As parents, your interests lie with your school(s) providing a good education for your children. This includes identifying conditions which can impede your child's ability to learn, especially if they're not doing adequate schoolwork. Since the majority of a student's learning is based in vision, you would think that school vision screening would be uniform, technologically appropriate and a priority. But this is most often not the case, as indicated in this excerpt from an independently published VERA research paper:

Although it is acknowledged that children require good vision for optimal classroom performance, there is no consensus about what constitutes adequate or appropriate vision for classroom use. The American Optometric Association (AOA) Optometric Clinical Practice Guidelines for Learning Related Vision Problems cites a wide range of visual parameters, including visual acuity, refractive status, ocular health, binocularity, accommodation, ocular motility, and visual processing, as necessary for effective learning. The American Academy of Pediatrics (along with the Academies of Ophthalmology and Pediatric Ophthalmology), however, argues that many of these visual parameters are not related to learning and classroom performance. This major difference in opinion between the 2 eye care professions has contributed to a lack of agreement in school vision screening policy across the country. Although it has become accepted in most states that schools have a role to play in screening for vision problems, there is wide disparity among states and even school districts about how and when to screen children. At one end of the spectrum, 10 states currently have no requirements for school vision screening. On the other end, 3 states have gone beyond screening and implemented mandatory eye examinations by an optometrist or ophthalmologist upon school entrance, whereas 2 other states require an eye examination for children upon entrance into special education services .

The results of these disparities are characterized in studies by the American Optometric Association, the Vision Council of America, the National PTA, the American Public Health Association and both optometric and ophthalmologic research journals, which cite dramatic statistics:

• About 10,000,000 children in this country suffer from undetected vision problems that may cause them to fail in school.

• 80% of the children with diagnosed learning problems have undiagnosed vision‐based problems.
  
  
• Up to 50% of youngsters who find themselves entangled with the criminal justice system have vision problems that were undiagnosed prior to their run‐in with the law.
  
  
• Among the 20% of school age children who have a learning disability in reading, 70% have some form of visual impairment, such as ocular motor, perception or binocular dysfunction, which may be interfering with their reading skills.
  
  
• Overall, vision disorders are the fourth most common disability in the United States and the most prevalent handicapping condition in children.

One of the most common examples of inadequate vision screening is reliance on traditional eye charts, which can miss up to 70% of vision problems. Students can memorize lines and guess at blurry letters from their shapes, while school nurses may not screen all students the same way. The result is that eye doctors frequently get different visual acuity measures than school nurses, which means that problems are being missed or misdiagnosed.

Another example of inadequate vision screening is reliance on near visual acuity screening, where students read letters up close for a moment to check their near vision. The theory behind this is that if they're farsighted they won't be able to see well up close, but his test is not only grossly inaccurate, it's extremely misleading. Most students have extremely flexible eye muscles and can force themselves to see clearly up close for the moment they're being tested, even if they are farsighted. If a student requires special services, the nurse may provide these near vision findings to special educators or pupil support comittees, who will believe that the student has no difficulty seeing up close. In many cases, nothing could be further from the truth ‐ the student may still be farsighted, have uncorrected astigmatism, or have a tracking, focusing or eye muscle control issue which prevents them from easily reading for any length of time.

The VERA screening overcomes these and other screening deficiencies. Visual acuity is tested line by line with "tumbling E's" which can't easily be memorized or interpreted from their shapes. Every student receives the identical, accurate, logic‐controlled screening. Note that there is no near vision test here! That's because every cause of poor near vision is covered in other VERA tests, including visual abilities necessary to sustain clarity for easy reading.

In addition, the VERA program makes it easier for school nurses to notify parents of vision issues and to remind them if the vision referral hasn't been fulfilled. VERA also simplifies notifying teachers of which students may not be seeing well in class, so that they can better accommodate the child in class and discuss the vision referral with parents.

Finally, VERA's vision skills screening enables schools to test for eye muscle control issues rather than by a child's chance encounter with a specialist eye doctor who identifies and treats these issues. If your child is having difficulty in school and fails this screening, simple adjustments to your child's home and school working environment may be helpful, but the greatest help may come from vision therapy and/or occupational therapy.

We encourage you to explore this website and learn more about why the VERA program should be used by your schools. You are invited to download our free program, see for yourself how simple and effective it is, and compare VERA to your school's current vision screening. Your local PTA or other association might consider donating the full program to your school, although the free VERA program might be a better method of vision screening than what your schools do now!