Model and Strategy
Literacy is still a major crisis in the US and is a leading cause of poverty and prison overpopulation. In an unprecedented way, the UCSF Dyslexia Center brings together the neurosciences with education to revolutionize the field of childhood learning.
This revolution is led by a neuroscience research collaboration between UCSF Neurology, UCSF Child Psychiatry and the Charles Armstrong School. The two worlds of Education and the Neurosciences are normally isolated from each other. Bringing together the best of research and practice in these fields will enable a large number of young children to develop literacy skills who would otherwise face certain failure from an outmoded school system.In next year, the UCSF Dyslexia Center will prove that the neurosciences can have a direct impact on student learning in the classroom. We are the pioneers of the new science of neurodevelopmental-based education
Impact
Our plan is to identify reading disorder subtypes in the laboratory, share this information with teachers, parents and students and measure outcomes at Armstrong School to further refine the validity and usefulness of this approach. Based on the classroom based validity of these phenotypes to improve outcomes by better targeting treatments, a phenotype screener will be developed and piloted at SFUSD schools. Based on our success with the phenotype screener, it will be widely distributed. The initial work will likely directly benefit 50 to 100 students at Armstrong and will also benefit their parents and the other 150 to 200 students in the school. The next phase in the next two years will likely benefit hundreds of students, parents and teachers. As we scale across California in the next 5 years, we will reach millions of young learners. The wider dissemination in the next decade will likely benefit many millions of students, parents, teachers, health care providers, law enforcement agencies and, indirectly, the general economy worldwide. Imagine our country with 20% less crime and 20% more economic and social contribution.
Leadership
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Dr. Robert Hendren
Associate Professor of UCSF Psychiatry & Dyslexia Center