Forty-nine states have formally defined dyslexia in statute. We haven’t. Now, the Legislature is moving a step closer to changing that.

So far, 2026 has brought a daily onslaught of bad news, and this week was one of the worst. So when House Bill 1891, which defines dyslexia and requires school screenings, unanimously passed third reading in the Senate on Friday, it stood out as a rare moment of positivity worth celebrating.

In an interview, Erica Nakanishi-Stanis, advocacy director of HawaiiKidsCAN, described the bill’s impact and value succinctly, “define dyslexia, define the right to evidence-based interventions, mandate dyslexia-sensitive screenings … and make the training, at least, available.”

This issue was something we addressed in 2013, my first legislative session, when the Legislature unanimously passed SCR 120, asking the Department of Education to evaluate its approach to dyslexia and literacy and report back to the Legislature. The DOE’s 2014 report committed to improvements, detailed funding needs, and highlighted staffing requirements.

Hawaiʻi has made progress throughout the last decade, identifying best practices, establishing a literacy goals frameworks, and providing training in structural literacy. In 2024, the state received a five-year, $60 million federal comprehensive literacy state development grant to help schools adopt structured literacy best practices.

However, only 60 of Hawaiʻi’s 258 schools opted into that grant. The other 198 schools won’t be required to use the grant’s structured literacy training or improved screening practices. That’s the problem with voluntary.

Nakanishi-Stanis frames the argument for this current bill’s mandated dyslexia-sensitive screenings around equity.

“If you are a dyslexic student or if you are having difficulty with sound-symbol recognition or phonemic awareness, then if you aren’t taught using structured literacy, your chances of actually learning to be competent and fluent in literacy are much lower,” she said. “If you go to a school where a teacher has undertaken that extra independent work, great, you’re lucky. If you go to a school where that training hasn’t been mandated, and the screener that’s used to catch early literacy struggles is not designed for that level of specificity … then you lose the lottery.”