Have we been misdiagnosing dyslexia? A read and thoughts.

Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/too-many-schools-are-misdiagnosing-dyslexia1/

For decades now, medical science has made so much progress in cancer. If caught in its early stages, we can have outcomes that may be 100% curable, or patients tend to go in remission for years together, extending their life span and helping them live a decent quality of life. However, it is unfortunate that decades later, we still are struggling to diagnose Dyslexia. Still today, up to 20% of the US population has Dyslexia. I wonder how many of them go undiagnosed.

Dyslexia is a neurological disorder that makes it difficult to spell and make sense of written words. People with moderate Dyslexia may only omit words such as "and" and "the" when reading or read phrases such as "dog" as "god." As this kind of Dyslexia is very moderate, with support from teachers, children can get over their reading disability early on. However, this isn't happening as I think that schools aren't trained well enough to do this or maybe even point to the parents towards the possibility of their child having Dyslexia. According to this article, most schools use a discrepancy model that compares IQ with reading performance to determine if a child has Dyslexia. So, suppose a child does well on a reading performance test; they may not be diagnosed with Dyslexia even if they have it, according to the discrepancy model. For example, in elementary school, we used to do reading records once every quarter. The test generally lasts 10 minutes, during which we are given a passage to read and then answer the comprehension questions. Is 10 minutes fair? As per the model, their IQ is high if the child does well in the reading performance test. Therefore, they don't have a learning disability. Does this system of diagnosing children with Dyslexia make sense?

I would like to believe that somewhere, this model is flawed because my dear friend's Dyslexia went undiagnosed during his elementary school years. He was not put in any "step-it-up" program at the school. In our school, those children get assigned to a step-it-up program who are struggling in reading or math to help them give more concentrated instruction to perform better at the grade level. In my friend's case, his Dyslexia was caught in 7th grade in middle school. I think this is because his parents are doctors, and they decided to look at his constant stubbornness and refusal to read books or math, which became more challenging for him the minute he had to solve word problems. The parents, being doctors, probably had the larger perspective. With today's everyday challenges, can everyone bring this perspective?

Not only my friend's case but another acquaintance in the school district also went undiagnosed with Dyslexia up until high school. Once again, the parent took charge of figuring out what was wrong with their daughter. In this case, not only was the daughter diagnosed with Dyslexia, but she also went through all the social and emotional challenges that any student may go through when they are not on par with their classmates.

It's sad to learn through this article that due to a multitude of reasons, such as biases in IQ tests, most children who are diagnosed are from white and middle-to-upper-class families. So, I think not only that the model is flawed, but it also brings to light that economically disadvantaged children may be going undiagnosed and not getting the help that they need to better their education.