Language Literacy Evaluation and Consultation

• A 90-minute evaluation that we ask parents to observe so that they can better understand their child’s challenges.
• A comprehensive, written diagnostic report that can be shared with schools to potentially help your child get accommodations like extra time on tests.
• A 30-minute follow-up consultation with the therapist to review the evaluation report, discuss your questions and help you decide how best to help your child.
• The personalized, one-on-one attention of an expert therapist trained in current research-based approaches including the world-renowned Structured Literacy (Orton-Gillingham) Approach.
• The proprietary Lexercise assessment battery that includes both traditional and cutting-edge evaluation tools.

Our evaluation is personalized, convenient and costs less than other evaluations at $945 for children and adults.

Lexercise uses a testing protocol based on research funded by the National Institutes of Health. This language-processing evaluation focuses on the neuro-linguistic skills that are known to be the underpinning of skilled reading and writing. Our evaluations are carried out by clinical educators whose training is consistent with the International Dyslexia Association’s Knowledge and Practice Standards for Teachers of Reading. The professionals are qualified to make an official diagnosis when indicated. If the Lexercise evaluation indicates a disability diagnosis, it will qualify your child under the federal law, The Americans with Disabilities Act, and can be used at any school to request a 504 Plan for academic accommodations*.

*Every school has its own procedures for granting accommodations. Therefore, it’s advisable to take the Lexercise sample report found on the Lexercise evaluation page to your school to ensure it fits their individual procedures.

The free screener is a fast, preliminary tool to identify if there may be a heightened risk of dyslexia for a child, but it does not produce a definitive diagnosis. On the other hand, the Full Evaluation can give a formal diagnosis. The findings are detailed in a 6-8 page report. The Full Evaluation is conducted by a professional clinician with deep experience working with individuals who have language processing differences.

• You can do it from home! Lexercise is the first organization to offer a systematic language-literacy evaluation online, so time is not wasted driving to and from clinics.
• Unlike testing designed only to determine a child’s eligibility for public school Exceptional Children’s Services, Lexercise’s evaluation goes beyond this to pinpoint your child’s processing problem(s) and determine where to begin therapy.
• Our evaluation diagnoses the root cause(s) of your child’s spelling, reading and/or writing problems and provides a clear path for getting help.
• You can usually get scheduled within days, normally no more than two weeks.
• You, the parent, are encouraged to be involved in the evaluation, not waiting in a reception room.

See their comments on our Testimonials page. Here’s one:

“I was very pleased with the entire evaluation process… It was thorough, personalized, and enlightening.” – Kris Bales, mother of dyslexic son in Georgia

To learn more about the Lexercise team, please go to our Therapists page.

Please see the brief video on our Evaluation page to get a feel for how it works.

• A computer with broadband Internet (Verizon, Comcast, Spectrum, etc.). A tablet or iPad is not sufficient.
• A microphone (your computer probably already has one built in)
• A webcam (your computer probably already has one built in)

Payment is made with credit/debit card at the time we schedule your appointment. You can also use a health savings account (HSA) or Flex card.

To schedule an evaluation just click “Get Started Now” at the top of this Full Evaluation page.

Many parents expect public schools to provide their struggling readers and writers with timely evaluation and therapy, and these parents often delay getting their kids the help they need until the school acts. Unfortunately, this “wait and hope” approach is rarely effective and has a costly impact on children:

• Good teachers often miss dyslexia.
• Navigating the public school bureaucracy to secure special attention often takes months or years. Meanwhile, children are falling further behind during the critical early-education period.
• Most schools are under-staffed and ill-equipped to administer a complete language processing evaluation.
• Even if you are able to get your child designated for special education, he or she will typically be taught in a group of children with widely ranging learning challenges, making targeted and specific treatment for dyslexia unlikely.
• Federal guidelines allow for schools to wait 90 days from request for testing until action is taken. That’s almost ⅓ of a school year–a long time to wait while the child is feeling like a failure and experiencing shame.

Of course, the evaluation therapists at Lexercise are qualified to officially diagnose reading problems including dyslexia.

We follow the guidelines of the National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD) on the diagnosis of dyslexia and disability determination. The NCLD has provided the following guidance about who may diagnose dyslexia:

“Professionals with expertise in several fields are best qualified to make a diagnosis of dyslexia. The testing may be done by a single individual or by a team of specialists. A knowledge and background in psychology, reading, language and education is necessary. The tester must have a thorough working knowledge of how individuals learn to read and why some people have trouble learning to read. They must also understand how to administer and interpret evaluation data and how to plan appropriate reading interventions.”

We follow the following standards of the International Dyslexia Association:

• Background information should be included.
• Intelligence testing is no longer considered necessary. Instead, oral language abilities (listening and speaking) are more predictive.
• Oral language skills should be documented.
• Word recognition (word reading) should be tested.
• Decoding should be tested.
• Spelling should be tested.
• Phonological processing should be tested.
• Automaticity /fluency skills should be tested.
• Text Reading /comprehension should be tested.
• Vocabulary knowledge should be tested.
• Evaluation outcomes should provide the framework for the detailed evaluation of relative strengths and weaknesses across the various skill areas.
• Diagnosis should be made by a professional who is thoroughly familiar with the important characteristics of language-literacy disorders /dyslexia.
• Intervention planning recommendations should be included in the written report.
• Documentation should acknowledge that the “specific criteria, such as cutoff scores for eligibility [for special education] vary from state to state”

Full article here…