Retire Extra Time
It’s time to retire “Extra time” as an accommodation for dyslexia.
Mike Matvy 4-23–22
Looking back at my life since the first grade and connecting the dots has given me an understanding of what my dyslexia is, what it is not, and what we can do for today’s students. Here is my perspective on extra time for slow and labored visual reading and spelling.
Extra time has its place as an accommodation for some kinds of disabilities. However, it’s time to retire “extra time” as an accommodation for dyslexia(1). It causes harm. It keeps students trapped using methods designed for students who don’t have dyslexia, and it keeps them from using effective accommodations that would let them read and write fluently like their peers(2)(3).
Extra time for dyslexia was an appropriate accommodation when it was the only accommodation available. It was the only way to let students use print in the classroom, to give them a chance to succeed, to say to them, “You can read, and you are not stupid.” But, now it’s outdated and its use is harming students. With current technology students can read by listening at 250 to 350+ words per minute with excellent comprehension and can write by speaking as fast as they can speak. Many of us use this technology daily. For example, when you pop your phone out to send a text message and dictate instead of type, you’re writing by speaking. When you read an audible book in your car, instead of reading the print version of that book, you’re reading by listening. These accommodations fit the way students with dyslexia learn. When students stay caught up minute by minute in the classroom using these accommodations, they excel academically. We won’t have to keep reminding them that they’re smart; they’ll know.
So, why do we keep using extra time as an accommodation for dyslexia instead of effective accommodations? We keep using it because we’ve always used it. We keep using it because if we stop using it, we will have to face the truth that “students with dyslexia will never learn to read like their peers.” We will have to accept that our reading programs, while excellent and needed to enable students to be the best they can be at pronouncing and spelling words, will not save them from dyslexia and a life with dyslexia.
While well intentioned, asking students to function in a classroom without fluent reading and spelling skills causes serious damage because of the unintended consequences — harming the growth of their intellect, vocabulary, general knowledge, self-confidence, and emotional and social development. And, it gives the false belief that someday, something is going to click and our students with dyslexia will read like their peers. Or, it gives the false belief that while they will not be fluent readers, by using extra time, they will be able to keep up and compete with their peers without a disadvantage.
What are the costs of continuing to expect students to keep up with their classes using extra time and slow and labored reading and spelling?
— Students miss out on class activities.
If your child is taking extra time to read a paragraph that’s to be followed by a class discussion, they will be reading the paragraph while the discussion has started. Instead, they could be completing all reading and writing tasks in the same length of time as their classmates, and start that discussion with everyone else.
— Students miss out on the opportunity to read a passage, pause and ponder its meaning.
There’s little time, energy, or mental capacity for thinking about the passage when your child’s attention is almost solely on sounding out words and figuring out why a sentence doesn’t make sense when a word has been mispronounced. All they may be able to hope for is to comprehend most of the passage, but not have time for anything else.
— Students miss out on language experiences and incidental learning that comes from reading.
Your child will not experience the amount of written language that is available to their peers, and they will miss out on many stories that could be speaking to them. They will miss out on hearing stories as the authors intended them to be heard, fluently.
— Students miss out on reading with joy.
Instead of reading for enjoyment, your child will go through the spirit-killing drudgery that comes with sounding out words one after another in an attempt to get meaning, in an attempt to understand what is being said. They never get to the joy of reading. If they had a hearing problem, you would want them to have hearing aids, so they wouldn’t, be missing out. If they had a vision problem, you would want them to have glasses, so they could enjoy seeing what others see.
— Students miss out on the joy of expressing themselves
Your child will miss out on feeling the pleasure that comes from fluent writing, discovering a way of saying something that comes from their heart, quietly writing something that is moving, and getting a warm feeling that perhaps their words will speak to someone else in the same way, instead of feeling cut off from a part of their soul that would love to speak, cut off from sharing their ideas and themselves with others.
— Students miss out on the learning that comes from reading and writing fluently.
The idea of extra time assumes that your student will not read and write as many words in the same period of time as their peers. And, that is obvious. The result is fewer words read in an hour, in a day, fewer sentences written in a day, in a semester, fewer, if any, robust sentences that reflect their good language, and more sentences written that appear to be coming from a child with low ability. Your child will experience lost opportunities on a daily basis for learning from reading and learning to communicate through writing. It’s no wonder that students with dyslexia start school with high abilities but experience declines in IQ, vocabulary, and background knowledge.
— Students develop self-image based upon bad data that screams “You are inadequate.”
When your child spends almost 100% of their time struggling to complete reading and writing tasks and recognizes that they are among the worst in the classroom at these tasks, they will draw conclusions about themselves, who they are, what their worth is. They won’t realize that their conclusions are based on our placing them in an impossible situation that keeps them from using their talents and abilities and squanders their potential. They fail to recognize their extraordinary reading and writing talents. Its no wonder; why would they think that their ability to tell stories around the dinner table would be of any value when no one shows them that those stories could immediately go into print, just by speaking, and be tomorrow’s writing assignment completed. How could they realize that they have the most important reading skills of all, the abilities to recognize spoken words, understand the meaning of those words, know how those words go together to make new meanings, and comprehend complex sentences, and passages, when we will not let them get past the barrier of sounding out words? Their image of self is based on bad data. They don’t get to see who they really are.
— Students experience emotional damage and trauma because of failures over trying to complete reading and writing tasks in the classroom.
Using extra time perpetuates a system that forces students to function in an unnatural way and fail at tasks that are easy for non-dyslexic students. If your child has dyslexia , they are not designed for automatic, fluent visual reading of words; they are not designed for memorizing the spelling of words. Placing your child in an environment that requires these two skills to fully participate means your child will, at best, always be behind, trying to keep their head above water, and most likely feel shame, embarrassment, despair, and anger toward themselves. Every reading and writing task will be an opportunity for failure, under performance, and embarrassing mistakes. Your child will miss out on being able to relax and enjoy reading, to relax answering questions in the knowledge that they will simply write their answers, turn in their work, and go on to the next class activity. Instead they will live with constant threats looming. You can give them encouragement and tell them how capable they are. However, what are they going to believe your words or what they experience daily? Placing students in this environment day after day, month after month, year after year, takes an emotional toll — take it from me, a toll that can last a lifetime.
Summary
We can’t save our students from dyslexia, but we can save them from letting it limit who they are and who they can become. We can do this by showing them what dyslexia is and what dyslexia is not, and how it only affects two of their abilities: pronouncing words and spelling words. When those two weaknesses are accommodated for by using reading by listening and writing by speaking, our students will not experience the typical secondary consequences of dyslexia, writing problems, reading problems, and lost learning opportunities. The pain, suffering, and losses caused by extra time and inadequate methods can be eliminated. They will not need extra time because they will complete reading and writing activities in the same length of time as their peers and stay caught up minute by minute with class lessons. They will develop their inherent talents for reading and writing along with their classmates and have the life-changing opportunity to achieve academic excellence.
To accompany this blog post, we have a Facebook post for talking about dyslexia, please join in the conversation at https://www.facebook.com/AudioExamCreator/photos/a.306383879528247/2207990846034198/
Notes
(1) There may be two situations where a student with dyslexia continues to use extra time. One is where a student with dyslexia has another disability where extra time is needed as an accommodation. However, if the student’s only disability is dyslexia, extra time is seldom, if ever, needed when they can read by listening at 250 to 350+ words per minute and write as fast as they can speak. The other situation is where a student has spent years using their slow and labored reading and extra time, and they are committed to staying with that slow way of coping with reading demands.
(2) The two harmful effects of dyslexia, the inability to pronounce words automatically and spell words, are solvable problems using assistive technology. And when these problems are solved early, the secondary consequences of dyslexia, or downstream effects, never appear. Students become like everyone else, fluent readers benefiting from regular classroom instruction on reading, writing, language arts, social studies, science, math, etc.
(3) While our reading programs are excellent at teaching students to sound out words and become the best readers they can be, they cannot teach students to be fluent readers. Reading by listening solves that problem and has students with dyslexia reading fluently in minutes.
