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Why California Still Doesn’t Mandate Dyslexia Screening
This article was originally published in CalMatters.
California sends mixed messages when it comes to serving dyslexic students.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom is the most famous dyslexic political official in the country, even authoring a children’s book to raise awareness about the learning disability. And yet, California is one of 10 states that doesn’t require dyslexia screening for all children.
Education experts agree that early screening and intervention is critical for making sure students can read at grade level. But so far, state officials have done almost everything to combat dyslexia except mandate assessments for all students.
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“It needs to happen,” said Lillian Duran, an education professor at the University of Oregon who has helped develop screening tools for dyslexia. “It seems so basic to me.”
Since 2015, legislators have funded dyslexia research, teacher training and the hiring of literacy coaches across California. But lawmakers failed to mandate universal dyslexia screening, running smack into opposition from the California Teachers Association.
The union argued that since teachers would do the screening, a universal mandate would take time away from the classroom. It also said universal screening may overly identify English learners, mistakenly placing them in special education.
The California Teachers Association did not respond to requests for comment for this story. In a letter of opposition to a bill in 2021, the union wrote that the bill “is unnecessary, leads to over identifying dyslexia in young students, mandates more testing, and jeopardizes the limited instructional time for students.”
In response, dyslexia experts double down on well-established research. Early detection actually prevents English learners — and really, all students — from ending up in special education when they don’t belong there.
While California lawmakers didn’t vote to buck the teachers union, they haven’t been afraid to spend taxpayer money on dyslexia screening. In the past two years, the state budget allocated $30 million to UC San Francisco’s Dyslexia Center, largely for the development of a new screening tool. Newsom began championing the center and served as its honorary chair in 2016 when he was still lieutenant governor.
“There’s an inadequate involvement of the health system in the way we support children with learning disabilities,” said Maria Luisa Gorno-Tempini, co-director of UCSF’s Dyslexia Center. “This is one of the first attempts at bridging science and education in a way that’s open sourced and open to all fields.”
Parents and advocates say funding dyslexia research and developing a new screener can all be good things, but without mandated universal screening more students will fall through the cracks and need more help with reading as they get older.
Omar Rodriguez, a spokesperson for the governor did not respond to questions about whether Newsom would support a mandate for universal screening. Instead, he listed more than $300 million in state investments made in the past two years to fund more reading coaches, new teacher credentialing requirements and teacher training.
The screening struggle
Rachel Levy, a Bay Area parent, fought for three years to get her son Dominic screened for dyslexia. He finally got the screening in third grade, which experts say could be too late to prevent long-term struggles with reading.
“We know how to screen students. We know how to get early intervention,” Levy said. “This to me is a solvable issue.”
Levy’s son Dominic, 16, still remembers what it felt like trying to read in first grade.
“It was like I was trying to memorize the shape of the word,” he said. “Even if I could read all the words, I just wouldn’t understand them.”
Dyslexia is a neurological condition that can make it hard for students to read and process information. But teachers can mitigate and even prevent the illiteracy stemming from dyslexia if they catch the signs early.
Levy, who also has dyslexia, said there’s much more research today on dyslexia than there was 30 years ago when she was first diagnosed. She said she was disappointed to find that California’s policies don’t align with the research around early screening.
“Unfortunately, most kids who are dyslexic end up in the special education system,” Levy said. “It’s because of a lack of screening.”
Soon after his screening in third grade, Dominic started receiving extra help for his dyslexia. He still works with an educational therapist on his reading, and he’s just about caught up to grade level in math. The biggest misconception about dyslexia, Dominic said, is that it makes you less intelligent or capable.
“Dyslexics are just as smart as other people,” he said. “They just learn in different ways.”
The first step to helping them learn is screening them in kindergarten or first grade.
“The goal is to find risk factors early,” said Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan, a speech-language pathologist and a professor at the University of Houston. “When you find them, the data you collect can really inform instruction.”
Cárdenas-Hagan’s home state of Texas passed a law in 1995 requiring universal screening. But she said it took several more years for teachers to be trained to use the tool. Her word of caution to California: Make sure teachers are not only comfortable with the tool but know how to use the results of the assessment to shape the way they teach individual students.
A homegrown screener
UC San Francisco’s screener, called Multitudes, will be available in English, Spanish and Mandarin. It’ll be free for all school districts.
Multitudes won’t be released to all districts at once. UCSF scientists launched a pilot at a dozen school districts last year, and they plan to expand to more districts this fall.
But experts and advocates say there’s no need to wait for it to mandate universal screenings. Educators can use a variety of already available screening tools in California, like they do in 40 other states. Texas and other states that have high percentages of English learners have Spanish screeners for dyslexia.
For English learners, the need for screening is especially urgent. Maria Ortiz is a Los Angeles parent of a dyslexic teenager who was also an English learner. She said she had to sue the Los Angeles Unified School District twice: once in 2016 to get extra help for her dyslexic daughter when she was in fourth grade and again in 2018 when those services were taken away. Ortiz said the district stopped giving her daughter additional help because her reading started improving.
“In the beginning they told me that my daughter was exaggerating,” Ortiz said.
“They said everything would be normal later.”
California currently serves about 1.1 million English learners, just under a fifth of all public school students. For English learners, dyslexia can be confused with a lack of English proficiency. Opponents of universal screening, including the teachers association, argue that English learners will be misidentified as dyslexic simply because they can’t understand the language.
“Even the specialists were afraid that the problem might be because of the language barrier,” Ortiz said about her daughter’s case.
But experts say dyslexia presents a double threat to English learners: It stalls them from reading in their native language and impedes their ability to learn English. And while there are some Spanish-language screeners, experts from Texas and California say there’s room for improvement. Current Spanish screeners penalize students who mix Spanish and English, they say.
Duran, who helped develop the Spanish version of Multitudes, said the new screener will be a better fit for how young bilingual students actually talk.
“Spanglish becomes its own communication that’s just as legitimate as Spanish on its own or English on its own,” Duran said. “It’s about the totality of languages a child might bring.”
Providing Multitudes free of cost is important to schools with large numbers of low-income students. Dyslexia screeners cost about $10 per student, so $30 million might actually be cost-effective considering California currently serves 1.3 million students in kindergarten through second grade. The tool could pay for itself in a few years. Although there are plenty of screeners already available, they can stretch the budgets of high-poverty schools and districts.
“The least funded schools can’t access them because of the cost,” Duran said.
In addition to the governor, another powerful state lawmaker, Glendale Democratic state Sen. Anthony Portantino, is dyslexic. While chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, he has repeatedly, and unsuccessfully, authored legislation to require public schools to screen all students between kindergarten and second grade.
Portantino’s 2021 bill received unanimous support in the Senate Education and Appropriations committees, but the bill died in the Assembly Education Committee. Portantino authored the same bill in 2020, but it never made it out of the state Senate.
“We should be leading the nation and not lagging behind,” Portantino said.
Portantino blamed the failure of his most recent bill on former Democratic Assemblymember Patrick O’Donnell, who chaired the Assembly Education Committee, for refusing to hear the bill.
“It’s no secret, Patrick O’Donnell was against teacher training,” Portantino said. “He thought our school districts and our educators didn’t have the capacity.”
O’Donnell did not respond to requests for comment. Since O’Donnell didn’t schedule a hearing on the bill, there is no record of him commenting about it at the time.
Portantino plans to author a nearly identical bill this year. He said he’s more hopeful because the Assembly Education Committee is now under the leadership of Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, a Democrat from Torrance. Muratsuchi would not comment on the potential fate of a dyslexia screening bill this year.
Levy now works as a professional advocate for parents of students with disabilities. She said without mandatory dyslexia screening, only parents who can afford to hire someone like her will be able to get the services they need for their children.
“A lot of high school kids are reading below third-grade level,” she said. “To me, that’s just heartbreaking.”
This was originally published on CalMatters.
California
California still hasn’t released Newsom’s Baby2Baby diaper contract as lawmakers weigh longer public records delays
California’s delayed release of its Baby2Baby contract is casting a shadow over the state’s new Golden State Diaper program.
Two months after Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a controversial multimillion-dollar state diaper contract with Baby2Baby, a nonprofit with existing ties to the Newsom administration and the First Partner, Californians still have not been allowed to see the contract or competitive bid records behind the deal to manufacture and deliver millions of California co-branded free diapers to new parents.
The delay comes despite repeated requests by CBS California Investigates and despite California law requiring the state to release these records.
ALSO READ: California’s “Diapergate”: Critics got free diaper math wrong, but state won’t release key Baby2Baby records
The Newsom administration waited 24 days to decide whether it would even allow the public to see the records, but continues to delay releasing the Baby2Baby contract and competitive bid records that the governor announced more than two months ago.
At the same time, California lawmakers are advancing legislation that would give state agencies additional time to respond to California Public Records Act requests, further extending how long the public must wait for records like these.
Delayed accountability
CBS California Investigates requested a copy of the Baby2Baby contract on May 12, four days after Governor Newsom announced the partnership during a high-profile press conference.
Given the controversy and misinformation surrounding the announcement, we asked the Newsom administration to forgo the formal California Public Records Act (CPRA) process and provide an expedited copy of the contract and competitive bid records.
Both are expressly identified as public records under California law, which also requires agencies to “promptly notify” requesters whether records are disclosable, allowing a maximum of ten days to let them know the estimated date that they will provide the records.
Instead, the Newsom Administration spent 24 days determining whether or not it would even allow Californians to see these public records, then said it would take another 42 days (if the state meets its latest deadline) to provide a copy of the contract and competitive bid records that the governor publicly announced two months ago.
What is AB 1821?
Even as public interest grows, California lawmakers are advancing a bill that would allow agencies to further delay responses to Public Records Act requests, extending the maximum initial 10-day determination window and 14-day extension window from calendar days to business days.
State law does not limit how long an agency can wait to actually provide the records after they provide that initial response.
ALSO READ: California State Secrets: What public officials don’t want you to know
Assemblymember Blanca Pacheco introduced Assembly Bill 1821, which originally sought to overhaul the transparency law to allow agencies to sue if they deemed a request “malicious” and charge up to $66 an hour to provide public records.
The proposal triggered fierce pushback from a broad coalition including the First Amendment Coalition, ACLU California Action, Common Cause California, the League of Women Voters, and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.
The Senate Judiciary Committee, led by Senate Judiciary Chair Tom Umberg, stripped the most controversial elements from the legislation before moving it forward.
“People shouldn’t have to tell us why they want that information. People shouldn’t have to pay to get information from public officials,” Umberg told CBS California.
Still, the amended version lengthens the legal window for officials to respond to records requests.
Pacheco maintained the necessity of the changes for burdened departments.
“Agencies across the state are experiencing a sharp increase in requests that are exceptionally broad,” she argued during testimony.
Ginny LaRoe of the First Amendment Coalition contends that essential documents, such as multimillion-dollar state contracts, should be accessible without any formal request at all.
“You should have that document in your hands. You should’ve had it in your hand the day they were talking about it,” LaRoe said.
Rather than forcing Californians to wait weeks for paper-pushing, LaRoe suggests the state should proactively upload finalized agreements online with minor necessary redactions for personal information, ensuring immediate transparency and easing the administrative burden.
Umberg signaled support for a shift toward automated disclosure.
“I think there’s a world where we make them do that,” he said. “It’s up to us to motivate them to do so.”
More than two months after Newsom’s big announcement, CBS California Investigates continues to wait for the state to release the Baby2Baby contract and the underlying bid documents.
After waiting 24 days to confirm the records were, in fact, disclosable, the state said it would need an additional 28 days to provide them. At 5:09 pm on the 28th day – Friday, July 3, a state holiday – CBS California received a presumably automated email informing us the state would need another two weeks to provide the contract the governor announced two months ago.
Until these public records are actually public, questions will continue to mount about how this deal was reached and how competing proposals were scored.
Day 1 | May 12
CBS California Investigates requested a copy of the Baby2Baby contract four days after Governor Newsom announced the partnership during a high-profile Capitol press conference.
The Governor’s Office referred the request to the California Health and Human Services Agency. Because of the intense public interest following the announcement, CBS California Investigates asked Deputy Secretary of External Affairs Sami Gallegos and Assistant Secretary of External Affairs Rodger Butler to forgo the formal California Public Records Act (CPRA) process and simply provide an expedited copy of the highly publicized contract.
Instead, Butler directed us to the Department of Health Care Access and Information (HCAI), the agency handling the procurement. HCAI acknowledged receipt of the request.
Day 7 | May 19
CBS California Investigates followed up with the HCAI, again requesting an expedited copy of the contract because we were on a deadline.
The agency responded that the request was being processed through the California Public Records Act, rather than providing the contract directly.
Day 14 | May 22
Exactly 10 calendar days after the request, the HCAI invoked the CPRA’s “unusual circumstances” provision, extending the deadline another 14 days to determine whether the requested records were disclosable.
The agency wrote that it needed additional time because “two or more components of the agency have substantial subject matter interest” in the request.
Day 28 | June 5
Fourteen days later, the HCAI agreed that the records are public.
The agency determined that the Baby2Baby contract, procurement packet, scope of work, bid scoring sheets and vendor award documents are disclosable public records.
However, instead of releasing them, the HCAI said it would need another three to four weeks to identify and produce the records.
AB 1821 | While we waited
While CBS California Investigates waited for the records, lawmakers advanced AB 1821, legislation that originally proposed sweeping changes to California’s Public Records Act.
After bipartisan criticism and opposition from transparency advocates, many of the bill’s most controversial provisions were removed. However, the amended bill still gives agencies additional time to respond to public records requests.
Day 52 | July 3
Instead of receiving the records, CBS California Investigates received another email at 5:09 p.m. on the final day of the promised three-to-four-week production window.
Rather than releasing the records, the state delayed production another two weeks, pushing the expected release well past the two-month mark.
Day 56 and counting
Fifty-six days after CBS California Investigates requested the Baby2Baby contract, and 60 days after Governor Newsom publicly announced the partnership, Californians still have not been allowed to review:
- The executed contract
- The procurement packet
- The scope of work
- The competitive bid scoring sheets
- The vendor award documents
Translation: The Newsom administration spent 24 days determining whether records already identified as public under California law could be released. It then delayed producing those records for another six weeks. If the state meets its latest deadline, Californians will have waited 66 days from our request and 70 days from the governor’s announcement to see the contract.
Gavin Newsom is taking a victory lap today on the first anniversary of California’s film and TV tax credits program being jacked up to $750 million, and the potential presidential contender has Disney, a Shrek prequel, and Ben Affleck along for the ride.
Along with an untitled Pixar project, the Argo Oscar winner’s upcoming Gingerbread Men, the Hailee Steinfeld and Rashida Jones-starring animated Hexed from the House of Mouse and DreamWorks’ Eddie Murphy-led Donkey were among 41 films that received $187 million in incentives today.
The Pixar flick was awarded the most in credits with $26.7 million in what has become a very helpful program for animation the past 365 days. Not that ‘toons don’t pay off. The four animated features are estimated to inject $711 million into the Golden State’s economy. That breaks down to about “$145 million in qualified wages, employing over 1,900 cast and crew members” for the home of Hollywood, according to the California Film Commission.
“We received the approval letter informing us that Gingerbread Men was accepted into the California Film and Television Tax Credit Program,” Affleck said of the indie from his and pal Matt Damon‘s Artists Equity.“ Gingerbread Men got $7 million from the state.
“Under the program, we have been able to make the films Argo, Unstoppable, and Accountant 2,” Affleck added. “Our upcoming film, Gingerbread Men, will be filmed in Los Angeles, California – close to our company office and the best and most experienced cast and crew, vendors, and service providers. Let’s continue to keep the California film industry alive with the help of the California Film and Television Tax Credit Program!”
Take a look at the full list of conditionally approved awards here:
Overall, the bean counters in Sacramento anticipate the 41 projects will generate $1.1 billon “in direct production spending in California” and “$145 million in qualified wages, employing over 1,900 cast and crew.”
That figure factors nicely into some very big numbers that Governor Newsom heralded Tuesday.
Specifically, $6.6 billion has been created for the state’s economy over the past year out of 170 credited projects. While that sum sounds (and is) impressive, the figure that may get the town truly jazzed is the “nearly 35,000 cast and crew jobs across California” the Governor’s team says have come out of the last year since the program allotment leapt up.
To that, including the awarded big screeners revealed today, Gov. Newsom sure sounded like he was prepping a stump speech for the Heartland on the California miracle, so to speak.
“California has long set the standard for entertainment production, creating good-paying jobs and showcasing the creativity and innovation that define the Golden State,” the governor asserted. “The first year of the expanded tax credit program is already delivering results — generating billions in economic activity, creating opportunities for businesses and the workforce, and bringing more productions home to California.”
Maybe the biggest praise came from Burbank.
“Governor Newsom, and the legislative leaders who have worked to strengthen opportunities for production here as we continue to invest in California’s world-class creative workforce,” said Alan Bergman, Disney Entertainment Studios chairman Tuesday.
Reading the tea leaves-ish, does that mean we’ll see some Marvel movies coming over from the tax incentive rich UK soon?
Just askin’.
See video of Waymo driving through exploding fireworks
Waymo passengers were stunned as the self-driving car rolled into exploding fireworks in San Francisco during the Fourth of July celebration.
A man has been arrested for involuntary manslaughter after a woman was killed and three other people were injured from a fireworks explosion in Southern California over the holiday weekend, authorities said.
Officers responded at about 8:30 p.m. local time on July 4 to a reported vehicle fire in a neighborhood in the city of Chino, California, the Chino Police Department said in a news release. Chino is located in western San Bernardino County, about 35 miles east of Los Angeles.
When officers arrived, police said they found that an explosion had occurred and multiple people had been injured. Officers immediately provided first aid to several victims with serious injuries. A nearby vehicle was also engulfed in flames as a result of the explosion, according to police.
“Based on the preliminary investigation, detectives believe a large quantity of fireworks ignited, causing the explosion,” police said in the news release, adding that the incident remains under investigation.
Derion Tradon James Jr., 28, was detained at the scene and later booked into the West Valley Detention Center for involuntary manslaughter, police said. The case will be submitted to the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office for review.
Following the incident, police said investigators and fire personnel remained at the scene as they worked to ensure the area was safe and evaluate any remaining fireworks, debris and other hazards. Several nearby roadways were closed over the weekend.
The Chino Police Department is leading the criminal investigation. The Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner will conduct the death investigation, while the Ontario Fire Department Bomb Squad is assisting investigators with the explosives-related part of the case.
Woman died at hospital after sustaining severe injuries
Three people were transported to local hospitals with severe injuries, according to police. One of the victims, a woman in her 20s, later died from her injuries at a hospital.
Her identity is being withheld pending identification and notification of next of kin by the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner, police said.
The two other victims suffered serious injuries and are expected to survive, police said. Their identities have not been released.
A fourth victim, who police described as a juvenile, was taken to a hospital for evaluation and “has since been released to a parent or guardian,” according to the news release.
Latest fireworks-related incident during July Fourth celebrations
Ahead of July Fourth celebrations, experts had warned the public to stay safe around fireworks, citing a spike in the number of fireworks-related fatalities in 2025.
According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), there were 15 deaths and 13,000 injuries in the United States attributed to either the misuse of or malfunctions with fireworks. Of those, 1,300 emergency-room-treated injuries were caused by sparklers.
About 68% of all fireworks injuries occur in July; July Fourth is the most injury-prone day, with 27% of total injuries, USA TODAY previously reported. New Year’s Day is the second-largest, with 5.5% of total injuries.
Numerous incidents involving fireworks were reported across the country over the holiday weekend, including several in Southern California.
In Los Angeles County, the fire department said a man was critically injured after a fire burned at least two cars in a parking lot in the Wilmington neighborhood on July 3. The incident also prompted the evacuation of a nearby hotel and a two-story single-family home, displacing 10 adults and two children.
After extinguishing the flames with foam, crews discovered “what appeared to be potentially dangerous explosives/fireworks” near the vehicles, and the Los Angeles Police Department bomb squad determined that “commercial grade fireworks” were found on the ground next to the burned vehicles, according to the department.
Fourth of July celebrations in Newport Beach, California, a coastal city in Orange County, led to over 400 arrests after large crowds became disorderly, according to police. “As the crowd rapidly grew, individuals engaged in increasingly dangerous and unlawful behavior” including by “blocking roadways, restricting emergency vehicle access and throwing explosive mortars, fireworks and other projectiles at police officers,” the city of Newport Beach said.
Contributing: Stephen J. Beard and Paris Barraza, USA TODAY
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