If you spend any time talking with parents in Utah, one theme comes up again and again: something in public education isn’t working. Kids who seem bright, curious, and full of potential somehow fall behind. And no one can explain why.

Dyslexia affects an estimated 20 percent of the population, yet it remains one of the most overlooked and misunderstood learning differences in our school system. It hides in plain sight. Many of these kids are gifted problem-solvers and creative thinkers. They’re the ones who can rebuild a garage door motor without ever reading the manual, yet they’re told—explicitly or indirectly—that they aren’t trying hard enough in class.

Dr. Barbara Wirostko (Morelli) and her daughter Julia joined Utah Stories to talk about the issue. Their perspective is personal, painful, and instructive. Their story explains exactly how a child can get mislabeled, misdiagnosed, and sent down a path that leads nowhere—but also how one family’s tragedy turned into a national effort to pull other kids back from the edge.

The Brightest Kids Are Often the Ones Schools Miss

Barbara puts it bluntly. “Individuals with dyslexia are actually extraordinarily bright and gifted… They’re absolutely out-of-the-box thinkers.” She explains that many engineers, artists, and innovators think this way by default. What they lack is not intelligence. It’s a school system designed for linear, rule-following students who learn best through repetition and written instruction.

In other words, if a student’s brain doesn’t operate on factory settings, the factory doesn’t know what to do with them.

“We don’t teach to the student,” Barbara says. “We teach to the way we think we should be teaching.”

There is no consistent national screening. Teachers receive limited training in identifying dyslexia. Even when the signs are there—poor spelling, inconsistent handwriting, difficulty decoding words—schools often miss it, because the student is otherwise “too smart” to fit the stereotype.

This was the case for Barbara’s son, Joseph.

A Smart Kid Who Suddenly Looks Like a Failure

Joseph didn’t have trouble with reasoning or math. In fact, he excelled. But reading-intensive subjects felt impossible. Language classes were torture. Still, the message remained the same: he wasn’t trying hard enough. He wasn’t working to his potential. He wasn’t focused.

Then things got worse.

Headaches. Ringing in the ears. Racing heartbeat. Shortness of breath. Joseph was falling apart physically, and nobody could tell him why. His parents—both physicians—took him from specialist to specialist. ENT. Pulmonology. Cardiology. An MRI. All normal.

In ninth grade, the school counselor called. “Your son is failing everything,” she said. “We think he’s not high school material and you should pull him out.”

Imagine that. A school telling parents their kid is simply not cut out for education. 

The truth was simple. Joseph wasn’t failing because he was incapable. He was failing because he was dyslexic.

When he finally received accommodations—books on tape, extended test time, tests read aloud—everything changed. “I feel good about myself,” he told his parents. “I know I’m smart.”

He went on to study engineering at Montana State. He made the Dean’s List. His mind had never been the problem.

And then he was killed in a car accident.

Turning Loss Into Opportunity for Hundreds of Students

After Joseph’s death, the Morellis looked for a way to ensure that other kids wouldn’t go through what he did. “There’s got to be other kids like Joseph,” Barbara told herself. Kids misread by their teachers, misjudged by their schools, and misdiagnosed by the system.

What started as a small scholarship became the Joseph James Morelli Legacy Foundation, which has now awarded nearly $900,000 to students with dyslexia pursuing STEM degrees. Utah quickly became one of the foundation’s strongest communities thanks to support from the Sorenson Legacy Foundation and families in Park City.

But as the Morellis soon discovered, money alone wasn’t enough.

The Hidden Reason Dyslexic Students Drop Out

During the foundation’s early years, students received scholarships and then disappeared. They didn’t reapply. They weren’t continuing school.

“When we found out why, it was heartbreaking,” Julia says. Students couldn’t get accommodations. They felt embarrassed or ashamed. They believed, incorrectly, that needing help meant they weren’t cut out for college.

The Morellis responded by creating something public schools rarely provide: peer mentoring.

Older scholarship recipients coached new ones. They shared their struggles, their workarounds, their frustrations with the system. They said, essentially, “You’re not alone.” It worked.

Dropout rates fell from 30 percent to nearly zero.

“The mentoring program became the most successful piece,” Barbara says. Support, not money, made the difference.

The Financial Burden No One Talks About

Dyslexia testing is expensive—often several thousand dollars—and may need to be repeated multiple times as students move from high school to college.

“Like really?” Barbara says. “Dyslexia is going to go away?”
Yet schools frequently require updated documentation, even though dyslexia is a lifelong neurological difference.

Insurance seldom covers the tests. Many families simply cannot afford them.

The Morelli Foundation steps in where it can—providing software, computers, and technology. But it raises a larger question: Why is a learning difference that affects so many students treated as a fringe issue?

Stories of Students Who Just Needed One Person to Believe in Them

Julia reviews hundreds of scholarship applications each year. Many come from students who spent their entire academic lives feeling stupid, lazy, or broken. They had been told—sometimes explicitly—that they weren’t “college material.”

Two stories stand out.

One student, Amy, received support for five years and now returns to speak at the foundation’s events, sharing how the scholarship changed her life.

Another student deferred college for a year, reapplied, and received funding thanks to Julia’s advocacy. He wrote to the foundation saying that each time he hiked, he would think of Joseph and pick flowers in his memory.

These students weren’t lacking intelligence. They were lacking recognition.

“They didn’t feel smart,” Julia says. “They didn’t feel believed in.”

A System Built for Conformity, Not Creativity

At one point in the interview, the conversation shifts to a simple but uncomfortable idea. Much of modern education was designed not to spark creativity but to produce dependable workers for a 19th-century industrial economy—workers who could sit still, follow instructions, and conform.

That doesn’t describe a dyslexic mind.

Dyslexic thinkers often excel in environments where creativity, spatial reasoning, design, and engineering flourish. They bring something the system doesn’t always know how to measure: unconventional intelligence.

Yet those strengths only matter if someone recognizes them.

Parents Who Trust Their Instincts Change Lives

Barbara underscores one point again and again: “A parent knows their child.”
If something feels off, it probably is. Too many families accept the explanation that their child is lazy or unfocused or not applying themselves. In reality, their brain may simply be wired differently.

And different is not less.

A Foundation Powered by Volunteers

Today, the Morelli Foundation operates with around 40 volunteers and one part-time staff member who manages the website and donor logistics. “Nobody’s getting paid,” Barbara says. Nearly every dollar donated goes directly to students.

The foundation didn’t start out to build a community, but that’s exactly what happened. Students find each other. They find mentors. They recognize themselves in peers who have succeeded despite the same obstacles.

“The community became the leading value,” Julia says.

The Intelligence We Don’t Know How to See

As the conversation winds down, the theme becomes unmistakable: the issue isn’t a child’s intelligence, but whether anyone recognizes how their mind works. Dyslexic students don’t lack ability. They lack a system prepared to understand them.

It’s a reminder that dyslexia isn’t a deficit. It’s a different cognitive structure that schools still struggle to understand.

When students finally receive the tools they need, something remarkable happens. They stop believing they’re broken. They start recognizing the spark that others overlooked. And the trajectory of their entire life changes.

The Morelli Foundation exists to make sure that spark doesn’t die in the shadows of a broken system.