> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://on.dystinct.org/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Issue 32: Decoding the Evaluation: Understanding the Path to Dyslexia Identification | Dr Michelle S. Storie and Dr Sheila Clonan - URL: https://on.dystinct.org/decoding-the-evaluation-understanding-the-path-to-dyslexia-identification-dr-michelle-s-storie-and-dr-sheila-clonan/ - Published: 2026-10-29T16:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-30T12:53:56.000Z - Description: Dr Michelle S. Storie and Dr Sheila Clonan explain how reading assessments can uncover difficulties masked by a child’s strengths, clarify the path to dyslexia identification, and help families and educators turn findings into targeted support. - Author: Dr Sheila Clonan - Tags: #table-of-content, Evidence Matters, #issue 00032 👉 This article was published in [Dystinct Magazine Issue 32 October 2026](https://on.dystinct.org/issue-32-october-2026/). Dr Michelle S. Storie is an Associate Professor and Coordinator, SUNY Oswego School Psychology Program and Co-Author of Assessing Dyslexia in Schools **\[*[**educationalsolutionscny.com*](https://www.educationalsolutionscny.com/?ref=on.dystinct.org)**\]* Dr Sheila Clonan is a Licensed Psychologist, Educational Solutions CNY, and Co-Author of Assessing Dyslexia in Schools **\[*[**educationalsolutionscny.com*](https://www.educationalsolutionscny.com/?ref=on.dystinct.org)**\]* ![Decoding the Evaluation: Understanding the Path to Dyslexia Identification - By Dr Michelle S. Storie (Associate Professor and Coordinator, SUNY Oswego School Psychology Program, Co-Author of Assessing Dyslexia in Schools) and Dr Sheila Clonan (Licensed Psychologist, Educational Solutions CNY, and Co-Author of Assessing Dyslexia in Schools)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2e/a5/2ea50a0c-f4a8-4de6-9555-dcc016acb40e/content/images/2026/10/Decoding-the-Evaluation-Michelle-and-Sheila-Clonan-DYSTINCT-Magazine.jpg) Decoding the Evaluation: Understanding the Path to Dyslexia Identification Aurelia breezed through her school's second-grade fall reading screener. No flags, no follow-up letters home, nothing to worry about. But by winter of that year, she was crying at homework time, telling her parents she was "just bad at reading." They studied spelling words each night, and she would do okay on the spelling test at week's end, but her parents noticed she misspelled even simple words in her writing. When they read with her, they noticed that she was guessing at words instead of reading them. Aurelia's father was afraid she'd struggle like he did all the way through school, always in the lowest reading group. > How could a test say everything was fine when it wasn't? ❣️ Love what we do at dystinct.org? [**Subscribe here!*](https://on.dystinct.org/#/portal/signup/) The answer isn't that the screening was wrong. It just wasn't designed to answer Aurelia's parents' question: "Why is my child struggling in reading?" A screening tool works something like a thermometer, checking one or two vital signs. If a child's temperature is normal but the real problem is his heart rate, the thermometer isn't lying; it's just not measuring what's actually wrong. Many reading screeners work the same way. They might check fluency or a narrow picture of phonics skills, but miss a weakness in an area they were never built to catch. That's because screening tools are built to flag risk quickly and efficiently across an entire classroom in a matter of minutes. > Oftentimes, it feels like a child needs to ‘fail enough’ before a comprehensive evaluation is initiated, often delaying important support. A comprehensive evaluation is built to explain why a child is struggling, in enough detail to guide what happens next. Confusing the two, or expecting one to do the job of the other, is where so much of the frustration around dyslexia identification begins. Unfortunately, oftentimes it feels like a child needs to "fail enough" before a comprehensive evaluation is initiated, often delaying important support. ## Navigating the Assessment Landscape: Screeners, Diagnostics, and Progress Monitoring ## Navigating the Assessment Landscape: Screeners, Diagnostics, and Progress Monitoring School settings often use three types of measures, each providing different information. Keep in mind that assessment processes, terminology, and pathways to dyslexia identification can vary between countries and education systems; the details below best reflect common practice in the United States. Benchmark assessments are frequently referred to as screeners, and these are given to all students three times per year throughout the United States. These measures are typically considered curriculum-based measures, as they are short to administer and related to curricular goals. Examples of benchmark assessments include DIBELS, Acadience, Aimsweb, MAP, and STAR. Benchmarks or screeners compare performance to grade-level expectations and can help determine if a student is on track to meet grade-level goals. However, keep in mind that benchmarks or screeners do not tell you everything that you need to know related to reading performance, nor are they intended to. In some screeners, composite scores consist of measures such as vocabulary, reading comprehension, and decoding. For students with dyslexia, who may excel in vocabulary and language-based tasks, these students may perform extremely well on the vocabulary portions, compensate and achieve average scores on the reading comprehension section, and struggle with the decoding portion. In such cases, looking carefully at the patterns of performance on the different subtests can provide critical information related to strengths and weaknesses. If a student does not meet grade-level standards and is flagged as "at-risk," what should happen next? Again, benchmarks or screeners are only a temperature gauge, telling us that something may not be functioning properly and needs further examination. To identify whether this is the case and to determine where instructional methods can be beneficial, criterion-referenced measures should then be administered. A criterion-referenced measure does not compare performance to grade-level standards; instead, it examines what a student can or can't do with regard to a specific skill. For example, a phonics inventory will delineate what phonic patterns are established and which still need to be developed. A spelling inventory can help determine encoding patterns of a student. Once we have gathered information related to the decoding and encoding skills of the student, we can then ideally group them with other students with comparable abilities for intervention. > Benchmarks or screeners are only a temperature gauge, telling us that something may not be functioning properly and needs further examination. What is used to determine if a student is making progress towards reading goals? Typically, that is where curriculum-based measures provide the most useful information, with their benefit being their brief administration, multiple probes so that practice effects don't occur, and ability to track progress over time. ![MTTS Decision Making Flow Chart [Doreen Mazzye Literacy Consulting, 2024]](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2e/a5/2ea50a0c-f4a8-4de6-9555-dcc016acb40e/content/images/2026/10/MTSS-Decision-Making-Flow-Chart.png) MTTS Decision Making Flow Chart \[Doreen Mazzye Literacy Consulting, 2024\] When should you, as a parent or educator, become concerned? If progress doesn't appear to be occurring despite the implementation of effective and evidence-based instruction and/or intervention, you may want to consider a referral for a comprehensive psychoeducational assessment to determine whether the child may have dyslexia. ## ****Demystifying the** Comprehensive Dyslexia Assessment: Looking Beyond the Surface ## **Demystifying the** Comprehensive Dyslexia Assessment: Looking Beyond the Surface A comprehensive psychoeducational assessment is typically made up of standardized tests, which are normed on populations of individuals of the same age or grade. These assessments typically involve an individualized multi-hour session where cognitive abilities and reading are evaluated. Scores obtained on standardized testing will let you know where the child is falling compared to others. Using these data, along with a record review, analysis of interventions received, and interviews with educators and parents, a diagnosis of dyslexia may be rendered. A comprehensive evaluation assesses several key skills that contribute to efficient and effective reading. An important framework for helping us to understand the reading process is the Simple View of Reading (Gough & Tunmer, 1986), which describes reading comprehension as the product of decoding and language comprehension. A child can have rich vocabulary and strong listening comprehension but stumble over the words if decoding is weak. Alternatively, a child with weak language skills and strong decoding skills might sound out every word accurately and still not understand what they just read if their vocabulary, background knowledge, or grasp of sentence structure isn't strong enough to support comprehension. Breaking the simple view of reading (decoding x language comprehension = reading comprehension) down even further helps us to see what skills are important to assess. On the decoding side, a few skills build on each other in sequence. Can the child hear and play with the sounds inside words, like noticing that "cat" and "hat" rhyme, or that removing the first sound from "stop" leaves "top"? That's phonological awareness, and it's the foundation that everything else is built on. From there, can the child use letter-sound knowledge to sound out unfamiliar words? That's decoding. And over time, do familiar words start to be recognized instantly, without needing to be sounded out at all? That's orthographic mapping, and it's what eventually makes reading feel automatic instead of effortful. ![The Simple View of Reading (Gough & Turner, 1986)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2e/a5/2ea50a0c-f4a8-4de6-9555-dcc016acb40e/content/images/2026/10/The-Simple-View-Of-Reading.png) The Simple View of Reading (Gough & Turner, 1986) Fluency is the glue that holds all of the skills together. A child who reads accurately but painfully slowly, or without any natural expression, is often still spending too much energy on word recognition to have much left over for understanding what the words mean. On the language comprehension side, it is important that a comprehensive evaluation assess vocabulary, background knowledge, and how well a child understands the structure of sentences and stories, since these are the skills we use to make sense of the words once we've decoded them. > Fluency is the glue that holds all of the skills together. Other skills may also be important to assess. Rapid naming, how quickly a child can name familiar things like colors, objects, or letters, can give insight into how efficiently the brain retrieves information. Slow rapid naming is common in dyslexia even when other skills look fine. Spelling and written expression matter too, since writing draws on many of the same underlying skills as reading, and difficulties there sometimes show up before or more clearly than they do in reading itself. ## From Data to Action: Interpreting Results and Building on Strengths ## From Data to Action: Interpreting Results and Building on Strengths It is important to recognize that testing results capture a child's performance on a particular day at a particular time. There are many factors that can impact student performance, which is why decisions should not be based on a singular data point, and convergence of data should be sought across the student's record review, interviews, and testing measures. One low score is not necessarily automatically meaningful; we are looking for patterns of performance across tests or a student's academic history. A determination of whether or not a student has dyslexia should be driven by all of the assessment information gathered, including how the student has responded to instruction and intervention. Many people think the purpose of a comprehensive psychoeducational assessment is to determine the presence of dyslexia, but we feel that the purpose of testing is to identify the student's reading strengths and weaknesses so that appropriate instructional recommendations can be implemented. Confirming the presence of dyslexia may help ensure that the student receives structured literacy or explicit phonics instruction. This is especially true for students who may be missed by traditional benchmark or screening measures when they have learned compensatory strategies. It is also imperative that information be presented in a strengths-based manner, rather than solely focusing on the student's area(s) of weakness. ## ****Aurelia’s Journey:** A Case Study in Advocacy and Intervention ## **Aurelia’s Journey:** A Case Study in Advocacy and Intervention Aurelia's parents followed their instincts and requested a meeting with the school team to review her reading screenings. A closer examination showed that, while Aurelia’s composite scores were typically average overall, she demonstrated significant variability in the specific skills measured by the screeners. A diagnostic assessment revealed significant gaps in her phonemic awareness, decoding and encoding skills. Aurelia began receiving targeted intervention, but progress monitoring data revealed minimal growth after four months, and a comprehensive dyslexia evaluation was initiated. They found that although Aurelia's verbal intelligence was quite high and her reading comprehension was average, her phonological awareness, decoding, and fluency skills were all below average. Applying the Simple View of Reading conceptualization introduced above, the school team recognized that Aurelia was compensating with her strong language skills for her weaknesses with word reading. ## Empowering Parents and Educators: Practical Next Steps ## Empowering Parents and Educators: Practical Next Steps Does this case sound familiar? If so, here are some steps you can take to ensure the proper supports get implemented: - Examine your child's screening data. Do scores look consistent? Is there variability? If yes, what are the strengths? Weaknesses? Is comprehension stronger than decoding? - Ask for progress reports, assessment results, etc. Save them and review your child's progress periodically. - If your child is getting extra help in reading, find out more about the intervention program being used, including whether it's structured literacy or explicit, systematic phonics instruction, as well as how often and in what size group. - Talk to your child's teacher/s. What do they see in the classroom? Do they notice concerns with any of the underlying reading skills discussed above? - Read with your child. Do they have difficulty decoding unknown words? Reading fluently? Recalling what they've read? - Examine your child's writing samples. How is their letter formation? Spelling? - If progress isn't happening despite intervention, or your concerns aren't being addressed, request a referral for a comprehensive psychoeducational evaluation. ## Additional Resources ## Additional Resources - The International Dyslexia Association (IDA) offers fact sheets, program guidance, and certification standards \[[dyslexiaida.org](https://dyslexiaida.org/?ref=on.dystinct.org)\] - The Reading League has free resources on their website and offers professional development to schools \[[thereadingleague.org](https://www.thereadingleague.org/?ref=on.dystinct.org)\] - Check out our book on dyslexia assessment in schools, an excellent resource for educators and parents, which goes more in-depth into each of these topics. ## References ## References - Gough, P. B., & Tunmer, W. E. (1986). Decoding, reading, and reading disability. Remedial and Special Education, 7(1), 6-10. ## Michelle S. Storie, Ph.D ### Associate Professor and Coordinator, SUNY Oswego School Psychology Program, Co-Author of Assessing Dyslexia in Schools | [educationalsolutionscny.com](https://www.educationalsolutionscny.com/?ref=on.dystinct.org) | [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/educationalsolutionscny) | [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/educational-solutions-cny?ref=on.dystinct.org) ## Michelle S. Storie, Ph.D ![Dr Michelle S. Storie (Associate Professor and Coordinator, SUNY Oswego School Psychology Program, Co-Author of Assessing Dyslexia in Schools)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2e/a5/2ea50a0c-f4a8-4de6-9555-dcc016acb40e/content/images/2026/10/Michelle-S-Storie-Educational-Solutions-CNY.jpg) Dr Michelle S. Storie (Associate Professor and Coordinator, SUNY Oswego School Psychology Program, Co-Author of Assessing Dyslexia in Schools) Michelle S. Storie, Ph.D, is a licensed psychologist, certified school psychologist, and Associate Professor at SUNY Oswego, where she coordinates the School Psychology Program. Since 2000, she has also directed the Syracuse University Psychoeducational Teaching Laboratory. Dr Storie has 18 years of practice as a school psychologist across diverse school districts. A founding board member of The Reading League, she serves on the Professional Advisory Board for the Learning Disabilities Association of America and the National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilities. In her private practice, she specializes in assessing dyslexia, anxiety, and ADHD in youth and college students. Dr Storie provides professional development on the Science of Reading and recently co-authored Assessing Dyslexia in the Schools: Empowering Practitioners through Reading Science. Her research focuses on dyslexia screening, evidence-based reading assessments and interventions, educator knowledge, and the impact of professional development on student outcomes. ## Sheila Clonan, Ph.D ### Associate Professor and Coordinator, SUNY Oswego School Psychology Program, Co-Author of Assessing Dyslexia in Schools | [educationalsolutionscny.com](https://www.educationalsolutionscny.com/?ref=on.dystinct.org) | [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/educationalsolutionscny) | [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/educational-solutions-cny?ref=on.dystinct.org) ## Sheila Clonan, Ph.D ![Dr Sheila Clonan (Licensed Psychologist, Educational Solutions CNY, and Co-Author of Assessing Dyslexia in Schools)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2e/a5/2ea50a0c-f4a8-4de6-9555-dcc016acb40e/content/images/2026/10/Sheila-Clonan-Educational-Solutions-CNY.jpg) Dr Sheila Clonan (Licensed Psychologist, Educational Solutions CNY, and Co-Author of Assessing Dyslexia in Schools) Sheila Clonan, Ph.D, is a New York State Licensed Psychologist and permanently certified school psychologist in private practice, specializing in the assessment of students with dyslexia, ADHD, and other disabilities. With over two decades of experience in public school and university settings, she served early in her career as project director of a large, multi-site reading research project investigating the impact of systematic reading instruction on brain function and student outcomes, an experience that ignited her passion to ensure that all struggling readers receive effective identification and instruction. Dr Clonan collaborates with school districts, educators, families, and psychologists through professional development, webinars, and mentoring. She is a founding board member of The Reading League, teaches courses on understanding and assessing dyslexia for their Virtual Professional Learning academy, and has published more than a dozen research articles and book chapters. She co-authored Assessing Dyslexia in Schools (Guilford Press) with Dr Michelle Storie. ## Assessing Dyslexia in Schools ### Empowering Practitioners through Reading Science ## Assessing Dyslexia in Schools SPONSORED [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2e/a5/2ea50a0c-f4a8-4de6-9555-dcc016acb40e/content/images/2026/10/Assessing-Dyslexia-in-Schools-Book-Cover.jpg)](https://www.guilford.com/books/Assessing-Dyslexia-in-Schools/Clonan-Storie/9781462562961?ref=on.dystinct.org) **This book bridges a critical gap between reading research and school-based practice, providing practitioners and students with up-to-date tools to understand, identify, and intervene with students with dyslexia. Grounded in the science of reading, the book addresses common misconceptions and outdated practices that prevent struggling readers with dyslexia from getting effective support, and provides clear, evidence-based alternatives. Assessment protocols incorporating widely used measures are described, as are interpretation frameworks - including the simple view of reading - and intervention planning strategies. The book addresses the critical distinction between identification of dyslexia and eligibility for special education services.* [BUY on guilford.com ](https://www.guilford.com/books/Assessing-Dyslexia-in-Schools/Clonan-Storie/9781462562961?ref=on.dystinct.org) ## Buy Printed Copies of Dystinct Magazine ## Buy Printed Copies on Amazon ### **Select the Amazon Store based on your region** [ Buy on Amazon.com (USA) ](https://link.amazon/B06Fw1fmQ?ref=on.dystinct.org) [ Buy on Amazon.com.au (AU) ](https://link.amazon/B01znxuw6?ref=on.dystinct.org) [ Buy on Amazon.co.uk (UK) ](https://link.amazon/B00QuC4nA?ref=on.dystinct.org) [ Buy on Amazon.ca (Canada) ](https://link.amazon/B066If2Tg?ref=on.dystinct.org) ****\#** ***AffiliateLinks:** *As an Amazon Associate, Dystinct earns a commission from qualifying purchases made by readers on the affiliate links we share. The product details such as product image, description, price, stock, etc are accurate as of the time of publication of this article.* ## Extracts from Dystinct Magazine ## Extracts from Dystinct Magazine ![Decoding the Evaluation: Understanding the Path to Dyslexia Identification - By Dr Michelle S. Storie and Dr Sheila Clonan from Educational Solutions CNY for Dystinct Magazine](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2e/a5/2ea50a0c-f4a8-4de6-9555-dcc016acb40e/content/images/2026/10/Decoding-the-Evaluation-Michelle-and-Sheila-Clonan-Educational-Solutions-CNY-for-DYSTINCT-Magazine-2026.png) Decoding the Evaluation: Understanding the Path to Dyslexia Identification - By Dr Michelle S. Storie and Dr Sheila Clonan from Educational Solutions CNY ## Sign up for DYSTINCT Nurturing Dystinct Minds #Dyslexia #Dyscalculia #Dysgraphia #Dyspraxia Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. ❣️ Love what we do at dystinct.org? 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