Why Spelling Tests Unfairly Punish Kids with Reading Delays

As a child, I loved spelling tests.  Getting back my paper with the coveted 100% in red across the top and being lavished with praise from teachers about my “dedication” and “hard work” filled me with pride. 

Only, in reality, it had nothing to do with either dedication or hard work. 

My brain naturally saw the patterns in language, and segmenting out the sounds and meaning units in words came easily to me.  Like approximately 60% of English-speaking kids, I learned to read and spell with little effort.

Now that I am an adult working with the other 40% of kids who struggle with academic learning, I see the inherent flaws in a system that prioritizes memorizing a list of often random words to make a judgment about a child’s worth.

And for those one in five kids whose brains process the language components of reading differently enough to qualify for a dyslexia diagnosis, spelling tests that get progressively harder even as their skills continue to lag behind can become a bottomless pit of despair from which they can’t climb out…