Aug 10, 2026 · 55 min · 14 segments
In this powerful episode of Not Finished Yet, host Mark Kennedy speaks with Russell Van Brocklen — widely known as The Dyslexia Professor — about helping dyslexic children move from frustration…
Russell Van BrocklinGuestMarkHosttraditional schools failed? Do you think that's because they – is it the time? Because you mentioned rich people.
What's the difference? Why are they failing in traditional schools and not private? It can't just be down to resources, is it?
Oh, well, because – okay, again, so I'm going to compare windward Some people think this is a little off, but I think it's about right.
So what they do is they have just dyslexic and similar neurodiverse students.
The reason there's 75,000 a year, and by the way, the teachers are horrifically poorly compensated compared to public school teachers, is because the student to teacher ratio is four to one to five to one.
And literally what they're doing is they're using a approach that was perfected from the 20s through the 50s, hasn't changed a heck of a lot since.
And they are literally teaching dyslexics how to work in a way that research has shown the brain works differently.
It's two years after a bachelor's degree and it costs about $11,000 for a not-for-profit.
It is so massively resource intensive that it cannot be duplicated without an immense cost.
And you can ask them, how do we test for dyslexia in kindergarten? And they will tell you it costs about 40 or 50 dollars a kid.
Now, once you find out that they're dyslexic, they then go back to Yale.
How do we fix this? Well, in the United States, we have something called the National Institute of Health and the U.S.
Education Department that hands out 30 plus billion dollars a year in research grants.
Over the decades, they have accumulated courses that are proven successful to teach dyslectics to read kindergarten through third grade.
traditional schools failed? Do you think that's because they – is it the time? Because you mentioned rich people.
What's the difference? Why are they failing in traditional schools and not private? It can't just be down to resources, is it?
Oh, well, because – okay, again, so I'm going to compare windward Some people think this is a little off, but I think it's about right.
So what they do is they have just dyslexic and similar neurodiverse students.
The reason there's 75,000 a year, and by the way, the teachers are horrifically poorly compensated compared to public school teachers, is because the student to teacher ratio is four to one to five to one.
And literally what they're doing is they're using a approach that was perfected from the 20s through the 50s, hasn't changed a heck of a lot since.
And they are literally teaching dyslexics how to work in a way that research has shown the brain works differently.
It's two years after a bachelor's degree and it costs about $11,000 for a not-for-profit.
It is so massively resource intensive that it cannot be duplicated without an immense cost.
And you can ask them, how do we test for dyslexia in kindergarten? And they will tell you it costs about 40 or 50 dollars a kid.
Now, once you find out that they're dyslexic, they then go back to Yale.
How do we fix this? Well, in the United States, we have something called the National Institute of Health and the U.S.
Education Department that hands out 30 plus billion dollars a year in research grants.
Over the decades, they have accumulated courses that are proven successful to teach dyslectics to read kindergarten through third grade.
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3 of 10
Casey Reads Beyond Expectations
A struggling reader received an impossible book
Reed's Remarkable Academic Turnaround
One family tested a radically different approach
The Grammar Epiphany
A grammar mistake reveals how dyslexia works
+7 more clips · 7 min 34 sec of audio in all
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