Educators, specialists, and advocates from across the country—and around the world—attended a sold-out California Dyslexia Initiative (CDI) conference earlier this week. They learned the most effective ways to teach reading, how to meet the needs of a range of students, and how to address dyslexia and related challenges. The two-day conference focused on ways to maximize student achievement through the “multi-tiered system of supports (MTSS)” framework.
Setting a record for the project, more than 2,500 educators registered to attend the conference, including people from 18 U.S. states, plus Canada, Egypt, Italy, and Trinidad and Tobago. The grant-funded initiative is helping to build capacity and resources in California to address the needs of struggling readers and students with dyslexia. Offering a dynamic platform for advancing screening, instruction, and intervention practices, the June 11–12 event was hosted by the Sacramento County Office of Education (SCOE) in collaboration with the California Department of Education (CDE), the California State Board of Education, and the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence (CCEE). Attendees heard from renowned experts, including Maryanne Wolf, Ed.D., Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan, Ed.D., and Ioulia Kovelman, Ph.D. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond also welcomed participants on the second day of the conference. The speeches were followed by more than 65 breakout sessions.
“The CDI team was honored to host this dynamic event to build knowledge and educator capacity to meet the needs of struggling readers and students at risk for, and with dyslexia,” said Tami Wilson, SCOE Director of Development and Training. “The attendees were excited about the lineup of presenters, which included national experts, and there was lots of talk about the difficulty of choosing which sessions to attend with such rich options.”
“I appreciate the connection to multilingual learners and the different activities on how we can connect students’ home languages to English,” one teacher commented about the variety of sessions offered. Attendees will be able to access recordings of the conference sessions they didn’t attend.
SCOE’s K–12 Curriculum and Instruction Department, which oversaw the conference, is also leading Sacramento County READS, a countywide initiative focused on improving literacy outcomes for all learners by engaging families and community partners, convening a community of practice to build knowledge, and sharing best practices and resources. Its efforts are grounded in the science of reading—a body of knowledge that informs how proficient reading and writing develop, why some people have difficulty, and the most effective way to assess and teach.
About the CA Dyslexia Initiative
The Sacramento County Office of Education (SCOE) was selected in 2021 by the California State Board of Education (SBE), the California Department of Education (CDE), and the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence (CCEE) to administer the California Dyslexia Initiative (CDI), a three-year, grant-funded initiative. CDI is working in partnership with the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Dyslexia Center to build capacity and resources across California’s educational systems to address the needs of struggling readers and students with dyslexia.
Professional learning opportunities, resource highlights, a series of expert speaker webinars for educators, and other resources are available on the CDI website.