Giving Compass' Take:

• At two Brooklyn Elementary schools, the Department of Education will host interventions to screen entires grades of students for dyslexia as part of a pilot program. 

•  What are the benefits of screening entire classes? How can this intervention expand across school districts? 

• Here are some tools that can help students with dyslexia. 

The Department of Education will for the first time screen entire grades for students who are at risk of dyslexia, as part of a trial-run that got underway this week at two Brooklyn elementary schools, officials told THE CITY.

The total upfront cost: $2,000.

The effort, which has been pushed by parents, advocates and some elected officials for years, will have teachers assess the reading-related skills of roughly 300 first- and second-graders at PS 107 in Park Slope and PS 130 in Windsor Terrace, both in District 15.

Nearly 75,000 NYC public school students — out of a total of 1.13 million — have been classified as having a learning disability, according to the latest education department data.

Dyslexia, which is marked by language-processing challenges that impede reading, is the most common learning disability. But parents and advocates say it’s vastly under-identified, and until recently wasn’t even a term used by city schools on special needs students’ individualized education plans, or IEPs.

Education officials say they offer schools a variety of screening tools to help identify certain learning disabilities. But this is believed to be the first effort to universally screen whole grades of students for challenges associated with dyslexia, administrators and advocates say.

Experts estimate that roughly 10% to 20% of students are somewhere on the dyslexia spectrum — meaning that potentially thousands of city public school students have gone for years without proper diagnosis. The experts say early intervention offers the best chance for catching students up to their peers.

Read the full article about pilot programs for dyslexia in NYC schools by Yoav Gonen at Chalkbeat.