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October is National Dyslexia Awareness Month, and at Louisiana Key Academy, the school is turning struggling readers into confident students with strong academic skills across all areas while educating them in a safe environment with highly trained teachers.
Dyslexia impacts approximately 1 in 5 people and affects all races and socioeconomic groups. At LKA, emphasis is on early identification since these students experience difficulties with decoding words, reading words fluently and spelling.
In Louisiana, state law requires school districts to report the number of students with a dyslexia diagnosis, but in 2022, the number reported was less than 1 percent of the overall student population. Knowing approximately 20 percent of the population has dyslexia, “that points to a lack of identification and to the importance of the resources that Louisiana Key Academy provides,” says Andromeda Cartwright, LKA’s chief academic officer.
LKA’s Baton Rouge Campus was founded in 2013 to serve local students with dyslexia who struggle in a traditional school setting. Currently, LKA offers Kindergarten through 9th grade, and plans are underway to 
expand to 10th grade next year. LKA also has a Northshore Campus in Covington that offers Kindergarten through 5th grade and a Caddo Campus in Shreveport that offers Kindergarten through 4th grade.
At LKA, educators across all content areas are knowledgeable about dyslexia and are trained in evidence-based curriculum. “In a traditional school, dyslexic students may get pulled out for 30 minutes a few times a week, but then they have to go back into a traditional classroom, and they’re expected to just fill in the gaps,” Cartwright says. “Here, we can focus our entire school day on dyslexia.”
In LKA’s K-5 program, highlights include 90 minutes of specialized reading therapy every day, small reading groups of six to seven students and smaller classroom sizes overall. Reading teachers undergo a two-year training program to become Certified Academic Language Therapists.
In grades 6-9, the focus remains on small class sizes, grade-level rigor with 
project-based learning, faculty that understands dyslexia, accommodations and technology. Students leave LKA prepared for college and real-world jobs.
Rather than using lectures, LKA brings concepts to life. Math Alley consists of number lines, arrays, various shapes, a clock and a chess board painted on the sidewalk. Students explore concepts like circumference, area and telling time using a hands-on approach. In Math Kitchen, they use math and science skills to perform cooking tasks.
With the focus on early identification, students accepted into LKA’s kindergarten have been identified as at-risk for dyslexia. Official testing occurs in the spring of kindergarten year and is free for families through a partnership with Dyslexia Resource Center. In fact, anyone that applies to the school receives a free evaluation as part of the admissions process if they are identified as being at risk for dyslexia.
As a public charter school, LKA is able to provide tuition free enrollment. Individual Education Plans, or IEPs, are built into the classroom structure and common accommodations include extended time for tests and assignments and the opportunity to have assignments read aloud. LKA is working to bring additional technology into classrooms, including speech to text.
Monica Owens, principal of LKA’s Baton Rouge campus, invites parents to an Open House Nov. 4. at 10 a.m. The event is designed to help guide families through the admissions process and familiarize them with the Louisiana Key Academy history, campus and curriculum.
To learn more about LKA, visit lkaschools.com.
