Structured Literacy Training Programs Compared: The Real Gates
You have decided to get trained. You have a shortlist, and you are comparing the shortlist on hours, because hours are the number everybody publishes.
Put the hours down for a moment. Structured literacy training programs compared on coursework totals all look roughly alike. Compared on the thing that actually decides whether you can finish one, they look nothing alike at all.
What binds is a student you have to recruit and get approved, a supervisor whose appointment you do not control, and a calendar with a deadline at both ends.
This is the piece that sits downstream of a question we have already answered elsewhere. If you are still working out what the label on a curriculum means and who adjudicates it, start with what "Orton-Gillingham based" actually means, because nobody adjudicates it. This article assumes you have settled that and are now choosing a route to walk.
Nothing here is legal advice. There is no state licensure for educational therapy, and none of the requirements below is a legal obligation. They are the published admission rules of private organisations. If you need to know what your state requires of you to work in a school or to practise independently, that question belongs with your state education agency and, for independent practice, with an attorney.
The decision is not which course. It is which certifying body.
Here is the structural fact that reorganises the whole comparison: in most of these routes, the organisation that trains you is not the organisation that certifies you.
That sounds like administrative trivia. It is not. It determines who may supervise your practicum, whether your hours are recognised anywhere else, what you are permitted to call yourself at the end, and — most practically — whether you can start at all, because in several of these systems the supervisor is appointed by a third party rather than chosen by you.
Choose a course and you have chosen a certifying body, a supervisor you cannot appoint, and a student who must meet somebody else's published criteria. The hours are the part you can look up. The gates are the part that decides.
So the useful comparison is not a table of hours. It is a map of who does what.
Four structures hide behind one phrase
"Structured literacy training program" names at least four structurally different objects. Sorting your shortlist into these four is the first useful thing you can do.
One: the organisation trains you and certifies you
NILD describes itself as "a professional training and licensing organization." It runs the courses, it licenses practitioners, and at the end of Level III it certifies them as Professionally Certified Educational Therapists. One organisation, the whole ladder.
Wilson Language Training is the same shape. Wilson writes the program, runs the course, supplies the practicum supervisor, and issues the credential.
Two: the organisation certifies but deliberately does not train
The Orton-Gillingham Academy has made the opposite choice, and says why in a sentence worth reading twice:
"Because the training is done by Fellows, the Academy does not train, it only certifies and accredits, eliminating the conflict of interest where training and certification is done by the same organization."
The ungrammatical "is done" is the Academy's. So is the reasoning, and it is unusually candid for this field. Training is delivered by individual Fellows rather than by the Academy, which then certifies the result.
Three: the organisation accredits courses and certifies nobody
IMSLEC states its scope in two flat sentences: "IMSLEC accredits training courses" and "While IMSLEC does not certify individuals, many of IMSLEC's accredited members offer certification." Its accredited directory listed 57 organisations when we checked it on 25 September 2026. None of those listings is a credential you hold. They are courses you can take.
Four: the certification requires training you must obtain somewhere else
CERI certifies individuals but runs no training. Both its practitioner certifications state the same requirement for the programme of study and for the practicum: "Under Direction of IDA Accredited Partner." You cannot satisfy CERI by studying with whomever you like.
ALTA works the same way, and names the supervisor's credential rather than the training provider's.
Neuhaus Education Center is the clearest worked example of that fourth shape, because it operates in two of these structures at once. Its own Online Certification Program for Dyslexia Specialists awards a Neuhaus certificate of completion.
But its Dyslexia Specialist Preparation Program leads somewhere else entirely: Level I, at "9–24 months" with a bachelor's required, leads to "Certified Academic Language Practitioner (ALTA)," and Level II, at "24–60 months" with a master's required, leads to Certified Academic Language Therapist.
So a Neuhaus trainee on that track is being prepared for a credential Neuhaus does not issue, assessed against a standard Neuhaus does not own, and examined by somebody else. The Level II requirements publish "Supervised Practica: Minimum of 10 Lessons" and ten demonstrations against ALTA's therapy-level figures. That is the train-here-certify-there structure made concrete.
Who is allowed to train you, and why that is the bottleneck
In every one of these systems, the right to train and supervise is a separate and higher credential than the right to practise. That is the reason enrolment is hard.
The Academy is the most explicit. Its training information page states that "The Associate practitioner is not certified to provide OGA training or supervision," and that "The Certified Level practitioner is not qualified to provide independent OGA training or practicum supervision." Training authority arrives at Fellow, which is the top of a four-level ladder.
Wilson draws the same line at both of its levels. A Level I completer "may represent themselves as WRS Level I Certified Teachers but are not qualified as Wilson Credentialed Trainers." A Level II completer receives the Wilson Dyslexia Therapist credential, and the page adds plainly: "This does not qualify one as a Wilson Credentialed Trainer (W.C.T.)."
At ALTA the supervising credential is an Instructor of Certified Academic Language Practitioners or a Qualified Instructor, depending on the level. At Wilson it is a Credentialed Trainer. At the Academy it is a Fellow.
So the supply of people entitled to supervise you is generated by the credential itself, one level up, and it is small. When a practitioner tells you the hard part was finding a supervisor, this is why.
The delegation caps are the interesting detail
The Academy publishes something the others do not: how much of the observing may be handed down. At the Classroom Educator level, the practicum "includes 5 observations of the trainee teaching complete lessons in a group (of at least 2 students) or classroom setting conducted by the Fellow (3 out of the 5 observations may be by a Fellow-in-Training (FIT) or Clinical Supervisor (CS) as designated by the Fellow)."
At the Associate level it rises: "10 entire 40-60 minute lesson observations of the trainee conducted by a Fellow (7 out 10 observations may be by a FIT or Clincial Supervisor (CS) as designated by the Fellow)." Both typos are the Academy's, quoted as published.
Read those two together and you can see the rationing. Two of five observations at the entry level must come from a Fellow personally; three of ten at Associate. The scarce resource is Fellow attention, and the Academy has written the ration into the standard.
The degree gate does not rise with the level
This is the first place the received wisdom breaks. It is natural to assume the academic bar climbs as the credential does. In three of these systems it does not climb at all, and in one it is absent entirely.
Wilson states no degree requirement of any kind, at either level. The Level I prerequisites are the introductory course and a co-requisite online course. Graduate credit is available as an option. A degree is not a gate.
CERI requires a bachelor's degree at all three of its certifications, including the Specialist. There is no escalation from Interventionist to Specialist.
ALTA is the one that does escalate. The CALP requires a bachelor's; the CALT states "A master's degree is required for a Certified Academic Language Therapist."
The Academy states a bachelor's "in any area of study" at Classroom Educator and Associate, and states no degree requirement at Certified or Fellow. The bar appears at the bottom of the ladder and then stops being mentioned.
IMSLEC escalates by level: "B.A.-Education or related" at Teaching, "Master's-Education or related" at Therapy.
NILD requires a bachelor's, "preferably in education or related field," and its own FAQ puts it more loosely still: "A degree in education helps, but it not required."
ALTA also publishes the most humane provision in the set. A candidate who completes therapy-level training and passes the exam without a master's "may join ALTA as a CALT-Candidate (CALT-C) and will have an additional five years to complete the master's degree." If the degree never arrives, "the CALT-C status will automatically convert to a CALP level." The credential waits for the degree rather than barring the work.
The practicum student is a prerequisite, and you have to go and find one
Here is the gate that catches people, and almost nothing in the marketing prepares you for it. Several of these routes require you to produce a specific child, meeting published criteria, available on a published schedule, before your practicum can begin.
Wilson publishes the strictest version, and it is worth setting out in full because it is the clearest example of a requirement that has nothing to do with you. The practicum student "must meet the following criteria and be approved by Wilson Language Training (WLT) before instruction begins":
"In or entering grades 4–12 (grade 3 approved if student has been retained)."
"Overall cognitive ability in average range (minimum IQ = 80)."
"Overall reading must be ranked in the 5th to 30th percentile with a minimum total reading score of grade 2.0."
"Student's listening comprehension ability is higher than independent reading comprehension."
"Student has poor decoding and spelling skills."
"The practicum student must not have received any previous Wilson instruction."
Then the evidentiary requirement: the Word Identification and Spelling Test "plus another formal reading test must be administered and results submitted to your supervising Wilson trainer," and "Testing results used to select practicum student must be no more than six months old."
Sit with that list for a moment as a caseload problem rather than a compliance problem. You need a student in a specific grade band, inside a narrow reading percentile band but above a floor, with a cognitive score above a threshold, with a particular comprehension profile, who has never had Wilson instruction, and you need current testing to prove all of it.
If you are in private practice, you need that student to walk through your door. If you already have someone ideal but they had a term of Wilson two years ago, they are ineligible.
And then the scheduling condition, which is the one that quietly disqualifies a whole category of practitioner. The student "must be available to be scheduled for a minimum of three to four 45-minute lessons or two to three 60–90 minute lessons per week (one-on-one)."
A once-weekly private caseload cannot satisfy that condition. Not because the practitioner is not good enough, but because the arithmetic of the week does not reach.
We have written about that gap between published dosage and what a weekly practice can actually deliver in intervention session frequency and duration, where it turns out to be a general feature of the field rather than a Wilson quirk.
The National Center on Intensive Intervention treats dosage as one dimension of intervention intensity rather than as a threshold, which is the right frame for reading a practicum specification too: it describes a fidelity condition, not a minimum effective dose.
There is a practical move available here, and it is worth naming because it is how most people actually solve this. If you work in a school or can partner with one, the practicum student problem is largely somebody else's problem to help with, and the scheduling condition is satisfiable inside a timetable.
If you are in independent practice, this is the single constraint most likely to decide which route you can take, and it deserves to be checked before you pay for anything. Building an independent caseload and satisfying a practicum schedule pull in different directions more often than the brochures admit.
The same word, wildly different objects
Compare that with what "practicum" means elsewhere.
CERI counts students and specifies their profiles. The Interventionist practicum takes "1 Student." The Specialist takes "3 Heterogeneous Students," and the heterogeneity is defined rather than left to judgement: at least one requiring intervention with single-syllable word reading, at least one with multi-syllable word reading, and at least one requiring "vocabulary, comprehension, or written response instruction."
ALTA CALT requires 700 practicum hours "with a minimum of 3 teaching situations in both intro and advanced levels of instruction." Seven hundred hours with one student does not satisfy it. The breadth clause is doing separate work from the hour count.
NILD goes the other way and says so without ambiguity: "You must spend at least 100 hours providing NILD therapy with students. You can attain this with one therapy student or with multiple students." Your choice.
IMSLEC adds a footnote under every one of its level tables that changes the arithmetic for anyone working in groups: "Group instruction counts as one session."
That last one deserves a moment. If you teach a group of five, you have delivered one session, not five. Two practitioners logging identical calendars can be a long way apart on the same requirement.
The supervisor you do not appoint
Having found a student, you need a supervisor. In the two certification-only systems you do not choose one.
CERI's entire published rule on the subject, on both the Interventionist and Specialist pages, is six words: "Appointed by IDA Accredited Partner, Approved by CERI." Nominated by your training provider, ratified by your certifier. There is no elaboration anywhere on either page.
ALTA names the credential instead, and the two levels differ in a way that is easy to miss. At CALP level, training is "under the supervision of an Instructor of Certified Academic Language Practitioners (I-CALP) or Qualified Instructor of Certified Academic Language Practitioner and Therapist (CALT-QI)."
At CALT level it narrows to one: "training under the supervision of a Certified Academic Language Therapist-Qualified Instructor (CALT-QI)." An I-CALP who can supervise you toward the practitioner credential cannot supervise you toward the therapist credential.
Wilson assigns a Credentialed Trainer, and specifies the observation format down to the hardware: "Participants will need access to an external camera to be used during observation. The camera must be external to your device, as built-in cameras do not capture the observation completely."
NILD is the outlier. Across all three of its course levels, the only observed artefact in the published sequence is a single video: Level II prerequisites include "5 Core Demo – video submitted and reviewed." No observer is named, no count is given, and no live observation appears anywhere in the ladder.
This is the same terrain as what "supervised hours" actually means across six bodies, where the finding was that the phrase almost never means hours of supervision. Here the point is narrower and more immediate: the observation count is small, the person entitled to do it is scarce, and in two systems you are not the one who picks them.
The calendar is a requirement, not a plan
Most of these routes publish a minimum duration. Several also publish a maximum, which is the part people do not expect. You can fail by being too slow.
Wilson: "Individuals have 12 months from the date of enrollment to complete the online course and practicum."
The Academy: 50 practicum hours "over 8 consecutive months, minimum" at Classroom Educator; 100 hours over 8 consecutive months at Associate; 200 hours over "2 academic years, minimum" at Certified; and at Fellow, 300 hours over 3 academic years, "in addition to 300 hours at Certified for a total of 600 hours over 6 years, minimum."
CERI: "Two Academic Semesters each: 12 Consecutive Weeks (TOTAL of at least 24 weeks)" and "24 Sessions (TOTAL of at least 48 sessions)," at a cadence of "2x/week for 60 minutes non-consecutive days or 3x/week for 45 minutes." Note "consecutive" and "non-consecutive" are both load-bearing, in different places.
IMSLEC: "9 months" at Teaching, "24 month minimum" at Therapy.
NILD: "four weeks of asynchronous, online work followed by 5 days of residency either in person or virtual," then "nine months of job-embedded coaching" with required monthly sessions.
ALTA is alone in barring you from being too fast as well as too slow. The exam "is available to applicants, at the CALP level, with a minimum of nine (9) months and a maximum of two (2) years from the beginning of CALP Training."
At CALT level it is "a minimum of two (2) years (21-24 months) and a maximum of five (5) years." The parenthetical sits oddly against the stated two years, and we quote it whole rather than resolving it.
Eight consecutive months is the phrase to look at hardest if you are fitting this around a school year. Consecutive is not the same as cumulative, and an interrupted practicum may not be a shorter practicum so much as a restarted one.
"Trained" and "certified" are different products sold on the same website
This is the finding that matters most if you are shopping rather than already enrolled, and it took verifying the commercial providers to see it.
At ALTA, CERI and the Academy, the practicum is the route. There is no shorter thing with a similar-sounding name.
At the large commercial training companies there are two products, and the gap between them is roughly a year of supervised work.
IMSE publishes its Comprehensive Orton-Gillingham Plus course at "Length of time: 30 hours." What 30 hours yields is a certificate. What it does not yield is certification, and IMSE says so in an equation printed as a heading on its certification page: "Course Pathway + Practicum = Certification."
The practicum on the far side of that plus sign is substantial. IMSE's published application manual for 2024–2025 requires completers to "Complete and implement 25 weekly lesson plans," each including "two hours of direct instruction to be delivered in a minimum of two sessions."
It also requires them to "Submit a minimum of 15 videos demonstrating each component of the IMSE OG routines," and to "Work with student(s) for a minimum of six months but finish within 12 months." Its FAQ adds that "On average, participants can expect to spend five hours per week on their practicum."
A bachelor's degree and a teaching certificate or licensure are required for the practicum. For the 30-hour course they are not.
Brainspring is structured identically and is even blunter about it. Its 30-hour Phonics First course promises that on completion participants will "Receive a document of completion" and "Be eligible to apply for Brainspring's nationally recognized certification program." Eligible to apply.
The certification itself requires a bachelor's degree, a written exam, a "Pre-Practicum Lesson Presentation to a practicum supervisor" before you are even admitted, then a "60-hour Supervised Teaching Practicum," a portfolio, a certification exam and the KPEERI, yielding a credential that renews every three years.
"IMSE-trained" and "IMSE-certified" are both true things a practitioner might say. They differ by a degree requirement, fifteen recorded videos, twenty-five lesson plans and most of a year.
None of that is a criticism of the 30-hour course, which is a real and useful thing. It is a warning about a phrase. When a colleague, a job posting or a parent-facing bio says "trained in Orton-Gillingham," that sentence is compatible with thirty hours and no observed teaching, and it is equally compatible with a year of supervised practice.
The words do not distinguish them. This is the same problem, one level up, as the one we found in reading intervention programs compared: shared vocabulary, unshared meaning.
Worth saying plainly, because it cuts the other way too. Both of those Orton-Gillingham lineage companies do require a genuine supervised practicum with observed or recorded teaching before they will use the word certification, and both route graduates onward toward a third-party credential.
IMSE states that completers of one practicum "may apply for CERI's Structured Literacy Dyslexia Interventionist certification," and that completers of both may apply at Specialist level. Brainspring's certification requires the KPEERI. The commercial routes are not the shortcut a sceptic might assume.
Where "trained" really does mean coursework alone
The genuine outlier sits elsewhere, in the large state-mandated professional learning products. LETRS, the one most often required of teachers by state policy, publishes a course of study of two volumes and eight units, with "Each online session" carrying a "Bridge to Practice" activity in which "you'll be guided to transfer what you learned to your classroom."
A Bridge to Practice is self-directed classroom transfer. It is not a supervised practicum, no observation of the trainee is published, and what completion awards is a per-unit document keyed to a quiz threshold: a Certificate of Mastery at 80 per cent or above, a Certificate of Completion below it.
We did not find a Lexia page stating that LETRS has no practicum, so the accurate formulation is that no practicum requirement is published, corroborated by the fact that IDA lists LETRS at plain Accreditation rather than Accreditation PLUS — a tier IDA reserves for programs requiring supervised practicum experience.
LETRS awards no practitioner designation and does not present itself as a certification. It is professional development, and it is not trying to be anything else.
That distinction matters when you read a résumé. A teacher who has completed LETRS has done something substantial and has not done a practicum.
The vocabulary is not shared either
One more thing to expect, and it is mildly disorienting the first time you notice it. The providers do not agree on what the approach they are all teaching consists of.
The Orton-Gillingham Academy publishes nine headed principles: Diagnostic and Prescriptive; Individualized; Language-Based and Alphabetic/Phonetic; Simultaneous Multisensory; Direct and Explicit; Structured, Sequential, and Cumulative, but Flexible; Synthetic and Analytic; Cognitive; Emotionally Sound. Its definitional page calls the approach "direct, explicit, multisensory, structured, sequential, diagnostic, and prescriptive."
Orton-gillingham.com, a commercial training site, publishes four Critical Components: "Multi-Sensory," "Structured, Sequential, and Cumulative," "Flexible," "Language-based." IMSE's own five-item self-description is different again: "Explicit / Direct / Sequential / Structured / Multi-Sensory."
Notice what drops out. Neither commercial formulation carries cognitive, and neither carries diagnostic and prescriptive — which are precisely the two properties that make the approach incompatible with a fixed scope and sequence, and the two the Academy leads with. The Academy's FAQs draw that distinction itself: "An OG program follows a set scope and sequence. An approach is the means adapted to tackling an issue."
None of that tells you a course is bad. It does tell you that two providers can both be teaching Orton-Gillingham and be optimising for different things, and that you should read the principles list on the site you are about to enrol with rather than assuming it matches the one in your head. All formulations above were read on 25 September 2026.
What the evidence does and does not say about the thing you are enrolling in
This belongs in a training decision, and it needs stating carefully, because the honest position is easy to misreport in either direction.
There is no body of evidence establishing that one of these training routes produces better outcomes than another. Nobody has run that study. What exists is evidence about the instructional approach, and it is thinner than the marketing around it suggests.
The What Works Clearinghouse reviewed unbranded Orton-Gillingham based strategies and reported that of 31 studies identified, "None of the 31 studies meet WWC evidence standards with or without reservations." Its conclusion has to be quoted whole, because half of it reverses the meaning: "the WWC is unable to draw any conclusions based on research about the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of unbranded Orton-Gillingham-based strategies."
Ritchey and Goeke (2006), reviewing twelve studies in The Journal of Special Education, reported mean effect sizes of 0.82 for word attack and 0.76 for comprehension — and concluded in the same paper that "Given the small number of studies, the lack of methodological rigor of the existing studies, and the inconclusive findings… additional research is needed before the scientific basis can be established." Both halves, or neither.
Stevens and colleagues (2021) meta-analysed 16 studies in Exceptional Children and found effects of 0.22 on foundational skills and 0.14 on vocabulary and comprehension, neither statistically significant. Their own framing of what that means is the essential companion to the numbers, and is freely available in full and on PubMed Central:
"The findings from this meta-analysis do not definitively prove that OG interventions are not impactful for students with dyslexia. In addition, we are not suggesting that other reading programs are more effective than OG. Instead, findings from this meta-analysis indicate that we do not yet know the answers to these questions."
The most useful detail in that paper for a prospective trainee is methodological rather than statistical. Having no objective standard available for deciding what counted as Orton-Gillingham, the authors fell back on self-identification.
They explain why: "non-OG programs have adopted many of the descriptors or characteristics of the OG approach," and "There is little consensus in the field around how we define and operationalize multisensory reading instruction." The researchers hit the same wall you are hitting on the enrolment page.
Federal guidance points at practices rather than at programs. IES practice guide 29 carries three Strong recommendations on multisyllabic decoding, fluency-building and comprehension, and notes that "Any references within the document to specific education products are illustrative and do not imply endorsement."
That is a non-endorsement disclaimer rather than an affirmative claim about programs, and we draw the inference in our own voice: the evidence attaches more securely to instructional practices than to branded packages.
IDA's own Structured Literacy fact sheet takes the same line: "Structured Literacy is an instructional approach, not a program. However, to deliver this comprehensive instruction, educators often systematically integrate one or more programs."
What follows for your decision is modest and worth saying out loud. Choose a route for what it will teach you, who will watch you teach, and what you will be entitled to do afterwards.
Do not choose it on a claim that its brand outperforms another brand, because no source in the published record supports a ranking, and several say explicitly that they cannot. We took this apart at greater length in is educational therapy evidence-based.
IDA's two tiers are the cleanest test available to you
There is a public register that makes exactly this distinction, and it is the single most useful tool in this article.
The International Dyslexia Association accredits training programs at two levels, and the dividing line is the practicum. Programs at the standard Accreditation level are "preparing candidates to serve as general education classroom teachers or support personnel," and their curriculum must be "at least 45 clock hours."
IDA then states the boundary in the negative, which is the more useful half: "IDA's Accreditation programs are not preparing professionals to provide specialized, remedial reading interventions to students in a small group or one-on-one setting."
Programs at Accreditation PLUS are "preparing candidates to provide targeted or intensive reading interventions that reflect the principles and practices of Structured Literacy to individual and small groups of students who have a primary need for reading and writing remediation," and the additional requirement is the point: "they require candidates to complete at least one supervised Structured Literacy practicum experience."
IDA's current accreditation handbook splits Accreditation PLUS further, with a "Minimum 90 hours of training" at the Interventionist level and "Minimum 135 hours" at the Specialist level. So the real structure is three floors, not two: 45, 90 and 135.
Here is how to use it. Look up any program on IDA's accredited program list and read the accreditation type. IMSE appears at both tiers — its course packages at Accreditation, its Interventionist and Specialist certifications at Accreditation PLUS. That one table row is the entire trained-versus-certified distinction, published by a third party.
Two honest caveats about the register. Its listings carry accreditation terms with end dates, so a status current today is not permanent — the entry for Neuhaus's online certification programme showed a term running to 2026 when we read it.
And we could not obtain a reliable total: the page publishes no count, returns errors to automated clients, and two careful reads of it produced different tallies, so we are not printing a number.
A thing IDA is not
It is widely assumed that IDA accredits the programs while its affiliate CERI certifies the individuals, in a clean division of labour. IDA's own wording is looser than that, and we could not verify the relationship as a formal one.
Its certification page says certifications "are offered through organizations such as the Center for Effective Reading Instruction (CERI) and other recognized certifying bodies." CERI as one of several, not as IDA's certifying arm. CERI's own about page does not mention IDA at all.
IDA does administer the KPEERI examination, which "assesses educators' foundational knowledge in Structured Literacy as outlined in the IDA Knowledge and Practice Standards." Administering an exam is not awarding a credential.
IMSLEC, for its part, describes IDA as a body from which "Certification is also available," alongside ALTA, the Academy and Wilson. On IDA's published pages, it is not.
What the credential lets you do, and what it does not
Before you enrol, read the scope sentence. Every one of these credentials has one, and they are narrower than the marketing.
The sharpest is CERI's classroom-teacher certificate, which is a knowledge certificate rather than a certification, has no practicum, and carries this: "Individuals holding a Structured Literacy Classroom Teacher Knowledge Certificate do not provide specialized, remedial reading interventions to students." If intensive one-to-one work is your intention, that route does not authorise it, and CERI says so on the page.
The Academy graduates scope alongside level. An Associate A member "is qualified to provide 1:1 Orton-Gillingham instruction under the mentorship of an Academy Fellow." An Associate B member is qualified for "1:1 and small group instruction under the mentorship of an Academy Fellow (Tier 3)." Note "under the mentorship of" in both. The Classroom Educator level is scoped to Tier 1 group and classroom work.
Wilson's Level I yields Wilson Dyslexia Practitioner, which "must re-credential every five years." Level II yields Wilson Dyslexia Therapist. Neither yields the right to train.
There is a related question about what any of these titles permits you to claim in a jurisdiction where the job title itself is unprotected. We took that apart in learning specialist certification: what actually exists, and the short answer is that a private credential describes your preparation, not your authorisation.
Does any of it travel?
Mostly, no — and the accurate way to say that is that none of these bodies publishes a reciprocity policy. That is a finding about what is published, not a claim about what has ever been informally agreed between two organisations.
Two exceptions are worth knowing, both at CERI, and both narrower than they first appear.
The portability clause. A Specialist candidate may complete the practicum "through a single IDA Accredited Partner; or through a combination of up to three IDA Accredited Partners (one per assigned student)." This is the only explicit portability provision anywhere in the survey, and CERI illustrates it with worked examples whose supervising partners are a higher education practicum, Wilson Level I and an Academy certification. Three different training lineages, one certification.
The credit reduction, and its precise limit. "CERI certified Structured Literacy/Dyslexia Interventionists will receive credit for one student; individuals not holding a CERI certification will need to engage three students."
Read that clause carefully, because the shape of it matters: the reduction keys off holding a CERI certification, not off holding any structured literacy certification. On the published wording, a Wilson Dyslexia Practitioner or an Academy Certified member who is not also CERI-certified is in the three-student group.
Then there is the route for people whose history is real but undocumented. CERI's alternate route exists for applicants whose training was not under an accredited partner, or whose partner has since lost accreditation or closed, or who "have been practicing as a tutor for students with dyslexia for more than 10 years, with local, state, or national recognition, but have no formal documentation of having completed a supervised practicum experience."
Documentation replaces the practicum. Three case studies, each student "seen for at least 48 individual tutoring sessions (approximately 45 to 60 minutes per session) over 24 consecutive weeks, for a total of 144 tutoring sessions across all three students."
Applications that miss those figures "will be automatically rejected without further review." Two colleague letters, which "should not be authored by another candidate who is currently also applying for CERI certification," plus a parent or student letter.
Two conditions on that route are easy to miss and both are absolute. It now requires the examination first: "Applicants are now required to take and pass the KPEERI exam prior to submitting their Alternate Route application." And the window is four weeks wide in the calendar year: "Alternate Route applications are only accepted between July 1st and September 30th of each year."
CERI also now prohibits generative tools in case-study preparation, with an unusually severe consequence — "use of Artificial Intelligence programs to generate alternate route cases" is grounds for immediate denial "with revocation of the option to revise," and may make an applicant "permanently ineligible for CERI certification in the future."
One more wrinkle: the bodies are nested
The accreditors accredit each other. All four Orton-Gillingham Academy levels appear on IDA's accredited program list, as do IMSLEC's Teaching and Therapy levels and NILD's two programmes. So "accredited by two of the three bodies" does not mean what it sounds like, and a program's accreditation count is a poor proxy for anything.
There is also a striking contrast between two of the lists. The Academy's own accredited programs list held 19 entries when we counted it on 25 September 2026, and every one is a school, clinic, camp, institute or school district. No commercial curriculum publisher appears on it. IDA's independent list is full of them. Same field, same vocabulary, two registers that barely overlap in kind.
The hour figures, and why they are the wrong axis
Now that the gates are on the table, here are the hours — with a warning attached.
Orton-Gillingham Academy. Coursework 30 hours at Classroom Educator, 60 or 70 at Associate, 100 additional for a stated 160 total at Certified, not published at Fellow. Practicum 50, then 100, then 200 additional for 300 total, then 300 additional for 600 total over six years. Observations 5, then 10, then 10, then 10.
IMSLEC. Course contact hours 45 at Teaching, 135 total at Instructor of Teaching, 200 total at Therapy, not published at Instructor of Therapy. Practicum 60, 600, then 700 or 500 or 350 at Therapy, then 2,100 including therapy level. Direct observations 5 at Teaching and 10 or 15 or 20 at Therapy; not published at either instructor level.
IDA accreditation floors. 45 clock hours at Accreditation, 90 at Accreditation PLUS Interventionist level, 135 at Specialist level. At PLUS, at least one supervised practicum, whose dimensions IDA leaves to the programme.
CERI. Training hours 90 at Interventionist, 135 at Specialist. Practicum published as weeks and sessions only, with no hour total at any level. Three formal lesson observations with write-up at both levels.
ALTA. Instructional hours 45 at CALP, 200 at CALT. Practicum 60 hours at CALP, 700 at CALT. Demonstrations 5 at CALP, 10 at CALT.
Wilson. No coursework hour figure published. Level I practicum is 65 lessons with 5 observations of 60 to 75 minutes. Level II publishes neither a lesson count nor an observation count.
NILD. No coursework hour figure published. 100 student contact hours before Level II and another 100 before Level III, plus nine months of monthly coaching. One reviewed video across the entire sequence.
Read any one of those entries on its own and the figures are usable. Line them up against each other and they are not commensurable, for four separate reasons.
Different denominators. CERI publishes no practicum hour total at any level. It publishes weeks and sessions: 24 weeks, 48 sessions. Any hour figure you see quoted for a CERI practicum is somebody's multiplication, not CERI's published requirement. Wilson counts lessons. NILD counts student contact hours and months of coaching. IMSLEC counts sessions, and a group is one session.
Compounding versus standalone. The Academy's Certified figure of 160 coursework hours is 100 new hours plus the 60 already done at Associate. Its 600 practicum hours at Fellow are 300 new plus 300 already done, over six years minimum. IMSLEC's "Total of 135 hours" at Instructor of Teaching is likewise "90 clock hours beyond Teaching level." A 160 next to a 200 may be a smaller commitment or a larger one.
A published trade-off. IMSLEC's Therapy level lists practicum hours as "700 — 500 — 350" against direct observations of "10 — 15 — 20." Taken in parallel order, that reads as an exchange rate: more observed lessons discharge the requirement at fewer hours, and twenty observations cost half the practicum that ten do.
We should be careful here. IMSLEC never writes the pairing out in a sentence, and the two triples sit in a single table cell each, so that reading is ours and not IMSLEC's stated rule.
If it is right, it is the only place in this field where anyone has publicly priced supervision against practice. And it concedes something the other five leave implicit: the hours and the observations are not measuring the same thing.
And some of the numbers have simply gone. The Academy's Fellow level page published coursework hour figures as recently as August 2026 that are no longer on it; the heading remains with no hours beside it, while the training information page still states 100 hours minimum. We are not resolving that. We are reporting that the page and the summary no longer agree, as of 25 September 2026.
The vocabulary problem here is general, not local to training, and by now it is the most reliable finding on this site. When several organisations share a word, the useful question is whether they share a meaning.
In achievement test qualification levels, the letter on a test is a purchasing rule for one storefront rather than an industry scale.
In educational therapy continuing education, a contact hour is not a portable currency, and one body's CEU is ten times another's.
In executive function scope of practice, five bodies name the same construct in five structurally different genres of document.
In is educational therapy evidence-based, six bodies define "evidence-based" differently, and the clearinghouses hold nothing on the service model itself.
In executive function curricula compared, the word "curriculum" covers four different kinds of object, from trial protocol to licensed classroom programme.
In progress monitoring tools compared, a 50th percentile in one system is not a 50th percentile in another, so switching mid-caseload breaks the graph.
In math assessment tools for dyscalculia, the diagnostic word turns out not to name anything you can score.
In working memory training programs, every party agrees the programs improve the trained task and disagrees about how far improvement must travel to count.
In dysgraphia and writing intervention tools, two authorities define the condition differently and the products split along the same fault line.
Training is simply the version of the problem that costs you a year rather than a purchase order.
Where the published record runs out
The honest close, because a comparison is only as good as its gaps, and a reader deciding where to spend a year of evenings deserves to know which figures we could not get.
ALTA's supervisor qualifications are not published. The CALP and CALT pages name I-CALP and CALT-QI as requirements but state nowhere what it takes to hold either. Its continuing education policies page, the natural home for carry-forward and audit rules, returns a members-only login wall, and the public site serves an empty shell to automated readers. Load it in a browser yourself, or email ALTA.
The Academy's Fellow coursework hours are absent from the Fellow page, as described above.
IMSLEC publishes no course contact hour figure for Instructor of Therapy, and no observation figure for either instructor level. Those rows do not exist in the tables. That is absence, not our omission.
Wilson's Level II practicum dimensions are unpublished. No lesson count, no observation count, no degree prerequisite. Only that each of two courses of study "may take up to 15 months to complete and may be taken consecutively or concurrently." Level II figures circulating in secondary sources, including in an earlier article on this site, are not on Wilson's page today. That is an absence bounded to today's date, not a removal.
IDA's accredited program count is not obtainable, for the reasons given above.
IDA's Knowledge and Practice Standards edition is cited by year, not by edition, on IDA's own national pages. The current accreditation handbook reviews programs against "The Knowledge and Practice Standards (KPS) for Teachers of Reading (2018)" and names 2010 as the superseded edition. The word "Second Edition" appears on regional branch documents, not on the national site, so we cite the year and stop.
IMSE's practicum requirements for the current year are not publicly readable. The most recent open application manual is 2024–2025; a newer guide exists as a gated download. The figures above are the 2024–2025 figures and are labelled as such.
Brainspring publishes a 60-hour practicum figure but no lesson or observation count, and the page that previously carried that detail now returns an error.
None of those gaps is scandalous. Organisations put their detailed rules behind member logins for ordinary reasons. But a prospective trainee comparing routes is making a decision worth a year, and on several of the axes that matter the published record does not support the comparison. Ask the questions directly, in writing, before you pay anyone.
The university route, and how it sits beside the AET ladder
One route deserves separate mention because it behaves differently from all of the above: a university certificate or degree programme.
The distinguishing feature is that the coursework and the credential are decoupled. A university awards you an academic credential and separately, if the programme is set up for it, positions you to meet a professional body's requirements. CSUN's Advanced Study certificate in educational therapy awards its own certificate and separately lets graduates meet the Association of Educational Therapists' academic requirements for Associate membership. Notre Dame de Namur runs an online master's route.
UCSC Extension's programme pages carry a sentence worth having in front of you before any of these decisions: "The certification by the AET is optional for practice in the field. There is currently no state licensure for educational therapy."
And this is the point at which the structured literacy ladder and the educational therapy ladder meet, because they are not the same ladder and people conflate them.
AET's Educational Therapist/Professional membership asks you to "Document and verify 1,500 Direct Service Hours completed within the past 10 years" and to "Complete formal Supervision with a BCET." Board Certified membership adds "an additional 1,000 hours of clinical practice" and a formal case study, which AET says "usually" takes three to five years.
A structured literacy certification does not satisfy AET's hours, and AET's hours do not satisfy a structured literacy certification. They are different credentials measuring different things, and AET's direct service hours notably count fieldwork or practicum hours from a higher education or credential programme, which is one of the few places any of these systems credits another's work. Practice under AET's Code of Ethics is a separate obligation again.
If you hold or want both, you are running two sets of requirements in parallel, and only one of them cares about your reading methodology. The full ladder is set out in how to become an educational therapist.
Two long-lineage routes that belong on a shortlist
Two training organisations are easy to miss because they do not market like the commercial companies, and both hold IMSLEC accreditation. Slingerland describes its approach as "the first whole-classroom adaptation of the Orton-Gillingham method." Spalding has arguably the strongest direct lineage of anyone: its history records that Romalda Spalding "sought guidance and training from the distinguished neurologist Dr. Samuel T. Orton" and "tutored children under Dr. Orton's supervision."
A detail we found striking enough to keep repeating: Spalding makes no Orton-Gillingham claim anywhere in its own materials. The programme with the strongest personal lineage to Orton makes the fewest claims to the brand, which is a reminder that the label tracks marketing decisions rather than descent.
A sequence for making the decision
Not a recommendation. A decision is yours to make on facts about your own setting, and anyone who tells you which program is best has skipped the part where your caseload and calendar decide it for you. What follows is the order we would ask the questions in.
Start at the end. Which credential do you want to hold in three years, and who issues it? Work backwards from the certifier to its accepted training routes, not forwards from a course you saw advertised.
Check the scope sentence. Does the credential authorise the work you actually intend to do — intensive one-to-one remediation, small group, classroom? If it does not, no amount of hours fixes it.
Audit your caseload against the practicum criteria before you pay. Can you produce the student the route requires, at the frequency it requires, with testing current enough to satisfy it? For Wilson's Level I in particular, answer this first and everything else second.
Find out whether you can get a supervisor. If the route appoints one, ask the provider how long the wait is. If the route requires you to secure one, find out how many hold the credential within reach of you.
Put the calendar on paper. Note every minimum, every maximum and every use of the word consecutive. Then check it against your own school year, your own leave and your own caseload turnover.
Only then compare hours — and compare them within a body, across its levels, rather than across bodies.
Ask what the completion document is called. Certificate or certification. Trained or certified. Get the answer in writing, and check the program's tier on IDA's register while you are at it.
If you are earlier in the journey than this and still mapping the roles themselves, the comparison of educational therapists, learning specialists and executive function coaches is the place to start, and how to become an educational therapist sets out the credential ladder this training sits beside.
For what the role is and is not permitted to do, see what is educational therapy, and for the instruments question that comes next, reading and achievement test qualification levels and psychoeducational evaluation for educational therapists.
Frequently asked questions
Is there one structured literacy certification that everybody recognises?
No. There is no single credential and no body that adjudicates the others. ALTA, CERI, the Orton-Gillingham Academy, Wilson and NILD each issue their own, with different prerequisites, different practicum structures and different scope sentences.
None of them publishes a reciprocity policy for another's hours. The closest thing to a common reference point is IDA's accreditation of training programs, which rates programs rather than people, and the KPEERI examination, which several routes now require.
Do I need a master's degree to train in structured literacy?
It depends entirely on the route, and the pattern is not what most people expect. Wilson states no degree requirement at all. CERI requires a bachelor's at all three of its certifications, including Specialist.
The Orton-Gillingham Academy states a bachelor's in any subject at its two lower levels and states no degree requirement at Certified or Fellow. ALTA is the clearest escalation: bachelor's for CALP, master's for CALT, with a five-year candidate status for those completing therapy training without one. IMSLEC requires a master's at Therapy level.
What is the difference between being Orton-Gillingham trained and Orton-Gillingham certified?
At the large commercial providers, a great deal. A 30-hour course at IMSE or Brainspring yields a completion document, and both companies are explicit that certification is a separate application with its own prerequisites — a bachelor's degree, a supervised practicum, recorded or observed teaching and examinations.
IMSE prints the relationship as "Course Pathway + Practicum = Certification." The phrase "trained in Orton-Gillingham" does not distinguish thirty hours from a year of supervised practice, so ask which one is meant.
Why is finding a practicum supervisor so difficult?
Because in every one of these systems the right to supervise is a separate credential one level above the one you are seeking, so the pool is structurally small. The Orton-Gillingham Academy states that neither an Associate nor a Certified practitioner may provide independent training or practicum supervision, which reserves it to Fellows.
Wilson reserves observation to Credentialed Trainers, and a Level II completer is explicitly not one. ALTA reserves therapy-level supervision to CALT-QIs. CERI does not let you choose at all: your supervisor is "Appointed by IDA Accredited Partner, Approved by CERI."
Can I use my existing tutoring experience instead of a practicum?
In one documented case, yes. CERI's alternate route lets applicants substitute documentation for a supervised practicum, including those practising more than ten years with recognition but no practicum record.
It requires three case studies totalling 144 tutoring sessions across three students, at least 48 sessions over 24 consecutive weeks each, plus colleague and parent letters, and a passing KPEERI score before applying. Applications are accepted only between 1 July and 30 September each year, and non-conforming case studies are rejected without review. No other body in this survey publishes an equivalent.
How do I check whether a training program is legitimate before enrolling?
Look it up on IDA's accredited program list and read its accreditation type, because that register distinguishes coursework-only programs at Accreditation level from those requiring "at least one supervised Structured Literacy practicum experience" at Accreditation PLUS.
Cross-check IMSLEC's accredited course directory and, for Orton-Gillingham specifically, the Academy's own accredited programs list. Note that accreditation terms carry end dates, so confirm the status is current. Then ask the provider directly what the completion document is called and what its holder is authorised to do.
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All requirements above were verified against the issuing bodies' own published pages on 25 September 2026. Requirements change, pages move, and several of the figures here are explicitly bounded to that date. Verify anything load-bearing for your own plan directly with the organisation before you commit to it.
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