http://www.house.gov/ed_workforce/hearings/107th/edr/idea6602/lyon.htm

Testimony of Dr.  G. Reid Lyon
“Learning Disabilities and Early Intervention Strategies:  How to Reform
the Special Education Referral and Identification Process”

Hearing before the Subcommittee on Education Reform Committee on Education
and the Workforce United States House of Representatives June 6, 2002

“We now have substantial scientific evidence that early intervention can
greatly reduce the number of older children who are identified as LD.
Without early identification and the provision of effective early
intervention, children with LD, as well as other students with reading
difficulties, will require long-term, intensive and expensive special
education programs, many of which continue to show meager results. Early
intervention allows ineffective remedial programs to be replaced with
effective prevention, while providing older students who continue to need
specialized services with highly informed and evidenced-based intensive
instruction so they can return as quickly as possible to the educational
mainstream. This should be the primary focus of special education for
students with LD – the instruction of those children who continue to suffer
failure in reading, mathematics, and written language despite
well-documented and systematic early instruction.”