Reading is a critical life-skill and ALL children deserve the right to read. 

Unfortunately, The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals just eroded educational standards and created a new, lower, legal precedent regarding reading proficiency and what constitutes adequate progress. Your help is needed NOW to support a rehearing. This alarming ruling must be corrected given that it now impacts hundreds of thousands of kids.

MLK is a 12 year old boy with dyslexia and ADHD who was not provided with an adequate education in his public school. After 4 years of intervention and special education services, he was still reading at a kindergarten level. MLK is a boy of average intelligence. He has highly engaged parents, and has no language barriers to overcome. There is no reason reading failure should be an acceptable outcome when more than 95% of all children are capable of learning to read.

The parent's of MLK worked diligently with the school district to provide the interventions he needed. After following the proper due process steps, The Minnetonka School District was court ordered to provide a Free and Appropriate Public Education(FAPE) that included Structured Literacy intervention  tailored to his learning needs. During the three years the court order was in place, MLK progressed from a kindergarten level non-reader, to a 6th grader reading at grade level. The proper intervention yielded the expected reading improvement.

The Minnetonka School District appealed the Administrative Law Judges’ ruling to the Federal District court where once again, MLK prevailed. The District then appealed to the The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals and a 3-judge panel overturned, we believe in an egregious error. The Eighth Circuit ruling denies the right to an effective education. It signals to school districts that 4 years of ineffective reading instruction, yielding no progress, is considered adequate. 

This Eighth Circuit decision will harm all children with special education needs. It is a set back for children with dyslexia, as well as approximately 60% of our children who are failing to read due to ineffective instruction. 

Dyslexia Advocates, in partnership with the family of MLK has petitioned for a rehearing by the full Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. This is called a "Petition for Rehearing en Banc." The brief is attached here along with historical documents regarding the case. https://dyslexiaadvocates.org/news

Sign this petition If you believe that:

1. All Children should be provided with evidence-based, structure literacy instruction until they demonstrate proficient reading ability.
2. All children with a disability deserve a FAPE that includes meaningful progress toward ambitious goals with data driven progress-monitoring.
3. if you believe the status quo can not stand, join us and sign this petition.

If you have the capacity to assist with legal fees or are part of an education advocacy organization, please contact us and donate to Dyslexia Advocates, a non-profit in MN that is financially supporting this case. We need all hands on deck to fight this decision so please share widely. https://dyslexiaadvocates.org/donate