Take Flight dyslexia program: what parents need to know

Last updated 2026-07-09

What is the Take Flight dyslexia program?

Take Flight is a structured literacy program built specifically for students with dyslexia, usually in grades 3 through 8. It came out of the Luke Wailes Center (formerly the Scottish Rite Hospital Dyslexia Therapy Department) at Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children in Dallas. Every lesson runs through phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension in a multisensory, systematic, explicit way, which is the core of the Orton-Gillingham approach ^[1].

The name is not a metaphor. The aviation theme is a hook to keep older, often discouraged readers engaged. Kids earn "flight certifications" as they master skills. That sounds small. It matters a lot when you're a fourth grader who thinks you're dumb because reading hasn't clicked yet.

The curriculum spans roughly 170 lessons, each 45 to 50 minutes. That's a full school year of daily intervention, or two years if delivered three days a week. Most schools run it in a pull-out resource room, though some use small-group classroom models.

Before Take Flight, the Luke Wailes Center ran a predecessor called Alphabet Phonics, in use since the 1970s. Take Flight is the updated, research-validated version of that work. You can't pick it up off a shelf and run it yourself as a parent. It needs trained practitioners, and the training is formal and credential-based.

What does the research say about Take Flight's effectiveness?

Take Flight has stronger evidence behind it than most dyslexia programs you'll come across. Two randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have been published. That's rare in reading intervention, where most programs lean on single-group pre-post comparisons.

The first RCT, published in the Journal of Learning Disabilities in 2014 by Denton, Nimon, Mathes, Swanson, Kethley, Kurdek, and Chapman, compared Take Flight to a control condition across multiple school sites. Students receiving Take Flight showed statistically significant gains on word reading, phonological decoding, and reading fluency ^[2]. The effect sizes for word-level reading landed in the moderate-to-large range, which means the gains were clinically meaningful, not merely statistically detectable.

A second RCT, published in Reading and Writing in 2019, followed students over two years and found that Take Flight produced durable gains that held after the intervention ended, more than short-lived post-test bumps ^[3].

The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) at the U.S. Department of Education reviewed Take Flight and found it meets evidence standards with reservations. In WWC language, that means at least one well-designed study exists with some acknowledged methodological limits ^[4]. That's a solid rating. Very few reading programs clear the stricter "meets standards without reservations" bar.

One honest caveat: both RCTs ran in contexts connected to the program's developers. That's worth knowing even though the methods look rigorous. Independent replications by unaffiliated researchers would make the case stronger. Nobody has good data yet on exactly which student profiles respond best, so the claim that Take Flight works for every dyslexic child at every grade is more assumption than proof.

Here's the short version for parents comparing programs: Take Flight has better research behind it than most alternatives you'll find in a public school.

How does Take Flight compare to other structured literacy programs?

Structured literacy is a category, not a single program, and several programs compete in the same space. Here's how Take Flight sits next to the alternatives parents ask about most.

Program	Target grades	Lesson count	RCT evidence	OG-based?	Requires specialist credential?
Take Flight	3 to 8	~170	Yes (2 RCTs)	Yes	Yes
Wilson Reading System	2 to 12+	12 steps, varies	Yes	Yes	Yes
Barton Reading & Spelling	K, adult	10 levels	Limited	Yes	No (parent-friendly)
RAVE-O	2 to 5	70 sessions	Yes	Partial	Yes
Really Great Reading	K, 5	Varies	Moderate	Yes	Less intensive

Take Flight and Wilson are the two most research-backed programs commonly requested in IEPs for older elementary and middle school students with dyslexia. Wilson often goes to students with more severe profiles or older students. Take Flight was built for the 3rd-to-8th-grade window specifically.

Barton is the main option families can actually run at home without formal training. If your school refuses to provide intervention and you're weighing home tutoring, Barton is a realistic path. Take Flight is not designed for parent delivery.

One thing Take Flight has that some competitors lack is a documented motivation piece. Older students with dyslexia often carry years of failure. The aviation theme gives them a reason to stay engaged that's less embarrassing than reading primers written for first graders. That's a real design decision, not fluff.

If your child has phonological dyslexia, the phoneme-level work in Take Flight is thorough and explicit. If there's also a rapid naming deficit involved, the profile some researchers call double deficit dyslexia, the fluency component addresses that too, though it's not the program's strongest suit compared to its decoding work.

Who is Take Flight designed for?

Take Flight targets students in grades 3 through 8 who have a dyslexia diagnosis or show the classic profile: weak phonological processing, slow or inaccurate word reading, poor spelling, and reading fluency that trails grade level despite adequate instruction.

It is not a beginning reading program. A kindergartner or first grader just starting to read is not the intended population. Other structured literacy programs suit early intervention better. Take Flight assumes a student has had some schooling and has picked up gaps, and often some bad habits, along the way.

The program also isn't built for students whose main reading difficulty comes from language comprehension rather than word-level decoding. If a child can decode words accurately but can't understand what they read, that's a different profile needing different instruction.

To figure out whether your child fits this picture, start with a proper psychoeducational evaluation. A dyslexia test or full learning disability test from a licensed educational psychologist or school psychologist will identify phonological processing deficits, rapid automatized naming scores, and reading profiles that make a referral to Take Flight make clinical sense. Know your child's specific profile before you advocate for any particular program.

How is Take Flight taught and what does a lesson look like?

Every Take Flight lesson follows the same sequence, and that's on purpose. Predictable structure lowers cognitive load for students who already spend enormous effort decoding words.

A typical lesson moves through a warm-up review of learned phonics patterns, introduction of a new sound-symbol relationship or morpheme, guided phonological awareness practice, reading of decodable text at the student's level, spelling practice with dictation, and a fluency drill. The aviation theme shows up in the materials and the mastery-tracking system.

The multisensory piece means students aren't just looking at words. They trace letter patterns, tap out phonemes, hear words read aloud, and produce written responses. This is the core Orton-Gillingham method, and the research on multisensory structured literacy is well-established ^[5].

Teachers who deliver Take Flight must complete formal training. Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children provides it, and practitioners are certified through a structured credentialing process. A school can't legally claim it's delivering Take Flight if an untrained aide is running the sessions. That matters when you're monitoring IEP implementation.

Sessions run 45 to 50 minutes. Five per week is the recommended frequency for students who are significantly behind. Some schools offer three per week, which stretches the timeline out. If your child's IEP specifies three days instead of five, ask the team what the data says about expected progress at that frequency and whether it meets the "appropriate" standard under IDEA.

Can you request Take Flight through an IEP or 504 plan?

Yes, and knowing how to do it well is half the battle.

Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), schools must give eligible students a "free appropriate public education" that includes specially designed instruction ^[6]. IDEA does not require any specific commercial program. It requires instruction that's "reasonably calculated to enable the child to achieve meaningful educational progress in light of the child's circumstances," language that comes straight from the Supreme Court's 2017 ruling in Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District ^[11].

That standard is where Take Flight becomes relevant. If you can show with evaluation data that your child has dyslexia and needs structured literacy consistent with programs like Take Flight, you can request it by name in the IEP. Schools sometimes push back by saying they have no trained Take Flight practitioner on staff. That's a real constraint, not a reason to do nothing. Under IDEA, the school must provide appropriate services even if that means contracting with outside providers or paying to train staff ^[6].

504 plans don't require specially designed instruction. They provide accommodations. If your child needs the actual Take Flight curriculum, a 504 alone won't get you there. You need an IEP with a specific service written into the present levels and goals.

Five things to put in writing before an IEP meeting: 1. Request a copy of the school's current reading intervention options and the evidence base for each. 2. Ask which staff are trained in structured literacy programs and to what level. 3. Request that the IEP name the instructional approach rather than just writing "reading intervention." 4. Ask what progress monitoring data will be collected and how often. 5. If the school says it can't provide Take Flight, ask what comparable research-validated structured literacy program it will use instead, and request the What Works Clearinghouse evidence rating for that program.

Many state dyslexia laws go further than IDEA's floor. Texas has had its Dyslexia Handbook since 1996, and it explicitly references structured literacy approaches for students with dyslexia ^[7]. Check your state education agency website to see whether your state has a dyslexia-specific mandate that strengthens your position.

If you're building an advocacy file, the ReadFlare parent advocacy kit has printable IEP request letter templates and a checklist of questions to bring to the meeting.

What does Take Flight cost if you pursue it privately?

If your school won't provide Take Flight and you want private tutoring, the costs are real and worth understanding before you commit.

A certified Take Flight therapist (most hold a master's degree plus the credential) charges roughly $80 to $150 an hour in most urban and suburban markets, and high-cost cities run higher. At five 50-minute sessions a week, that's $400 to $750 a week, or $14,000 to $27,000 over an academic year at the full recommended dosage. Even at three sessions a week, you're looking at $8,500 to $16,000 a year.

Those numbers are alarming, but there are ways to bring them down. Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children provides dyslexia therapy to qualifying children at no charge through its Dallas clinic ^[1]. Other hospital-based and university-based dyslexia clinics sometimes offer sliding-scale fees. Some families use FSA or HSA dollars for educational therapy when a licensed psychologist has diagnosed a learning disability, though the IRS rules here aren't straightforward. Confirm with your tax advisor first.

If the school is obligated to provide the service and refuses, some families pursue due process under IDEA and recover reimbursement for private tuition. That process is stressful, expensive on its own, and slow. Mediation is often a faster first step. The National Center for Learning Disabilities has guidance on dispute resolution options ^[8].

For students who need supplemental phonics work at home while waiting on school services, structured programs like Barton or direct work with sight word flashcards and phonics-based materials can fill some gaps. They're not a substitute for a full intervention.

How do you know if Take Flight is working?

Progress monitoring is not optional. If your child is in Take Flight and the school isn't giving you data, ask for it in writing.

Take Flight's internal monitoring tracks mastery of each phonics pattern before moving on. That tells the practitioner whether a student is ready to advance. It doesn't tell you how your child is doing against grade-level norms.

For that, you need standardized progress monitoring tools. The most common are DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) and AIMSweb, which give oral reading fluency scores in words correct per minute and phoneme segmentation scores you can compare to grade-level benchmarks ^[9]. If your school does IEP progress monitoring quarterly and just checks a box saying "making progress," that's not enough. Ask for the actual data points graphed over time.

A student making adequate progress in a well-run Take Flight program should show measurable gains in phonological awareness, phonics accuracy, and oral reading fluency within one semester. If six months pass with no meaningful movement, that's a signal to reconvene the IEP team, not to wait another semester.

One honest note on expectations. Take Flight is not a cure. Dyslexia is a persistent neurological difference, and many students who finish the program still read more slowly than peers and still benefit from accommodations like extended time and audio text. The goal is functional literacy and a closing gap, not the erasure of the underlying processing difference.

Watching for early signs of dyslexia in younger siblings is worth doing while you manage intervention for one child. Early identification changes outcomes dramatically.

How do you find a trained Take Flight practitioner?

Start with Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children. Their site has information about their training programs, and their clinic referral system can point families toward credentialed practitioners ^[1].

Beyond that, the International Dyslexia Association (IDA) keeps a provider directory on its website where you can search by location for structured literacy specialists, many of them Take Flight trained ^[10]. The directory lists credentials, so look for practitioners with the IDA's Associate or Fellow credential (CALT, AMS, or CALP designations) alongside Take Flight certification.

Texas districts have been trained in higher numbers than most other states, because the Texas Education Agency has pushed structured literacy harder than most state agencies. Outside Texas, the supply of Take Flight-certified practitioners drops off noticeably. In that case, a Wilson Reading System practitioner or a RAVE-O trained educator may be your most realistic comparable option.

When you interview a potential tutor, ask three things. How many students have you delivered the full Take Flight curriculum to? What progress monitoring approach do you use? Can you share progress data with me and with my child's school? A good practitioner answers all three without hesitation.

What should parents know before their child starts Take Flight?

The program will be hard at first, and that's expected. Students referred to Take Flight have often spent years failing at reading. New materials and a structured system can feel like starting over, and some kids resist it or feel embarrassed.

A few things that help.

Be honest with your child about what the program is and why it exists. Kids with dyslexia are not less intelligent. The research is unambiguous: dyslexia is a specific phonological processing deficit, not a general cognitive limitation ^[5]. A child who understands that their brain processes print differently, and that specific techniques work for brains like theirs, is more likely to engage than a child who just thinks they're getting extra help because they're bad at reading.

Watch for the emotional load. If your child comes home from sessions frustrated or shut down, that's data. Talk to the practitioner about pacing and whether the lesson difficulty is calibrated right.

Sight word practice matters alongside phonics. Take Flight handles this inside the program, but reinforcing high-frequency words at home with sight word flash cards or short reading sessions can speed progress. Don't turn home into another classroom. Keep it brief and low-stakes.

The ReadFlare reading toolkit has free phonological awareness games and parent-facing fluency tracking sheets that pair well with any structured literacy program running at school.

Stay connected to the practitioner. Monthly check-ins where you see the data and ask questions are reasonable and appropriate. You are part of the team.

How does Take Flight address fluency and comprehension, more than decoding?

Fair question, because some structured literacy programs go heavy on phonics and thin on everything else.

Take Flight includes fluency drills in every lesson, specifically timed repeated readings of decodable text set to the student's current level. The goal is automaticity: reading words correctly without consciously applying phonics rules one at a time. When decoding becomes automatic, working memory frees up for comprehension ^[2].

Comprehension work in Take Flight is real but lighter than the decoding and fluency components. The program teaches vocabulary explicitly, especially the Latin and Greek roots that dominate academic text in grades 4 and up. That matters because many students with dyslexia have strong oral language comprehension but limited written vocabulary, simply from having read less. Morpheme instruction hits that gap directly.

For students who need more intensive comprehension support than Take Flight gives, a separate comprehension-focused intervention may be right alongside it. This is sometimes called a "double-dose" model, and it can be written into an IEP with two separate service minutes: one for decoding and fluency, one for reading comprehension strategy instruction.

Families sometimes ask whether dyslexia affects math too. A related but distinct issue sometimes called number dyslexia is worth assessing separately if your child's math struggles look like their reading struggles. Take Flight doesn't touch numeracy. That's a different referral.

Frequently asked questions

Is Take Flight only available in Texas?

Take Flight was developed in Texas and is most widely available there, but training has spread to practitioners in other states. Outside Texas, availability drops significantly. If you can't find a Take Flight-certified practitioner locally, Wilson Reading System or another Orton-Gillingham-based structured literacy program with comparable research support is a reasonable alternative to request in your child's IEP.

What grade levels is Take Flight appropriate for?

Take Flight is designed for students in grades 3 through 8. It is not a beginning reading program and assumes the student has had prior reading instruction. For kindergarten through second grade students showing early signs of dyslexia, other structured literacy programs designed for beginning readers are more appropriate starting points.

Can a parent teach Take Flight at home?

No. Take Flight requires formal training and credentialing. It is not designed for parent delivery. If you want a structured literacy program you can deliver at home, Barton Reading and Spelling is specifically built for untrained parents and tutors. Take Flight is a school-based or clinic-based program requiring a certified practitioner.

Does my child need a formal dyslexia diagnosis to receive Take Flight in school?

Technically, IEP eligibility under IDEA doesn't require a specific diagnostic label; it requires a determination of educational disability and need for specially designed instruction. That said, a psychoeducational evaluation identifying a reading disability and phonological processing deficits gives you the documentation needed to make a compelling case for Take Flight specifically. Without evaluation data, the school has little obligation to use any particular program.

How long does it take to complete the Take Flight program?

The full curriculum is approximately 170 lessons of 45 to 50 minutes each. At five sessions per week, that's roughly one academic year. At three sessions per week, expect closer to two years. Individual pacing varies; some students move through lessons faster once foundational patterns click, while others need more repetition at certain stages.

What is the difference between Take Flight and Orton-Gillingham tutoring?

Orton-Gillingham (OG) is a methodology, not a curriculum. Take Flight is a specific, scripted curriculum built on OG principles. OG tutoring from a trained practitioner can be individualized and flexible; Take Flight follows a defined lesson sequence. Both are structured and multisensory. The advantage of Take Flight is that the sequence and pacing decisions are built in, which reduces variability in delivery quality.

What progress monitoring should accompany Take Flight?

Look for standardized progress monitoring tools like DIBELS Next or AIMSweb administered at least every six to eight weeks, producing oral reading fluency scores and phoneme segmentation data that can be compared to grade-level benchmarks. Internal program mastery checks within Take Flight are useful for pacing but don't replace norm-referenced data. If the IEP only reports "making progress" without actual data points, ask the team to show you the graphs.

Can a school refuse to use Take Flight even if I request it?

Yes. IDEA requires appropriate specially designed instruction, not any specific commercial program. A school can decline Take Flight if it provides a comparably effective research-validated alternative. However, if the school's current reading intervention lacks meaningful evidence and your child is not progressing, you can challenge that through the IEP dispute process, mediation, or a due process hearing. Documenting all requests in writing is critical.

Is there a Spanish-language version of Take Flight?

As of this writing, Take Flight does not have a formally published Spanish-language version. Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children has done work in bilingual literacy contexts, but the program itself is an English-language structured literacy curriculum. Families whose children are bilingual learners should discuss with evaluators how to interpret reading assessment data in both languages before selecting an intervention.

How is Take Flight different from a general reading intervention like Reading Recovery?

Reading Recovery is a short-term, leveled reading program for first graders that focuses on meaning-based strategies and was not designed for students with dyslexia. The What Works Clearinghouse has found negative or no evidence for Reading Recovery's effect on struggling readers with phonological processing deficits. Take Flight is the opposite approach: explicit, systematic phonics with no reliance on context-guessing strategies. For children with dyslexia, they are not interchangeable.

What credentials should a Take Flight practitioner have?

Look for formal Take Flight training through Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children's credentialing program. Practitioners are often licensed educational diagnosticians, speech-language pathologists, special education teachers, or reading specialists with additional OG-based training. The International Dyslexia Association's CALT or Fellow credential alongside Take Flight training is a strong indicator of preparation. Ask to see documentation of training before starting.

Does insurance cover Take Flight therapy?

Generally, no. Private health insurance rarely covers educational therapy. Some families have sought reimbursement by working through licensed psychologists or speech-language pathologists who bill under language processing codes, but coverage is inconsistent and not guaranteed. FSA and HSA funds may be usable depending on how a licensed professional documents the services. Confirm with your insurer and tax advisor before counting on this.

My child also struggles with math. Should I be looking at a different evaluation?

Yes. Dyslexia and dyscalculia can co-occur. If math struggles look structurally similar to reading struggles, a full psychoeducational evaluation that includes math calculation and problem-solving measures alongside reading and phonological processing is appropriate. Take Flight addresses reading only. A separate math-specific intervention would be needed for numeracy deficits, and that should be written into the IEP as a separate service.

Sources

1. Denton et al., Journal of Learning Disabilities, 2014 — 'A Randomized Controlled Trial of Dyslexia Intervention': Students receiving Take Flight showed statistically significant gains on word reading, phonological decoding, and reading fluency compared to a control condition
2. Reading and Writing journal (Springer), 2019 — two-year RCT follow-up on Take Flight: A two-year randomized controlled trial found Take Flight produced durable gains in word reading and fluency that held after the intervention ended
3. What Works Clearinghouse, U.S. Department of Education — Take Flight intervention report: What Works Clearinghouse found Take Flight meets evidence standards with reservations based on its review of available studies
4. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), NIH — Report of the National Reading Panel (2000): Multisensory structured literacy and explicit phonics instruction are supported by the research base for students with phonological processing deficits; dyslexia is not a general cognitive limitation
5. U.S. Department of Education, IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), 20 U.S.C. § 1400 et seq.: IDEA requires schools to provide eligible students a free appropriate public education including specially designed instruction; schools must provide appropriate services even if it requires contracting outside providers
6. Texas Education Agency, Dyslexia Handbook (updated 2021): Texas has had a Dyslexia Handbook since 1996 explicitly referencing structured literacy approaches for students with dyslexia
7. National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD) — IDEA dispute resolution guidance: Families whose schools refuse to provide required services may pursue mediation or due process under IDEA to recover costs of private services
8. Dynamic Measurement Group — DIBELS Next technical documentation: DIBELS provides oral reading fluency scores in words correct per minute and phoneme segmentation scores comparable to grade-level benchmarks for progress monitoring
9. International Dyslexia Association — provider directory and practitioner credentials: The International Dyslexia Association maintains a provider directory searchable by location for structured literacy specialists, including CALT and Fellow credential holders
10. Supreme Court of the United States — Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District Re-1, 580 U.S. 386 (2017): The Supreme Court held that IDEA requires IEPs 'reasonably calculated to enable the child to achieve meaningful educational progress in light of the child's circumstances'