Texas Lawmaker Who Struggled With Dyslexia Wants to Take His Fight to Congress 

Republican Texas congressional candidate Steve Toth has struggled with dyslexia his entire life. If elected to Congress, he wants to make sure kids with dyslexia do not face the same challenges he did growing up.

Toth, a current Texas state representative who defeated Republican incumbent Dan Crenshaw in the Republican primary election for Texas’ 2nd Congressional District, revealed his plans to improve literacy rates and education for dyslexic children to the Daily Signal.

“I want a separate category for dyslexic students in special education, and I want to make sure that those kids have the opportunity to get services in the event they’re identified,” Toth said. “And I’m going to make it mandatory. I would love to try to make it mandatory for parents that their child has a reading problem to be tested for dyslexia.”

Toth said the federal government needs to make it mandatory for states to help identify dyslexia in children, stop stigmatizing the learning disability and instead view it as a strength. 

Toth believes that many dyslexic children have a “superpower”: They can see things most others can’t. 

“A lot of engineers have dyslexia,” he said. “Some of the greatest inventors that have ever lived are dyslexic. They may have a reading problem of decoding these P’s and Q’s, but what they do have is the ability in their brain to see things in three dimensions, which makes them incredibly powerful when it comes to engineering.” 

“It’s a strength, not a weakness,” Toth added. “It’s not that you have a learning problem, you’re learning different.”

Toth believes that misguided education policy at the federal level has harmed literacy rates in the United States and has especially hampered students with dyslexia.

“I want the Department of Education to recognize dyslexia as the standalone,” said Toth. “And I want the federal government to empower parents to get their kids tested. I want to do at the federal level what we achieved at the state level.”

“The education cartel and what we have done on the federal level has overwhelmed what the states have tried to do with education,” Toth said. “We didn’t have the illiteracy problem in the United States until the Department of Education came into being in 1980.” 

Toth explained that after the Department of Education began operations in May 1980 under former President Jimmy Carter, literacy scores in the U.S. began to drop. 

The issue is deeply personal for Toth because he grew up battling his dyslexia in the classroom.

“You would be in the fifth grade English class, and you would be reading ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ and you’re hoping and praying that the bell would ring before it came for you to read that one page out loud in class,” Toth told the Daily Signal. “It’s a terribly embarrassing thing.” 

Toth said kids with dyslexia will typically struggle, even in subjects in which they are proficient, because they have difficulty reading. 

“I had a great mind for history, but it was hard for me to engage because I couldn’t read and because I struggled with reading,” Toth said. “It was really hard for me to have any kind of confidence at school and it sets you up on a completely different trajectory while you’re there.” 

However, Toth did not begin his career in the Texas House focused on this deeply personal issue. He served one term in the Texas House from 2013 to 2015, and returned to office in 2019. But it was not until 2021 that helping children with dyslexia became one of his primary concerns.

In 2021, a group of children and their mothers came to speak to the education committee to discuss the issue of public education for children struggling with dyslexia and other learning disabilities. That year, Democrat Rep. Harold Dutton Jr. had authored House Bill 3880, which sought to ensure school districts appropriately screen and broaden or clarify special education eligibility definitions for students with dyslexia. 

The day the bill was set to be heard, dozens of children showed up to the Public Education Committee to share their experiences struggling with the learning disability. After hearing those children speak out, Toth, who said he was ashamed to admit he dealt with the same problem, knew he needed to make the issue his mission. 

Toth joined Dutton on the bill, but it failed to make it out of the Texas Senate. 

The following legislative session, Toth filed House Bill 3928, a bill aimed at requiring public school districts to provide comprehensive evaluations when a student shows signs of dyslexia. The bill mandated that those evaluations follow best practices aligned with International Dyslexia Association standards and be conducted by teams including qualified dyslexia specialists. 

It also required districts to employ dedicated dyslexia intervention specialists, establish individualized education program (IEP) requirements for identified students, and create district-level grievance procedures for dyslexia-related complaints. 

Toth was determined to get the legislation passed. And he had a secret weapon: 8-year-old Wyatt Franklin.

Franklin stepped into the Capitol to advocate for students with dyslexia after struggling to receive the support he needed at his Conroe ISD school. After speaking before the House Public Education Committee, Wyatt returned to advocate before the Senate, where he also met with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

“I was just so passionate, because I knew what it felt like when you weren’t being treated right versus what it feels like when you are being helped with your needs,” Wyatt told The Daily Signal. 

Candace Franklin, Wyatt’s mother, claimed her son told her, “I went to the Capitol for the other kids in the state of Texas to get help.”

Wyatt’s advocacy helped get the bill passed and signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott.

Before Toth can bring his state plans to the federal government, however, he will have to defeat Democrat Shaun Finnie, an oil and gas lawyer and investment banker, in the general election on Nov. 3, 2026.