeducational Services
Overland Park, KS
913-214-1180

05/08/2024

Dyslexia Insights: A Guide for Parents and Teachers

“We Catch Kids Before They Fail”

What is Dyslexia?

Dyslexia is a brain-based learning disorder that affects a person's ability to read and spell accurately and fluently. It stems from difficulties in processing phonological and cognitive information. Dyslexia is the most prevalent specific learning disability, affecting 8 to 10% of children in the general population. It has a strong genetic component, with a 50% chance of being diagnosed if a first-degree relative has dyslexia. Reading difficulties associated with dyslexia are not merely developmental delays; without intervention, most children with dyslexia will continue to struggle with reading. This can lead to problems in reading comprehension and limited vocabulary and knowledge acquisition, as reading experiences are hindered.

Comorbidity

Many students with dyslexia struggle with additional learning disorders and mental health challenges. Common co-occurring conditions include attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), dysgraphia (impaired writing ability), and dyscalculia (difficulties with math). They may also experience depression, anxiety, or behavioral issues. The compounding effects of these multiple disorders can lead to negative outcomes, such as disengagement from school, higher dropout rates, and significant obstacles in learning and knowledge acquisition.

The Evaluation of Dyslexia

1. The Importance of Early Screening for Dyslexia

Research shows that accurate screening procedures can identify students at risk of dyslexia as early as kindergarten. The most effective time for early reading intervention is in kindergarten and first grade. However, many children with reading disabilities are not diagnosed or do not receive intensive services until several years later. Dyslexia screening is a brief assessment to determine if a child is at risk and needs further evaluation.

2. Importance of a Comprehensive Evaluation

Dyslexia is characterized by difficulties in various cognitive and linguistic abilities, which should be evaluated in any dyslexia assessment. These abilities include phonemic awareness (the ability to recognize and manipulate individual speech sounds), orthographic processing (the ability to recognize and manipulate written language), working memory, rapid automatized naming, processing speed, and visual-verbal associative memory.

The evaluation also includes an assessment of letter-sound knowledge, basic reading skills, spelling, oral vocabulary, listening comprehension, and family history. This comprehensive evaluation involves analyzing the unique pattern of cognitive strengths and weaknesses specific to the individual. By identifying these patterns, the evaluation can improve the specificity of diagnosis and help identify the specific areas in which an individual may need support. It can also provide valuable information for treatment planning, as interventions can be tailored to an individual's specific cognitive strengths and weaknesses. The educational plan may include academic accommodations and interventions designed to support the individual's specific learning needs.

In summary, the main purposes of a comprehensive dyslexia evaluation are to 1) determine if the individual has dyslexia, 2) specify the nature and degree of difficulties, 3) determine strengths, and 4) recommend appropriate accommodations and interventions.

05/06/2024

Dyslexia Remediation Specifics

How long should effective reading remediation take for your student?
When caught early, within 1 to 2 years of highly effective reading remediation, most students, even those with the most severe dyslexia, can graduate from special reading remediation help. With highly effective interventions, the largest reading gains occur within the first 15 to 20 hours of instruction. After that, progress continues at a dramatically lower pace, but still does not plateau. In other words, progress can continue but more slowly.

When should highly effective remediation occur?
Reading research offers compelling evidence that children at risk for dyslexia can be identified as early as kindergarten even when they haven’t begun reading.
Early intervention for at-risk students in kindergarten and first grade is crucial. We need to “catch them before they fail.” Without high quality instruction and intervention, early reading problems can manifest as serious reading disabilities later on. The longer it takes to identify reading problems, the harder it is to correct them.

What is highly effective remediation?
The most successful reading intervention programs contain the following three key elements:
1. They aggressively address and correct the student’s phonological awareness difficulties and teach phonological awareness to the advanced level (deletion, substitution, reversal)
2. They provide letter-sound learning and explicit systematic phonics decoding instruction and/or reinforcement.
3. They provide the students with ample opportunities to apply these developing skills to reading connected text.

A note regarding Orton- Gillingham and Wilson programs:
These programs represent the most intense forms of phonics instruction. These programs often dramatically boost phonic decoding skills but not necessarily real-word reading. That is, with students with more moderate to severe phonological awareness difficulties such intensive phonics instruction does not produce the more advanced phonemic proficiency needed to become skilled at orthographic mapping, the mental process we use to efficiently store words for instant effortless retrieval. As a result, growth in sight vocabulary - words that students can instantly and effortlessly recognize from memory – does not improve much. In other words, more intensive phonics instruction is likely to improve student’s ability to sound out new words. However, it does not necessarily result in better word storage, and word storage is the basis of reading fluency. If a student is not permanently storing words despite acquiring phonics skills, more intensive phonics is not likely to be the answer. However, these programs have some attractive features. They can provide help in developing letter-sound skills, and they have many great materials to assist with the phonic aspects of the reading process. In fact, these programs can be used alongside such programs as Equipped for Reading Success. www.equippedforreadingsuccess.com; www.thereadingleague.org.

Equipped for Reading Success is a comprehensive program to improve phonemic awareness and instant word recognition and is designed to supplement any existing reading program or approach. Implementing the program requires minimal planning and only several minutes of supplemental instruction per day.

How can at-risk students be identified?
Children at risk for future reading problems can be identified as early as pre-kindergarten. Children who have one parent with dyslexia have a 40% chance of having dyslexia. The risk and severity of dyslexia is higher when both parents are affected.

There are early warning signs of future reading problems. If two or more of the following indicators are evident, the child should be assessed, especially if there is dyslexia in the family.
• Delayed speech
• Mixing up sounds in multisyllabic words
• Trouble rhyming words
• Difficulty learning the alphabet and the names of numbers
• Difficulty learning to associate sounds with letters

How can a dyslexia diagnosis be improved?
Students with dyslexia are commonly misdiagnosed or even missed entirely. For example, in a large-scale study of at-risk readers, a troubling finding was that only one out of four boys and 1/7 girls with a reading impairment were identified by their schools as having a learning disability. Using multiple indicators or criteria improves the reliability of the dyslexia evaluation process.

For children between the ages of 5 and 7, in K through 2nd grade, Midwest Neuroeducational Services provides an early learning & dyslexia screening. This detects early dyslexia and/or other learning concerns. This evaluation helps to determine the presence and severity of any delays and provides recommendations for evidence-based interventions. Depending on the child’s history and development, a child may benefit from either or both components - learning and/or dyslexia.

The learning screening component is helpful for determining whether a child’s cognitive abilities are developing is expected, and, if not, identify needs for early intervention.

The dyslexia screening component evaluates the specific factors or causes that research has shown to be significant predictors of dyslexia.

The Early Learning & Dyslexia Screening includes a parent interview, testing, written report with recommendations, and feedback session.

For older children and adults, Midwest Neuroeducational Services offers a comprehensive evaluation to assess factors causing a child or adult to struggle with reading, spelling, or other learning problems, and provides a formal diagnosis and recommendations. This evaluation includes a parent or client interview, testing, written report with recommendations, and feedback session.

For more information or to schedule an appointment, call 913-214-1180 or email drstern@neuroeducational.com.

04/26/2024

Importance of a Comprehensive Dyslexia Evaluation - Linking Results to Interventions

Dyslexia is characterized by difficulties in various cognitive and linguistic abilities, which should be evaluated in any dyslexia evaluation.. These abilities include phonemic awareness, orthographic processing, working memory, rapid automatized naming, processing speed, and visual-verbal associative memory. A thorough evaluation also includes assessment of letter-sound knowledge, basic reading skills, spelling, oral vocabulary, listening comprehension, and family history. The main purposes of a dyslexia evaluation are to 1) determine if the individual has dyslexia, 2) specify the nature and degree of difficulties, 3) determine strengths, and 4) recommend appropriate accommodations and interventions



Midwest Neuroeducational Services is a psychologist in Overland Park, KS, who specializes in evaluating and helping children and adults with complex cognitive concerns.