Family urges Legislature to preserve detailed reading, dyslexia data in Nebraska schools

LINCOLN — A legislative bill seeking to “clean up” and “simplify” reports in the Nebraska Department of Education received pushback to not weaken reporting on dyslexia and reading.

Legislative Bill 671, by State Sen. Dave Murman of Glenvil on behalf of the Education Department, intends to streamline and consolidate existing reports on option enrollment (to collect both accepted and denied applications) and reading deficiencies, including dyslexia (to remove some specific data requirements).

The bill also would eliminate an intended “high-need” retention grant of $5,000 for teachers who become qualified to teach dual credit K-12 courses.

Brian Halstead, deputy commissioner for the Education Department, described LB 671 as the usual “clean up” or “technical amendment” bill repealing outdated laws.

Needed student support

However, Heather Schmidt of Lincoln, and her daughter Norah, a high school senior, urged the Legislature to not eliminate specific, detailed information in law related to reading and dyslexia. 

That first report came last fall. Specific district-by-district information had to be obtained through a public records request by former State Sen. Lou Ann Linehan of the Elkhorn area and the Nebraska Examiner.

Norah, who has dyslexia, said the information could help students get help earlier. 

“I feel like every student should be tested for the opportunity to get the help that they need, because I didn’t have that,” Norah said. “We had to try and go outside of school to get the help, and they wouldn’t help me because it’s a ‘school problem,’ but the schools wouldn’t help me for it either.”

In the fifth grade, Norah was at a third-grade reading level, she told the Education Committee, which Murman chairs, and some teachers didn’t think she was “smart enough” or “strong enough.”

Norah excelled after she got the help she needed and today loves to read as often as possible. Her high school graduation is less than 50 school days away, and this fall she will begin pursuing a nursing degree through the Bryan College of Health Sciences.

“I feel like it’s something that needs to happen to help students grow and be stronger and more self-confident so they don’t feel like they’re stupid or have their mental health be hurt,” she said.

Literacy in ‘free fall’

Linehan, who also has dyslexia, passed the reporting requirement in 2023 to ensure school districts were properly screening students for reading deficiencies, including dyslexia, in line with a reading testing requirement law that Linehan had earlier passed in 2018, her second year as a senator.

Heather Schmidt said that was roughly the same time her family got involved in advocating for dyslexia awareness and action at the Legislature.

“Dyslexia was a word not spoken in Nebraska at that time, and over the years since then, it’s become a little bit better, at least now to talk about it,” Schmidt said.

Schmidt said the department bill feels like the state is “walking further away from the detailed requirements that we clearly need.” She noted the Education Department had also suggested ways to improve data collection, which officials said in September was needed.

“We are in a free fall in literacy achievement in Nebraska,” Heather Schmidt testified, pointing to national test scores in comparison.

Halstead told the family after the hearing that the department doesn’t intend to “undermine” the requirements.

“We’re just trying to simplify the reporting,” Halstead told lawmakers. “It is not the intent of the department to change anything about what the Legislature wanted done, its intent or purposes. It’s merely harmonizing or clarifying language.”

The bill would allow the state education commissioner to require any additional information to be reported each year related to reading deficiencies, which had been noted last fall as a challenge to data collection, let alone the report coming in the first year. However, specific data that Linehan had worked to require reporting on would be removed.

Schmidt said not every student will have a “pit bull” for a mom. Without detailed information, she asked how officials would know what does or doesn’t work or what resources are needed.

Option enrollment and ‘dual credit’

Similarly, the bill addresses a key change requested by committee members on option enrollment — the program allowing families to apply to move children between public schools, or districts. While districts must report how many students are denied option enrollment, the law doesn’t yet explicitly require how many applications were accepted. LB 671 would fix that.

While the Nebraska State Education Association did not testify at the hearing, President Tim Royers said the language to remove “dual credit” as a high-need retention grant possibility remains in progress, since no separate teaching endorsement exists for teachers handling “dual credit” classes, unlike other areas of high need under the program, including special education, math, science and technology.

Linehan’s intent in 2023 was to apply to teachers, such as Royers, who have obtained a degree allowing them to give students high school and college credit. While that intent was clear, Royers said in February, the department went with the plain language of requiring an “endorsement.”

“NDE’s initial solution was to strike the language,” Royers said in a text. “What we’re working on is creating an endorsement to make them properly eligible for the high needs grant.”

Murman told his colleagues that they would continue to work with the department to improve literacy, including dyslexia detection and support.

“Whatever we need to do to improve this legislation,” Murman said, “we’ll definitely get that done before we advance it.”

The committee took no immediate action on Murman’s bill.