Abstract

This paper advocates for implementing mandatory early dyslexia screening in California’s transitional kindergarten (TK) programs. The transition to kindergarten is a critical developmental period that is often challenging for many students, especially those with reading difficulties such as dyslexia. Despite California school districts offering programs, such as summer programs, to increase students’ readiness to transition into kindergarten, these measures do not sufficiently address the needs of dyslexic students. In TK, students with dyslexia require early identification through screening tools like Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) assessments for students and the Adult Reading History (ARHQ) questionnaire for their parents, which can help teachers implement timely interventions and accommodations before they transition into kindergarten. Unfortunately, there are many challenges to early screening for dyslexia, including limited teacher training, underidentification of dyslexia, screening tools that are not accessible to EL (English Learner) students, and legal restrictions that make it harder for California school districts to screen for dyslexia in TK. This paper argues that if California school districts were to universally screen for dyslexia in TK, with targeted teacher training and effective assessment tools, students with dyslexia would have a more successful transition to kindergarten. This paper aims to address existing gaps in early literacy support and reduce the long-term academic and emotional consequences of undiagnosed dyslexia.

Key Words: Dyslexia, Early Screening, TK, California School Districts

Introduction

Every year, in kindergarten, my colleagues and I have students whose academic challenges and social-emotional behaviors are so hard to manage that we wonder how we can help them. There are multiple reasons why kindergarten is an especially difficult transition for students. The pandemic created academic and social-emotional disparities in early childhood learning experiences for English learners, children of color, children with families that have low incomes, and children with disabilities (Bornfreund & Ewen, 2021). Even without considering these disparities, the transition from preschool to kindergarten is difficult because kindergarten involves more formal classroom experiences, larger class sizes, fewer child-directed activities, greater behavioral expectations for students, and more procedures and routines to follow (Jiang et al., 2021). Kindergarten is also a place where students have a less close teacher-child relationship compared with preschool. The effects of this less close relationship can result in students receiving lower ratings for learning behaviors and social competence, and higher ratings for disruptive behavior (Vitiello et al., 2022). Given all these reasons why students struggle transitioning into kindergarten, it is not surprising that when a group of teachers was surveyed, they perceived that 16% of their students had a difficult transition, and 46% of teachers said that half or more of their class had several problem areas when it came to their transition into kindergarten (Rimm-Kaufman et al., 2000).
A student’s transition to kindergarten has far-reaching implications, as it is considered a critical developmental period for shaping a child’s short- and long-term well-being (Jiang et al., 2021). One way to help students transition is for parents to enroll their child in a summer transition program. These programs have been shown to combat academic disparities between low- and high-income students by helping students demonstrate greater readiness in mathematical thinking, language and literacy, and social foundational skills compared with students who did not participate in the program (Jones et al., 2025). Also, simply enrolling a student in pre-k can maintain benefits from attending for two to three school years compared with students who do not attend (Vitiello et al., 2022).

These are great solutions, but they are not enough to help a student with academic challenges such as dyslexia. For example, summer transition programs do not explicitly offer beneficial approaches for dyslexic students, such as structured literacy lessons, close progress monitoring, and fluency training (Normand, 2025). These approaches are necessary to ensure dyslexic students are ready to tackle the challenges inherent in their transition to kindergarten. As mentioned, simply enrolling a student in pre-k can give them years of benefits. However, pre-K teachers, parents, and specialists could do more to prepare dyslexic students for the transition to kindergarten. Early screening for dyslexia in pre-K programs, especially in TK, would be very beneficial for preparing students to transition to kindergarten. This paper argues that all TK programs in California should require that every student be pre-screened for dyslexia. It concerns how dyslexia is defined, current statistics on dyslexia in California, the benefits of early screening, how early screening is administered, and the challenges and solutions associated with early screening.

Dyslexia in California Explained

The International Dyslexia Association has defined dyslexia as:

A specific learning disability that is neurobiological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities. These difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language, which is often unexpected relative to other cognitive abilities and to the provision of effective classroom instruction. Secondary consequences may include difficulties with reading comprehension and reduced reading experience, which can impede the growth of vocabulary and background knowledge (International Dyslexia Association, 2002).

This definition of dyslexia has been incorporated into California’s state education statute (California Department of Education, 2017). This definition shows how great an impact dyslexia can have on a student’s readiness for kindergarten. Dyslexia can also affect a student’s ability to produce different speech sounds, recall words from memory, and provide fast visual-verbal responses when a teacher asks them to verbalize letters and words in a text (Stanley & Petcscher, 2017).

California currently has approximately 5-17 percent of children with dyslexia in its classrooms (PACE, 2025). It is also important to mention that in 2024-2025, only 49 percent of students tested at or above level in English language arts on the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) (California Department of Education, 2025). After reviewing these statistics, it is important to understand what California is doing to support students facing academic challenges, such as dyslexia. For the 2025-26 school year, more than 2,000 literacy coaches were hired and placed in schools with the highest needs, literacy roadmaps were provided to all of the teachers to give guidance on how to implement targeted interventions and evidence-based literacy instruction, and universal TK was implemented to improve student readiness for kindergarten (California State Portal, 2024). These are all great steps for improving literacy in California, but to better support a dyslexic student in being ready for kindergarten, dyslexia screening has to be part of TK.

Early Screening for Dyslexia

If a student is found to have dyslexia symptoms in a preschool grade, such as TK, the interventions put in place for them will be more effective. The interventions will prevent more serious symptoms of dyslexia, which could easily affect a student’s academic performance as they enter kindergarten. Students with dyslexia-related symptoms in primary school often experience low motivation, low academic achievement, and low self-confidence (Ramli et al., 2024). Students with dyslexia-related symptoms need specific interventions that must be implemented as soon as possible. In fact, students do not need an official dyslexia diagnosis for teachers to begin implementing interventions in TK. If a screening identifies any risk factors for dyslexia, an intervention should be initiated as early as possible, because remediating reading failure is much more difficult than preventing it (Normand, 2025). If a teacher waits for an official diagnosis, they may be wasting valuable time helping their student. So, how does a TK teacher screen their students for dyslexia?

One way teachers can screen TK students for dyslexia is by administering the Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) assessment. This assessment asks students to identify different familiar objects, such as a car, a chair, or a key. These tests are helpful for screening for dyslexia because the student needs to use the same brain network they use for reading to identify familiar objects. If the student has a history of language delay and/or their parents have a history of dyslexia, the assessment can be conducted in the first few weeks of TK (Normand, 2025). It is also important for teachers to observe their students and note any difficulties with language processing, cognition, or executive functioning (Lopez-Zamora et al., 2025). It is important to note that teachers are screening students not to provide an official dyslexia diagnosis, but to identify deficits, risk factors, and symptoms associated with dyslexia (Normand, 2025). The deficits and risk factors they have identified can serve as valuable starting points for developing and implementing interventions to help their students be ready for kindergarten. TK teachers will also have a much easier time identifying deficits and risk factors if they enlist the parents’ help.
A reading disability, like dyslexia, is considered highly heritable because 30-60% of children who have a parent with dyslexia will also develop it (International Dyslexia Association, 2002). Therefore, it is important that, along with the RAN assessment, parents are also screened as part of the dyslexia screening process for TK students. The Adult Reading History Questionnaire (ARHQ) is a screening tool that measures the risk of reading disabilities, such as dyslexia, in parents. The screening test is easy to access on the International Dyslexia Association’s website, consists of only 18 rating-scale questions that are instantly scored, and has been shown to have high validity in predicting a parent’s reading skill (Lefly & Pennington, 2000).

Challenges and Solutions of Dyslexia Screening

The RAN and ARHQ assessments are simple and effective tools to screen a student with dyslexia in TK. However, dyslexia screenings sometimes do not start because many teachers are not trained to identify its symptoms. Although many teachers recognize the fact that dyslexia is a common learning disorder affecting up to 20% of children, there is an underidentification of it in schools that leads to many late diagnoses of students (Ramsdell et al., 2026). Late diagnosis of students with dyslexia often occurs because teachers lack sufficient knowledge of its symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, and even general information about it (Huan & Jamil, 2025). A good start to resolving this issue would be for TK teachers to take the Knowledge and Beliefs about Developmental Dyslexia Scale (KBDDS) survey, which school administrators and specialists can use to identify gaps and misalignments in teachers’ understanding of dyslexia. The data will help school administrators and specialists design professional development (PD) training not only to prepare TK teachers to better identify the symptoms of dyslexia, but also to help them understand how to accommodate and implement interventions for their students with dyslexia symptoms.

Even if a teacher is trained to identify the symptoms of dyslexia, they may still struggle to recognize symptoms in an EL student. Teachers in California need to be able to screen EL students for dyslexia because it has the most EL students in America (California Department of Education, 2025). EL students in early grades may display symptoms of dyslexia because they may have difficulty learning new literacy skills due to unfamiliarity with English sounds, vocabulary, and sentence structures. They may also not have had much exposure to pre-literacy skills before starting school (Council of the Great City Schools, 2022). This is why teachers need to use multiple measures for screening EL students for dyslexia. When screening an EL student for dyslexia, it is important that screening assessments, such as RAN and ARHQ, are available in their primary language and that informal observations, formative assessments, and summative assessments are also collected as important data for the screening process (Council of the Great City Schools, 2022).

Regardless of whether a student is an EL student or a native English speaker, the more data a teacher can collect about them, the easier it will be to screen them and identify interventions and accommodations that will help them do well in TK and transition smoothly into kindergarten. This is especially true if the student has ADHD co-occurring with their dyslexia. Dyslexia and ADHD can co-occur in 15-40% of individuals who have been diagnosed with one disorder (Kellens et al., 2024). Screening for ADHD requires various assessment methods, such as behavior rating scales and symptom checklists (Verwimp et al., 2026). Therefore, teachers need to gather as much data as possible, especially classroom observations, to gain an overall picture of the student. This data will be especially helpful for administrators, specialists, and child psychologists if the student is showing significant academic or behavioral issues in class and needs to be evaluated for a diagnosis or an IEP. Also, the more data teachers have, the less likely they are to make risk-identification errors that could lead them to miss a student with dyslexia and ADHD symptoms requiring screening (Normand, 2025).

Senate Bill 114

The biggest challenge to implementing dyslexia screening in TK in California is that, by law, the earliest grade at which teachers can screen for dyslexia is kindergarten. Senate Bill 114 mandates that local education agencies ensure students are screened for reading difficulties between kindergarten and second grade (“Dyslexia Laws and Requirements in California,” 2025). Since the law was passed in 2023, every student in California from kindergarten through grade 2 is screened annually for reading difficulties. If they are found to have a reading difficulty, interventions and accommodations will be implemented, such as one-on-one tutoring and evidence-based literacy instruction tailored to the student’s needs (California Department of Education, 2025).

A Place to Start

Currently, there are no efforts in California being made to pass universal screening for dyslexia in TK. To start the process, there needs to be a California school district willing to screen its TK students for dyslexia using the RAN and ARHQ assessments and to implement interventions and accommodations if necessary. Then, student data can be collected to determine whether early screening and early implementation of interventions and accommodations improved students’ academic performance in TK and helped students to transition to kindergarten compared with data from previous years. The data the school district collects can hopefully be used to promote a bill in California for universal dyslexia screening in TK.

Conclusion

Study after study has shown that many students struggle to transition successfully into kindergarten. The transition is harder for students with dyslexia who do not have the correct interventions and accommodations put in place to help them succeed. It is important to note that a preschool student’s developmental level in writing, reading, and mathematics has considerable predictive value for a student’s successful transition to kindergarten (Catalano et al., 2025). TK provides a great opportunity for teachers to screen students and set up interventions and accommodations that will help them get a head start in their transition to kindergarten. It is not too difficult to screen students for dyslexia; all TK teachers need to do is collect assessment data and classroom observations (which teachers already do for their students), administer the RAN assessment, and ask parents to complete the ARHQ assessment. All administrators and specialists need to do is train teachers to identify the symptoms of dyslexia and how to support students with symptoms. These are small steps to take for the impact that implementing early interventions and accommodations can have on a student with dyslexia. Early intervention for students with dyslexia is vital not only for their educational success but also for their schooling experience (Council of the Great City Schools, 2022). Administrators, specialists, parents, and teachers need to work together to spare students from the academic and emotional trauma of reading failure before it has lasting consequences. In 2024, the Nation’s Report Card found that only 33% of fourth graders were reading at a level above proficiency (Normand, 2025). These results show a system with cracks that has failed to help many students. Early screening for dyslexia will be a major step toward repairing those cracks.

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