Effective: December 21, 2011
Latest Legislation: House Bill 157 - 129th General Assembly
(A) The governing board of any educational service center may engage the services of a dyslexia specialist to provide training for teachers of grades kindergarten to four on the indicators of dyslexia and the types of instruction that children with dyslexia need to learn, read, write, and spell. If a service center provides this training, it shall make the training available to local school districts within the service center's territory and to other school districts, community schools, and STEM schools that have contracted for the training from the service center under section 3313.843, 3313.844, 3313.845, or 3326.45 of the Revised Code.
If a governing board of any educational service center does not provide the training, a group of local school districts within the service center's territory may engage the services of a dyslexia specialist to provide training for teachers independently.
A school district or school may require the training authorized under this section for its teachers as part of the district's or school's regular in-service training programs.
(B) As used in this section:
(1) "Dyslexia" means a specific learning disorder that is neurological in origin and that is characterized by unexpected difficulties with accurate or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities not consistent with the person's intelligence, motivation, and sensory capabilities, which difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language.
(2) "Dyslexia specialist" means a person who is trained and certified in a multisensory structured language program that meets the level II specialist criteria set by the international dyslexia association's knowledge and practice standards or standards from any other nationally recognized organization that specializes in issues surrounding dyslexia, or any subsequently adopted standards.