Driven by years of pressure from parents and advocates, Colorado lawmakers are considering a bill that would require all schools to screen early elementary students for signs of dyslexia, an effort supporters say is critical to catching reading struggles before they deepen.
Last fall, desperate parents pleaded with the state's Board of Education to implement screening without delay, sharing stories of children who slipped through the cracks because no one recognized the signs.
Senate Bill 25-200, sponsored by Sen. Chris Kolker, D-Littleton, and co-sponsored by Sen. Kyle Mullica, D-Thornton, Rep. Eliza Hamrick, D-Centennial, and Rep. Matt Soper, R-Delta, would require school districts to implement a universal dyslexia screener or create their own process for identifying students with signs of dyslexia by the 2026-27 school year.
Kolker, who chairs the Senate Education Committee, described the bill as a foundational shift in how Colorado addresses reading struggles.
"If we have the ability to identify dyslexia in every child, then we have a responsibility to do it," he said in an interview.
Under the bill, dyslexia screening would begin in kindergarten and continue through third grade.
The bill outlines specific skills that any dyslexia screener must assess, including phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, word decoding and oral reading fluency, which are skills that are commonly associated with early signs of dyslexia.
By adding these criteria to state law, the bill requires the Colorado Department of Education to ensure that any interim literacy assessments it approves for use under the READ Act include tools or subtests that can reliably identify students at risk for dyslexia.
Interim assessments are periodic evaluations used by schools throughout the year to monitor students' reading progress and identify those who may need additional support.
"This gets those skills, like rapid naming and alphabetic knowledge, into statute, which means CDE has to include them in its next assessment review," said Lindsay Drakos, co-chair of COKID, a parent dyslexia advocacy organization. "So even if screening won't be perfect at first, districts will at least have to start, and they'll be more prepared once the assessment list changes."
The next interim assessment review process will take place in 2026.
Kolker said some reading assessments that districts currently use to determine how well students are reading, such as Curriculum Associates' i-Ready Diagnostic, don't adequately screen for dyslexia -- a common learning disability that affects word recognition, spelling and decoding skills despite typical intelligence and classroom instruction.
The bill doesn't come with a fiscal note, meaning no money is available for districts to purchase screening materials, so districts will be allowed to use a separate dyslexia screener if their current interim assessment doesn't meet the new standards.
Alternatives such as the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills, referred to as DIBELS, or Acadience Reading, both of which are designed to detect early signs of dyslexia, are free to download and administer manually.
Schools seeking additional support, such as training, digital scoring and progress monitoring, can access these tools at no cost through the state's Early Literacy Assessment Tool grant, which Kolker said could cover nearly every district in Colorado.
"No one who has applied for ELAT has been turned away," Drakos said. "It covers DIBELS, which already includes all the required subtests, and it comes with training and progress monitoring. Most of the state already uses it."
While the ELAT grant helps bridge current gaps, Kolker noted that broader investments will likely have to wait.
"We're forecasting budget deficits, so we're trying to do what we can while we wait," he said. "This is not an unfunded mandate. This is building the foundation."
The bill also makes school readiness assessments for kindergartners optional. Kolker said the current kindergarten readiness assessments are poorly understood and inconsistently used.
"Districts say they don't even know what happens to the data," he said. "Let's focus on where the deficiencies are with literacy, especially now that we have universal preschool and expect kids to be more ready."
Some opposition to the bill may come from the Governor's office, which has expressed concern over eliminating the readiness assessments, but Kolker said he's still waiting for a clear explanation of how that data is used.
He emphasized that the dyslexia screening provision has bipartisan support and backing from education groups such as the Colorado Association of School Executives and the Colorado Association of School Boards.
The bill represents a hard-won milestone for Drakos, who has advocated on this issue since 2019.
"We've been fighting for this since 2019, when barely any states required screening," Drakos said. "Now 43 do, and we're still waiting. We're so close. This has to be the year."
The bill is scheduled for public testimony before the Senate Education Committee at 1 p.m. on March 31.
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