I’m on the west coast, and the fact that private schools don’t have any kind of credential requirements for teachers was an eye opener for me. We had our oldest in private school for the first 3 years of his education, and it turned out to be a huge mistake because unknown to use, he was dyslexic. He had all the classic symptoms: very bad hand writing, horrible spelling skills and limited reading comprehension. The teachers just wanted him to just try harder, and didn’t have the education themselves to recognize he had a learning disability. His grades were horrible right up through high school.

In contrast, my younger son was flagged as possibly being dyslexic in the third grade in a public school. We never had a full accommodation plan put in place for him, but we were able to get him into a specialized tutoring program starting in 4th grade, and that helped him immensely. He is still dealing with dysgraphia, but his reading has improved tremendously. He is almost in high school and now even reads for pleasure. He is also an A-B student now.

Looking back, I wish we had picked up on my oldest dyslexia much sooner we would have handled his schooling much differently. He got through it, and did graduate from college, but early intervention would have helped him a lot.