Cathy Hasprunar is a mother of twins with dyslexia, a speech language pathologist, and a JerseyCAN fellow.  After facing numerous roadblocks navigating Ringwood Public Schools, Cathy is working to advocate for better literacy outcomes for all children so that they can receive the education that they deserve, and schools can be held accountable. 

Research tells us that 95% of children have the capability to read on grade level but only 38% of fourth and eighth graders in New Jersey score at or above proficient on a nationally administered reading assessment.  The good news is that as parents we have the ability to move the system by demanding evidence-based instruction for our children and to make sure that our children are being screened for reading disabilities; instructional techniques that benefit struggling readers benefit ALL readers.  

The National Council on Teacher Quality has reported that colleges in New Jersey do not prepare future teachers with evidence based instructional techniques.  Sixty percent of children need explicit, systematic instruction in order to learn how to read, however, districts across the state use methods to teach children that have been discredited and these techniques can cause an otherwise typically developing brain to mimic a dyslexic brain.  Many districts across the state continue to use ineffective curriculum like The Readers and Writers Workshop instead of ones that are backed by the research.  Teachers who are given poor curriculum along with an inadequate education are set up for failure, leaving students casualties of a problem that they have no control over.  My breaking point was when I approached the principal desperate for answers as to why my daughter wasn’t reading; she was guessing at words, and not truly reading.  He explained that she needed to practice cause and effect and identify character traits.  It made no sense; how could she possibly succeed in those skills if she couldn’t read the words on the page?

I decided to take my daughters’ education in my own hands and stop being complacent.  I now know that the early questions I had about my daughters were actually “red flags.” Catastrophically, this realization came too late.  Early intervention could change a child’s academic trajectory; it takes four times as many resources to remediate reading in fourth grade as it does in first grade.  Devastatingly, children who are behind their peers in reading by the end of first grade have a high likelihood of never catching up, but children who are lucky enough to receive effective intervention in kindergarten and first grade have positive outcomes.  

My children, like many others, were victims of a “wait to fail” model.  The age at which they were identified was already past the point in which they would receive maximal benefit from intervention.  What began as a deficit in learning how sounds work quickly snowballed and they began to struggle in areas such as vocabulary, comprehension, and world knowledge.  They began to struggle in all classes.  My children continued to have limited experiences with grade level texts and fell even further behind.  As they fell further behind, they continued to have negative experiences with reading, thereby perpetuating the cycle.  

There is more research on reading disabilities than any other learning disability, but when schools don’t follow the science, children like mine who are diagnosed with dyslexia suffer the most when they receive late diagnoses.  My daughters did not receive the evidence based intervention they desperately needed in the early years because of the district’s failure to follow the science as well as my inexperience.  Students with dyslexia have the capability to read on grade level, but only if they receive early evidence based instruction.  Alternatively, students who receive inadequate instruction continue to struggle to read and may never read proficiently.  Many of these students develop anxiety and depression as the result of embarrassment when they cannot read in class.  

Call to Action:  If you are concerned about your child, act NOW

• In August 2024, Governor Murphy signed a bill mandating that districts perform literacy screenings for students k-3 twice a year, if you haven’t seen the results of your child’s screening, ask to see a copy
• The bill also formed a working group on student literacy, ensure your district is following the recommendations https://jerseycan.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2025/04/Annotated-Summary-of-Recommendations-from-the-NJ-Working-Group-on-Literacy-2025.pdf 
• If the results of a screening show concerns in any area, your child should receive intervention immediately
• Consider referring your child to the child study team, the district cannot deny you a meeting to discuss the referral and waiting to see how a child responds to intervention is not a reason to delay a referral
• If your child is in 4^th grade or older and you have concerns, request a screening or refer to the child study team, particularly if your child is guessing at words, or is having trouble comprehending grade level work
• Visit the International Dyslexia Association’s page for more information on reading instruction and dyslexia https://dyslexiaida.org/

It has become clear that we can no longer leave this up to the schools.  Ineffective reading instruction is a crisis in New Jersey and is the result of a systemic problem, but a unique crisis where we have the tools to remediate the problem.  Parents need to take an active role to ensure that their district has an effective means of identifying struggling readers and is providing evidence based instruction.  My story is not unique, it is a story that has continued to repeat itself in districts across the state for the last twenty years.  Instead of trusting that your district is aware of these tools, educate yourself as a parent in order to ensure that your child has the best outcomes.  Demand that your district is compliant with the new law that will take effect in September 2025, and they are following the recommendations made by the working group on student literacy.