LINCOLN — Norah Schmidt loves reading, particularly dystopia and romance novels, but the high school senior recalls when that wasn’t always the case because of a learning disability: dyslexia.

Norah, 17, remembers being pulled out of class for timed readings where staff would hold a stopwatch and track how quickly she could read and if she was close to her peers.

“The first six years of school, K through 5, were hard,” Norah told the Nebraska Examiner this summer. “I didn’t know what I was doing, reading in fifth grade at a third grade level, reading my first book in fifth grade. It’s improved since but still hard.”

Close to graduation and looking ahead to college, Norah said she reads whenever she gets the chance now, after years of an uphill climb of interventions in part aided by legislation and advocacy from Norah’s parents in Lincoln Public Schools.

Legislation back to 2017

State lawmakers have passed multiple bills since 2017 to improve services for students with dyslexia and require intensive reading interventions in each of Nebraska’s 244 school districts. 

“I do hope that with all this going through, students who are coming into schools don’t have to go through things I did,” Norah said of the legislation.

State Sen. Lou Ann Linehan of Elkhorn has been heavily involved in legislative efforts regarding dyslexia, including her support this year for Fremont State Sen. Lynne Walz’s Legislative Bill 1284. That package contained two reading proposals from Linehan, which she said was her last “rah rah” before being term-limited out of the Legislature:

• LB 1253, to award up to $500,000 in grants to Nebraska companies researching artificial-intelligence-based writing assistance models for students with dyslexia.
• LB 1254, to set aside $2 million over three years for reading improvement mentorship programs and to employ regional coaches to train teachers in K-3 how to teach reading.

Linehan, who has dyslexia, introduced LB 651 in 2017 during her first year as a state senator to provide accelerated reading interventions for students in grades K-3. 

Known as the Nebraska Reading Improvement Act, any student who exhibited a reading deficiency would have received an individual reading improvement plan. Students would have needed to show sufficient reading skills to move on to fourth grade or be held back for a year.

Linehan said that extra support is critical, partially to prevent behavioral issues for students who will “hate school because they don’t want to be embarrassed.”

“They don’t want to have to stand up and be asked to read a book, and they can’t, so they throw the book because ‘I’d rather be in trouble than be embarrassed and have my friends make fun of me,’” Linehan said.

School tour informed legislation

At LB 651’s hearing, superintendents, teachers and school members from various school districts expressed concern, particularly with retaining students in the third grade.

Then-State Sen. Patty Pansing Brooks of Lincoln, who sat on the Education Committee along with Linehan, also opposed the measure, which later stalled during floor debate for the year.

But a separate bill, LB 645 from Pansing Brooks, did pass in 2017 to define dyslexia in state law. Linehan supported the change. 

Pansing Brooks brought the bill on behalf of her brother and cousin, who have dyslexia, and her mother, a former Lincoln Board of Education member who pushed for dyslexia-related services.

Linehan and Pansing Brooks have opposing political ideologies, but they sought to find a path forward in the fall of 2017 by touring more than a dozen schools together statewide to gather additional perspectives from educators and students, which informed new legislation to improve literacy.

“The education community could blow me off because I was not a supporter of the teachers union. I was a very conservative member. They could have run me over,” Linehan said. “They could not run over Patty — her willingness, my determination, and just keep going back.”

Pansing Brooks returned in 2018 with LB 1052, to update a dyslexia-focused guide for educators and require teacher training. And Linehan amended a revised version of her previous bill into LB 1081, which didn’t include holding students back. Both passed overwhelmingly.

Linehan’s proposal established three reading assessments for all students in grades K-3 each academic year, as well as supplemental interventions for those young students who have a reading deficiency.

“I felt like we could really work stronger together, and she’s a force, there’s no question,” Pansing Brooks said this summer.

In 2023, Linehan proposed LB 298, which also passed. It requires schools to track how many students have been tested for a specific learning disability and how many have a reading issue.

Districts must report that information annually by July 1 to the Nebraska Department of Education, which must compile the information and send a public report to the Legislature each year no later than Sept. 1.

‘I felt like Alice in Wonderland’

Heather Schmidt, Norah’s mother, recalled some of her own frustrations prior to that legislation, when Norah was in elementary school. School staff would show Norah’s parents charts “of why everything’s fine.” When Heather told them that everything wasn’t fine and that Norah was struggling, she said she was told to look at the chart in a different way.

“When we first started down this path, I honestly, in the meetings, felt like Alice in Wonderland just trying to figure out how to get home, and everybody was telling me about eight, nine other things that didn’t make sense,” Heather Schmidt recalled.

For some of Norah’s classes, she would have a sheet to track how many books she read each week. Though she spent hours reading, she couldn’t reach the goal, yet her mom would still sign the assignment, knowing the effort that Norah had put in.

Norah said she is still learning to cope with dyslexia and how to study, but an AI-focused tool created by local university students, Dyslexico, is helping to cut her study time in half.

“Instead of getting frustrated and shutting her Chromebook and pushing it away, she just kept going and writing, kept studying,” Heather Schmidt said. “You’d see her just kind of wilt as if she was defeated [before].”

Support with artificial intelligence

Dyslexico started in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Raikes School. Key team members Bridget Peterkin and Tristan Curd, who graduated in May, testified at a legislative hearing in February in support of Linehan’s grant program in LB 1253.

The online program is powered through AI but finds what its creators have described as a middle ground compared to other grammar check software.

Peterkin said when Dyslexico began, it all felt very theoretical, but support and excitement from Linehan and others left the team “blown away.”

Curd said this summer that Dyslexico was looking to start new pilot programs with schools. He said getting a grant could help the team improve its services for the community.

“It’s super exciting because at its core, it will help us keep Dyslexico going,” Curd said.

Linehan said the student team amazed her because they understood dyslexia and that people who have it are capable and intelligent, but just struggle to read or write.

The grant applications are due to the Nebraska Department of Education by Sept. 6.

‘We need to be proactive’

Elizabeth Tegtmeier, president of the State Board of Education, which oversees the Education Department, said that all students need to be supported. She said the State Board should expect struggling students to receive interventions but doesn’t need to wait for legislation.

“We’re in harmony as far as student literacy, and I just think that this particular facet of literacy needs to rise to the surface,” Tegtmeier said of the State Board.

Tegtmeier said she also has a child who struggles to read and found herself, like Heather Schmidt, supplementing the assistance her school provided and seeking additional resources.

“We need to be proactive, not wait until students have failed,” Tegtmeier said. “That affects their self-esteem. It affects their ability to work in the classroom if we wait for them to fail before we offer them assistance.”

‘Swimming upstream’

Heather and Norah Schmidt haven’t always been successful in finding advocates within Lincoln Public Schools, they said, but they recently found support in Sara Jones, LPS’ student services supervisor, and Adriana Martinez, Lincoln Southeast High School’s English Department chair, who was one of Norah’s teachers last year.

Norah said Martinez gave her as much time as she needed on assignments and would break lessons down in a way she could understand, tailored to her learning style.

Martinez said that she regularly tailors support to her students’ needs and that the “bare minimum” for teachers is to read and understand a student’s learning accommodations as part of their Section 504 plan or individualized education plan.

“Once I have a good understanding of my kids, we have pretty open conversations with what they need to feel successful,” Martinez said.

Jones said that everyone at LPS wants students to succeed and that accommodations are available to students, but she acknowledged it’s a “tough avenue to fight, like swimming upstream,” at times.

“When you find that one little gem that might work, it’s such a good feeling,” Jones said.

Throughout her 12 years in special education, Jones said, it’s almost hard to describe how students change once the right tool is put in front of them. She said she sometimes runs into former students in the community and is able to see how the interventions have paid off.

“It’s just so heartwarming,” Jones said. “Even if it’s just one kid.”

Martinez said teachers should “walk with humility” and understand that they don’t know everything and need to be lifelong learners.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers have seen that policies don’t always catch students’ needs, Martinez explained. She said many teachers are adapting and being more accessible.

“I think the more that students see teachers as collaborators for their learning,” Martinez said, “the better that we can make their education.”

‘We need to keep pushing harder’

Norah said more education for teachers on dyslexia will be helpful, as some don’t know what it is. She hopes future students don’t have to wait for help as long as her family did.

“I’m glad it’s happening now rather than 10 years down the line,” Norah said.

Her mother worries that momentum surrounding dyslexia needs could slow down with Linehan leaving the Legislature after this year. 

“I hope we’re not going to be left without moving forward,” Heather Schmidt said. “I feel like they’ve made a lot of inroads, just even with the awareness level, but we need to keep pushing harder.”

Linehan said that with the accountability measures in place and a bigger focus on phonics and reading comprehension, she sees the work continuing.

“I may no longer be in the Legislature, but I will still pay attention. It is too important,” Linehan said. “We can’t let bright, capable people not get an education because they struggle to read at an early age.”