Previous Diagnosis Dyslexia

In general, “dyslexia” is defined by evidence of a student having difficulty with decoding and fluency. The results summarized below are from Lindamood-Bell® Learning Center students who reported having been previously diagnosed with dyslexia and who had phonemic awareness, word attack, and word recognition skills at or below the 25th percentile. On average, these students exhibited substantial gains, in the above-mentioned categories, from just weeks of intensive Seeing Stars® instruction.

In 2011, Lindamood-Bell Learning Centers worked with 470 students who reported having previous, third-party diagnoses of dyslexia. That is 18% of the total student population in our Learning Centers. Before starting instruction, on average, these students tested below the 13th percentile in every decoding- oriented category of the Lindamood-Bell learning ability evaluation (i.e., symbol imagery, phonemic awareness, word attack, word recognition, spelling, and paragraph reading accuracy).

After completing instruction, these students achieved the following average gains:

• Symbol Imagery: from the 7th to the 37th Percentile – a 30-point gain. In terms of Standard Scores, this equates to a growth of 16.6 points. Note that, with Standard Scores, any change over 4.5 points is considered “large.”

• Phonemic Awareness: from the 7th to the 30th Percentile – a 23-point gain. In terms of Standard Scores, this equates to a growth of 13.7 points. Note that, with Standard Scores, any change over 4.5 points is considered “large.”

• Word Attack: from the 13th to the 37th Percentile – a 24-point gain. In terms of Standard Scores, this equates to a growth of 11.6 points. Note that, with Standard Scores, any change over 4.5 points is considered “large.”

• Word Recognition: from the 4th to the 16th Percentile – a 12-point gain. In terms of Standard Scores, this equates to a growth of 11.1 points. Note that, with Standard Scores, any change over 4.5 points is considered “large.”

• Spelling: from the 7th to the 13th Percentile – a 6-point gain. In terms of Standard Scores, this equates to a growth of 4.4 points. Note that, with Standard Scores, any change between 3.0 and 4.5 points is considered “medium.”

• Paragraph Reading Accuracy: from the 1st to the 5th Percentile – a 4-point gain. In terms of Standard Scores, this equates to a growth of 9.4 points. Note that, with Standard Scores, any change over 4.5 points is considered “large.”