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Dyslexia often shows uneven abilities, with strong reasoning or language alongside reading difficulty.

Research shows IQ discrepancy should not determine who receives early reading intervention.

But those findings do not mean intelligence or cognitive strengths are irrelevant to dyslexia.

Education should identify and cultivate dyslexic students’ strengths while addressing reading challenges.

At a recent U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee hearing on the “Science of Reading,” witnesses highlighted two points that now command broad agreement in education. First, many struggling readers benefit from early, explicit instruction in decoding and other foundational reading skills. Second, intelligence scores should never be used to deny a child access to effective reading instruction.

Both principles are widely supported. But the current policy conversation has begun to blur them with a different question: how dyslexia itself should be defined.

In several recent debates about dyslexia policy and definitions—including discussions surrounding federal legislation such as the proposed 21st Century Dyslexia Act—the longstanding idea that dyslexia often involves unexpected difficulty with reading has come under pressure. Traditionally, the term “unexpected” referred to a familiar educational pattern: students whose word-level reading lagged far behind their reasoning, language comprehension, curiosity, and conceptual learning.

Removing that concept may appear to simplify definitions. In practice, it risks harming some students’ education.

For decades, the concept of unexpectedness served a practical purpose in classrooms. Teachers often encountered students who struggled with printed words yet demonstrated a strong understanding when ideas were discussed orally. These students could explain concepts clearly, ask insightful questions, and grasp complex relationships even while reading remained slow or........

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