Dyslexia & the EFA
Paying for Dyslexia Help With Your Arkansas EFA
Updated for the 2026-27 school year · Last reviewed July 27, 2026
Quick answer
The Arkansas EFA can fund the full dyslexia support path: a dyslexia evaluation (disability evaluations are a covered expense category), specialized tutoring (a statutory qualifying expense under Ark. Code Ann. § 6-18-2503(11)(B)(ii)), and therapy or specialized educational services for a student with special needs through licensed providers. The variable that matters most is not the funding — it is whether the tutor you hire actually knows how to teach a student with dyslexia.
Dyslexia help is one of the clearest use cases for an Education Freedom Account. Effective dyslexia intervention is specialized, one-on-one or small-group, and sustained — which makes it exactly the kind of expense families struggle to cover out of pocket and exactly what the EFA’s tutoring and disability-services categories were written for.
This guide covers the three things EFA funds can buy on the dyslexia path — evaluation, tutoring, and specialized services — then gets honest about what good dyslexia instruction looks like and which tutor credentials matter. (One scope note: the EFA requires leaving the public school system. If your child is a K-3 student staying in public school, Arkansas’s separate Literacy Tutoring Grant may be the program that fits — the differences are laid out in Literacy Tutoring Grant vs. the EFA.)
Step 1: If you don’t have a diagnosis, fund the evaluation
Many families suspect dyslexia for years before anyone confirms it. Under the EFA program, disability evaluations — including dyslexia evaluations — are a covered expense category. That means the diagnostic step that often gatekeeps everything else can be paid from your child’s account through an approved provider.
An evaluation does two jobs: it tells you whether dyslexia is actually what you are dealing with, and it maps the specific skill gaps — phonological awareness, decoding, fluency, spelling — so intervention can target them instead of guessing. Not sure whether an evaluation is warranted yet? Start with our plain-language guide to the signs of dyslexia, or the broader page on reading struggles.
Step 2: Fund the intervention — two legal routes
Arkansas law gives dyslexia families two distinct qualifying-expense categories:
- Tutoring, for any student. “Instructional or tutoring services” is a statutory qualifying expense under § 6-18-2503(11)(B)(ii), and the handbook lists tutoring services from an approved tutor or learning center. This covers structured literacy tutoring directly.
- Specialized services, for a student with a disability. § 6-18-2503(11)(B)(vii) covers educational services provided by a licensed or accredited practitioner or participating service provider to a participating student with a disability. The handbook describes this category as speech therapy, occupational therapy, behavioral therapy, or other specialized educational services by licensed providers, for a student with special needs — relevant when dyslexia travels with speech-language needs or other co-occurring challenges, as it often does.
Payment-wise, the route to lead with is ClassWallet Direct Pay: the approved provider invoices your EFA, you upload the invoice, and payment flows directly from the account — nothing out of pocket. Mechanics are in our ClassWallet payments guide.
What good dyslexia instruction looks like (honestly)
The approach you will hear about most is Orton-Gillingham (OG) — a structured, sequential, multisensory way of teaching reading that underpins many structured literacy programs. Here is the honest framing we give parents: the structured literacy principles OG embodies — explicit, systematic, cumulative instruction in phonology, sound-symbol mapping, and morphology — are well supported by reading research, and that is the kind of instruction students with dyslexia typically need.
What we will not tell you: that any method is a miracle. No approach rewires reading in a month. Real progress comes from a qualified tutor delivering consistent, targeted sessions over a sustained stretch, with goals measured along the way. Be wary of anyone selling a guaranteed timeline.
Our own team’s dyslexia work is built on those structured literacy principles, delivered by certified special education tutors, including OG-trained tutors. You can read how we approach it on the dyslexia tutoring page.
Tutor credentials: the ADE rule, and why it matters here
ADE’s service-provider requirements say an EFA tutor must qualify through at least one of these routes: an Arkansas teaching license (or an ADE-recognized alternative route); meeting the requirements of an accredited tutoring organization; teaching at an accredited higher-education institution; a bachelor’s or graduate degree in the subject tutored; three or more years of teaching experience with special skills; or evidence of subject-matter expertise. All tutors also undergo background checks and fingerprinting.
Notice what that rule is: a floor. A tutor can clear the ADE bar with a math degree and no reading-instruction training at all. For dyslexia, the floor is not enough — teaching a student with dyslexia to read is a specialized skill, and a well-meaning generalist can spend months on strategies that research-aligned instruction would replace. When you interview any provider, ask specifically: What training do you have in structured literacy? What experience with students with diagnosed dyslexia? How will you measure progress?
Our answer to that question, for transparency: all of our tutors are certified special education tutors — a credential bar above what ADE requires — and dyslexia intervention is core to our practice, not a sideline. We are an ADE-approved EFA provider; details on how that works are on our EFA provider page.
Ready to build a reading plan?
Book a free consultation and tell us where your child is stuck. We’ll talk honestly about whether an evaluation should come first, what a structured literacy tutoring plan would target, and how to route it all through your EFA with Direct Pay — no out-of-pocket cost.