Effectiveness of New Reading Aid Is Unclear : Learning: Technique uses colored overlays and tinted lenses. Critics say the method developed by Long Beach psychologist Helen Irlen is more snake oil than science.

San Fernando High School students who for years had trouble reading anything more complicated than the TV guide without falling asleep or getting headaches say they can now read textbooks for hours with no problem.

Their teacher, reading specialist Jerry Spitz, says colored sheets of plastic placed over the printed page have solved a host of longtime reading problems, such as words that look blurry or seem to move off the page.

This year, more than one-third of his 100 or so students have been helped to read better using a variety of red, green and blue overlays, enabling them to study longer and finish books for the first time, he said.

“Miracles happen,” Spitz said.

Despite similar reading improvements reported elsewhere by children and adults using the colored overlays and lenses, critics contend that the method developed by Long Beach psychologist Helen Irlen is more snake oil than science.

The help is probably psychological, said David Grisham, a professor at UC Berkeley’s School of Optometry who has studied the method.

“Students say: ‘Yeah, I read better,’ ” Grisham said. “But it is highly susceptible to the placebo effect. . . . The question is: ‘Is there a change in reading performance?’ The jury is still out on that one.”

Grisham and others point out the absence of accepted scientific studies showing reading improvement. Plus, neither Irlen nor her supporters can explain why it works.

Irlen, who holds a patent on the method, said the testimonies of 25,000 people who say it has helped them read better is proof enough.

San Fernando High School is the only school in the Los Angeles Unified School District using her method. It is also being used to assist students in the Paramount Unified School District, as well as Banning and Jurupa unified school districts in Riverside County, officials there said. A vocational high school in the San Gabriel Valley has been issuing colored overlays to students for more than three years.

Studies on 20 adults conducted by the Eye Institute at the Pennsylvania College of Optometry have persuaded psychologist Penni F. Blaskey there that the Irlen lenses work for certain types of reading problems.

“For people who complain they get tired or get headaches reading, we’ve found those people can read faster and for longer periods of time,” said Blaskey, who is director of psychological and educational services for the Eye Institute.

Debate over use of the Irlen lenses and overlays, which with a two-hour examination cost between $125 and $275, has spilled over into the legal arena. New Jersey has banned Irlen and her associates from prescribing the devices, ruling that only optometrists are trained to do such work.

The California state attorney general’s office is considering a similar request by the state Board of Optometry, which believes that Irlen and others she has licensed to diagnose and dispense the equipment are practicing optometry without a license.

Irlen said the opposition comes from optometrists fearful of losing business to Irlen practitioners, who pay $3,000 to learn how to help clients pick the correct colored eyeglass lenses.

Irlen’s husband, attorney Robert Irlen, said the state law regulating the practice of optometry does not apply to their business because they are not treating an eye condition but a problem involving the eye and the brain.

Clients are required to first have their eyes examined by a licensed optometrist, he said. Besides, anybody can buy colored sunglasses without a prescription, Irlen said.

“We don’t believe we have the technology to know why it works, we can’t track it through the brain,” Robert Irlen said. “But that doesn’t counter the fact it works. Knowing why won’t change that.”

For now, their theory is that the lenses work by filtering certain lightwave frequencies that cause visual distortions and other reading problems.

Still, knowing why it works--and proving it--would go a long way toward persuading the academic world that Irlen has discovered reading’s Holy Grail.

“In medicine and academics you cannot just come out with a claim, you must prove it,” said Jeanne Chall, education professor and director of the Harvard University Reading Laboratory. “For the past 50 years there have been hundreds of such solutions and they have fallen through.”

Chall, one of the country’s top reading specialists after 40 years in the field, said she has reviewed some of the research supporting Irlen’s method and describes it as “quite shaky.”

Irlen said she came across her discovery in 1983 during research on learning disabilities at Long Beach State University. At the time, she believed that people with reading problems simply had trouble figuring out words. One day, she said, “I asked, ‘What do you see?’ ”

“I got a whole array of answers I didn’t expect: ‘Words are swaying,’ ‘Words disappear,’ ‘The background keeps flashing,’ ” Irlen said. “Up until then, it was assumed that if someone stumbles it is because they don’t know the word instead of the words may appear to be disappearing.”

Irlen said she had one of her subjects try a red plastic overlay used in a form of vision therapy for eye exercises.

“The student said: ‘Helen, the words aren’t moving as much,’ ” Irlen said.

The student’s observation grew into a nearly $2-million-a-year business, which Irlen said would be threatened if California authorities restrict her work.

Besides the financial loss, Irlen said, countless students will have missed their chance to become better readers. Researchers estimate that between 10% and 15% of the general population suffers some form of reading disability.

San Fernando High School senior Claudia Malta, like others in Spitz’s class, said reading has been a problem since grade school.

“The white part was too bright and I would get real tired,” Malta said.

Malta’s observation about the colored plastic overlays she now uses illustrates what Irlen admits: Her invention is no cure-all. Maltas said: “I still don’t really like to read, but now it’s easier.”

Classmate Jason Vargas, 18, said he would see spots on the page before being prescribed a combination of rose and turquoise overlays. “Ever since I was small, I would read, get tired and go to sleep,” he said.

Spitz, who has taught reading for 32 years, decided to try the method despite the controversy. A local business sponsored his training and paid for the colored overlays for students.

Nor has the skepticism bothered Laurel Adler, who heads the East San Gabriel Valley Regional Occupational Center, a high school serving six school districts. Of 200 students with reading problems referred to the school, more than 100 have been helped by using Irlen’s overlays during the past three years, Adler said.

She said the overlays do not necessarily raise students’ grades or IQ, and do not work for all students with reading problems.

“But what we’ve seen is that they help students be able to read and work longer,” Adler said.