Dyslexia Advocacy Action Group Inc

Protecting Every Child's Right to Learn How to Read

Sag Harbor, NY   |  https://www.dyslexiaadvocacyactiongroup.org

Mission

Our mission is to stop the school-to-prison pipeline by advocating, organizing literacy interventions for underprivileged children, children in foster care, incarcerated youths, and young adults. Studies indicate that 80% of youths brought before courts have weak literacy skills (National Assessment of Literacy, 2016). In addition, almost half of the population of incarcerated adults have dyslexia (Moody, 2000), and three out of four people on welfare cannot read (National Assessment of Literacy, 2016). Literacy is an essential component to fully developing as a member of society. Therefore, children who do not learn to read and write are effectively disenfranchised.

Ruling year info

2019

Executive Director

Helen Roussel

Main address

PO Box 2621

Sag Harbor, NY 11963 USA

Show more contact info

EIN

83-3085334

NTEE code info

Disabled Persons' Rights (R23)

Community, Neighborhood Development, Improvement (S20)

Elementary, Secondary Ed (B20)

IRS filing requirement

This organization is required to file an IRS Form 990-N.

Communication

Programs and results

What we aim to solve

SOURCE: Self-reported by organization

Funding, as we just started our 501c3

Our programs

SOURCE: Self-reported by organization

What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?

School Reform & Advocacy

We advocate for students who are not making progress at their school districts, cannot read, and are in crisis. We educate parents, teachers, and administrators about the science of reading. We partner with school districts to train teachers in science-based approaches to teaching reading.

Overwhelming scientific evidence indicates that explicit, sequential, systematic and cumulative reading instruction is the critical foundation for building literacy skills. When students receive daily science-based explicit instruction from kindergarten it prevents learning differences from becoming disabilities.
Our goal is to improve levels of literacy across entire school districts.
1) We advocate for individual students in crisis
2) We support parents and in some cases attend school meetings with them
3) We hold parent and teacher support/educational/advocacy workshops
3) We organize cost-effective teacher training in science-based approaches to reading (and writing) instruction.
4) We organize school district workshops to ensure implementation, consistency and teaching to fidelity.

Population(s) Served
Children and youth

Students who are not taught to read at their public schools usually blame themselves, they lose confidence, and their self-esteem suffers. The truth is the majority of schools in the USA adopted the "cueing system," a whole-word approach. This system has been championed by Columbia University (Teachers College) for more than fifteen years. Their reading program involves instructing illiterate students to flip through books and guess words by looking at the picture on the page, and if there is no picture, "guess." There is no scientific evidence to support this method. It is well documented that most of the population learn to read via explicit, sequential, systematic instruction.

The National Assessment of Adult Literacy states that 80% of youths in front of courts have low literacy skills. Furthermore, up to 85% of people in prison cannot read, and of those, nearly half are dyslexic.

Our programs educate and organize. We focus on women in prison as it is this population that receives the least funding and resources furthermore, dyslexia and low literacy levels tend to affect the whole family,

Population(s) Served
People with learning disabilities
At-risk youth
Adults
Economically disadvantaged people
People with learning disabilities
At-risk youth
Adults
Economically disadvantaged people

Where we work

Our Sustainable Development Goals

SOURCE: Self-reported by organization

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Goals & Strategy

SOURCE: Self-reported by organization

Learn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.

Charting impact

Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.

Our goal is to ensure all students are given the instruction required to become skilled readers at their public school.

We advocate for students who are not making progress at school and are at risk of dyslexia.
​We organize cost effective teacher training, hold school district workshops, parent support groups and train parent advocates. Our mission is to ensure every child at risk of dyslexia learns how to read at their public school. Our programs and approaches will improve reading skill levels for entire school districts.

Dyslexia is a symptom of a larger misunderstanding about how to teach reading.

-We advocate for individual students
-Train volunteer parent advocates
-Organize cost effective teacher professional development training
-Organize cost effective school psychologist professional development training
-Implement a mentoring system for teachers
-Hold educational professional development workshops for entire school districts
-Identify women in prison at risk of dyslexia
-Remediate women in prison with dyslexia, create network of support for families at risk of dyslexia

We have a growing network of volunteer parents and another 5 workshops to run across New York State.
We are a major grassroots movement pushing for science based reading instruction that is explicit, systematic, multi sensory structured literacy.
We have professional, expert teacher and psychologist trainers and programs to ensure teaching to fidelity, including a teacher mentoring system. We have 15 experts and professionals to consult on our Advisory Council.

We currently have a major grassroots movement across NYS and another 5 parents support workshops planned for the first week in December. We have a number of parent volunteers already and we are planning our parent advocate training for January.
We have:
- Advocated for 20 students at their school district (all of them are now receiving remediation & making progress)
- Organized training for 28 teachers
- Organized training for 18 school psychologists
- Held two parent support workshops in October, planning another five upstate NY
- We have 15 parent volunteer advocates (we hope to start training in January)
- 200 parents signed up for our newsletter on our website

Financials

Dyslexia Advocacy Action Group Inc
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Operations

The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.

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Dyslexia Advocacy Action Group Inc

Board of directors
as of 02/22/2022
SOURCE: Self-reported by organization
Board chair

Ms. Evelyn Gross Whitebay

Dyslexia Advocacy Action Group

Term: 2018 -

Sarah McCandless Quinn

Treasurer

Janine Mahoney

Secretary

Organizational demographics

SOURCE: Self-reported; last updated 1/6/2022

Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? GuideStar partnered on this section with CHANGE Philanthropy and Equity in the Center.

Leadership

The organization's leader identifies as:

Race & ethnicity
White/Caucasian/European
Gender identity
Female, Not transgender (cisgender)
Sexual orientation
Decline to state
Disability status
Person without a disability

Race & ethnicity

Gender identity

 

Sexual orientation

Disability