Myomancy ADHD, Dyslexia and Autism

The Dyslexia Institutes of America was set up by Dr Elaine Jett in 1997 to work with dyslexic children using her own treatment program. The treatment is now franchised across the US. The treatment appears to be an education / therapist based approach, focusing on teaching cognitive and phonetic skills in weekly sessions.

The site has an analysis of its results by John C. Ory, Professor, Dept. of Human Resource Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This is not a peer reviewed paper and cannot be considered truly independent as Dr Ory was a paid consultant. Also the data used was collected by the centre and not by independent evaluation. The study only covered 33 children over a twelve month period (77 over six months). The report has a number of graphs showing improvements, some of them quite impressive gains of about three grade years after twelve months of treatment. However some graphs, in some key areas such as memory, no improvement has been shown and in others the increase is only equivalent to 1 grade year after 12 months of coaching. As a scientific study this paper would be heavily criticised as there is no control group receiving no coaching or 1-to-1 coaching using normal educational methods.

Looking at the information on setting up a franchise, one of the ‘ownership advantages’, i.e. what is good for the person running the centre, is this little gem:

Clients remain in therapy for a minimum of one and a half years and as long as three years

The fact the the client has to attend, and pay, for up to three years is a great advantage to a franchise owner but not to a parent or child.

Based on the information provided by the Dyslexia Institutes of America on the web sites and on bullitin boards (see below) I am doubtful that they offer the best approach for most children. It is my guess that a child receiving 1-to-1 coaching from any suitably experienced teacher would have similar results.

This also appears to be a Dyslexia Institutes of America offical web site.

I’ve found two bulletin boards where comments have been posted about DIA and DIA franchises have commented back: International Dyslexia Association forums; I Speak of Dreams blog entry.