Homeschooling a child with dyslexia

Deciding whether to homeschool

Homeschooling gives you complete control of the instruction, which is exactly why it works well for some dyslexic students and badly for others.

The advantage is real. You can teach at the pace the student actually needs, spend as long as it takes on a skill, and remove the daily social cost of being the slowest reader in the room.

The risk is equally real. Without outside measurement, it is very easy to believe progress is happening when it is not, and a year lost at this stage is expensive to recover.

Choosing curriculum

Look for a structured literacy program, and check specifically whether it was designed to be delivered by a parent or requires a trained provider. That distinction matters more than any review you will read.

• Designed for parent delivery. Some Orton-Gillingham based programs are scripted specifically so a trained parent can teach them, with video training included.
• Requires a certified provider. Others, including several used widely in Texas schools, require a trained therapist. These are not do it yourself options no matter how good they are.
• Get trained either way. Even scripted programs assume the person delivering them understands why each step exists. The training is what lets you respond when a student stalls.
• Do not stack programs. Running two literacy curricula at once dilutes both and makes it impossible to tell which one is working.
• Teach the rest of the subjects with accommodations. Audiobooks, dictation and read aloud instruction apply to science and history too.

What you still need from outside

Homeschooling changes who delivers the instruction. It does not remove the need for the other pieces.

1. A formal evaluation you did not administer. You need an independent picture of the profile, and you need it in writing for later.
2. Access to a trained provider. Even a consultative arrangement, where a therapist sets the plan and checks in monthly, changes outcomes substantially.
3. Outside progress measurement. Formal measures administered by someone other than you, on a schedule, so that a plateau is visible early.
4. Peer contact. Co-ops, sports, clubs and homeschool groups. This is not a nice extra for a student who left school partly for social reasons.
5. A review point. Decide in advance what you would need to see, and by when, to conclude that the current plan is not working.

Measuring progress honestly

The most common failure in homeschooling a dyslexic student is not choosing the wrong curriculum. It is not noticing for a year that the right curriculum was not producing gains.

Texas specifics

In Texas, homeschools are treated as private schools. There is no state registration, no required curriculum approval and no state testing requirement, which gives families a great deal of freedom and places the entire burden of quality control on the family.

Two things are still worth knowing.

• Districts have child find obligations that extend beyond their own enrolled students. It is reasonable to contact your local district and ask about an evaluation. What services, if any, follow from an evaluation is a separate and more limited question, and it varies. Ask the district directly rather than assuming either way.
• Documentation matters later. Keep the evaluation, the progress data and a record of the instruction delivered. Colleges, testing agencies and any school your child later enrolls in will want a documented history, and reconstructing one after the fact is difficult.

Confirm anything procedural with your district and with the current Texas Dyslexia Handbook, since state guidance is revised periodically.