At the end of third grade, Tracy Patton realized her son was not succeeding. He was struggling with his confidence and was off task during language art lessons.

“When you’re going into fourth grade and your child can’t read, it’s a very helpless feeling,” she said.

Patton was apprehensive about enrolling her son in The Summit School, a private school in Edgewater, where the curriculum and culture is built for students with dyslexia. At first, she thought it was for students with behavioral issues, but after meeting with administrators and seeing how rigorous the evaluations and curriculum were, she enrolled her son.

“It is completely life-changing,” said Patton. “All of a sudden, nobody can read, so the stigma is gone, and he’s become self-confident and a leader.”

Roughly one in five people have a form of dyslexia, according to the International Dyslexia Association. It often goes undiagnosed and its effect on a student can range from being minimally disruptive to a major barrier to academic success.

“It’s not just because they see letters and words backward. They don’t sequence and hear the sounds internally in their brain the way they need to,” said Joan Mele-McCarthy, the school’s executive director. “How we teach is as important as what we teach.”

Founded in 1989, the school has an enrollment of 110 students with dyslexia and other learning differences in grades one through eight. The 15-acre campus is on a former horse farm 8 miles south of Annapolis.

“The biggest difference between these kids and other kids is that they faced such adversity. Most of them come in with a really negative outlook on academics and education,” said Kimberly Simpson, who teaches English to fourth and fifth graders. “Once they get here, they feel really validated, because they’re not constantly being told that they’re wrong because they’re being taught in a way that their brain can actually understand.”

Dyslexia is a specific neurobiological learning difference characterized by difficulty with word recognition, poor spelling, and insufficient decoding ability, according to the International Dyslexia Association. This results from a deficit in the brain’s comprehension of the phonological component of language — the relationship between speech and sound. In non-specialized schools, students with dyslexia are usually given Individual Education Plans, which ensure accommodations like extra time or reading assistance on tests. Still, some diagnosed students struggle to succeed or do not meet the criteria for support.

“When children are in other settings where 70% or 80% of the children are achieving easily, and they’re not, it’s very disconcerting,” said Mele-McCarthy. “When they get here, they understand, ‘Wow, these kids are just like me. They’re smart, but they can’t read.’”

The curriculum taught at Summit closely resembles that at other schools, with a few key differences.

“We’re an academically rigorous school, so when we take a child, we make a promise to the parent. We don’t take children we don’t reasonably think we’re trained to do well with,” said Mele-McCarthy.

After a few months at Summit, Patton’s son was picking up books and reading independently. When she enrolled him, he was reading at 16 words per minute.

His most recent testing shows him at around 142 words per minute.

Summit takes some pressure off parents, who often had the added stress of making sure homework was done at other schools. In contrast, students at Summit are instructed to call their teachers if they need help, and parents are asked to let their child work independently.

Simpson, who joined the faculty last year, enrolled her son in third grade. At the time, he was several grade levels behind in reading. Now, as an eighth grader, he’s reading above grade level.

“It’s actually incredibly remarkable,” said Simpson. “I thought it was going to be a long, hard road where we weren’t sure if he would go to mainstream high school, and we didn’t think college was even an option.

Her son is set to enter a high school with a mainstream curriculum next fall.

After graduation, Summit students go on to a variety of high schools, both public and private. Overall, students with learning differences have a 72% high school graduation rate, but for Summit alums, it’s 98%, and 85% go on to higher education.

The Summit School Resource Center also offers services to families and professionals outside the school, including testing, consultations, benchmarks, individual tutoring, summer programs, workshops and professional development

“Not everybody can get to the Summit, whether physically, geographically, or economically. Many kids and families struggle with ways to help, and they need the information to know what dyslexia is,” said Mele-McCarthy.

During October, Dyslexia Awareness Month, some students will do reports on successful people with dyslexia, such as Muhammad Ali, Anderson Cooper and Roald Dahl.

“There’s no secret. Kids know why they’re here,” said Mele-McCarthy. “The kids understand, they’re not ashamed and they understand who they are as a learner.”

Have a news tip? Contact Bridget Byrne at bbyrne@baltsun.com, 443 690 7205 and x.com/brdgtbyrn.