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Pandemic Child Crisis and the Rise in Learning Disabilities, Language Disorders, and Teacher Shortages

What happens when 40% of a generation cannot function at school? Signs are emerging that this may happen with the children who were 0-6 years old during COVID-19, now in grades K-6.While some children were buffered by extra supports at home, large swaths of the population were not so fortunate. A 2021-2022 national report found […]
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Check & Treat Dyslexia with Dysolve AI

Despite affecting 1 in 5 people, dyslexia generally remains a confusing condition for those who have it and those who support them. In my role as a clinical linguist, when I asked parents why they did not act earlier on their children’s dyslexia, they often said that they did not even know where to start, […]
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What Educators Need to Know about Dyslexia – and Why AI can Correct it

Can Dyslexia be Corrected? Background Last month, an education publication ran an article with the title: What Educators Need to Know about Dyslexia – and Why It’s Not Something to ‘Fix.’ It reiterates an old assumption about this neurological condition that no longer holds, thanks to technological advances. Old approach to treating Dyslexia: Dyslexia interventionists […]
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Dyslexia Treatment in the Age of AI

Now that assistive technologies can read texts out loud, correct misspellings and compose essays for us, do we still need intervention for dyslexia, a reading difficulty? The answer is yes. The problem with dyslexia does not go away simply because the individual affected does not need to read. Their reading difficulty is just an overt […]
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Breaking the Cycle of Summer Learning Loss

Research shows that summer contributes to learning and reading loss for all students.The loss is particularly pronounced in economically disadvantaged students. This is partly due to lack of exposure to print and support for literacy development at home. Also, learning is hindered by greater food insecurity in the summer, when free lunches at school are […]
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Disruptive Inventions – exploring nonverbal strengths in people with dyslexia.

Despite today’s rapid growth of scientific and technological knowledge, truly innovative activity is actually declining. Here, we distinguish between innovations that augment existing streams of knowledge v. innovations that disrupt them. The latter renders the old obsolete and propel science and technology forward in unexpected, new directions. We need disruptive innovations. Humankind faces huge challenges […]
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Love’s Labor Lost

A summer of extra tutoring—all gone. The fancy tablet, the brilliant markers, the tracing of words in sand. All that was taught—all gone. Nothing stuck. Why can’t your child retain any of it? Even how to spell little words like “one” and “two.” Until you know the root cause of this difficulty, all that extra […]
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AI’s New Insights on Dyslexia

Findings about the brain for the educator For the past 100 years, dyslexia was a murky, confounding disorder of the brain. For the one in five people who has it, dyslexia remained chronic and lifelong, impacting learning and reading. There was no way to peer into a dyslexic brain to see underlying problems precisely enough […]
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The Person in the Machine

Much has been said about the lack of accuracy of AI-generated texts. I’ve been asked repeatedly by reporters to comment on the observation that LLM-based AI “lies” and “hallucinates.” We endow machines with human qualities when we use such words. Yet, we cannot help ourselves. When we see or hear language, we instinctively imagine a […]
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How to Think about AI in Education

Since our firm launched the first autonomous AI program in education, educators have asked me for ideas on how they can manage this new wave of change. What AI tools and programs should they use in the classroom? What can they allow in assessments? I tell them to take a step back and look at […]