Education Week - October 28, 2015 - 6

Oak Foundation Aiding Those With 'Learning Differences'
Grants aim to assist
the often overlooked
By Christina A. Samuels
The U.S. Department of Education
estimates that a little over 3 percent
of elementary, middle, and high school
students have what's known as a
"specific learning disability" and are
receiving special education services.
But that percentage doesn't include
millions of other children and adolescents who are struggling with a learning impairment that has not been formally diagnosed-as many as 1 in 5,
many experts have suggested. Those
students may need as much help as
their peers in special education, but
their needs aren't recognized.
The Geneva-based Oak Foundation, which has a U.S. office in Chapel
Hill, N.C., is intent on reaching that
population. Over the past six years,
it has invested more than $28 million
through its program to support children, youths, and adults with what it
calls "learning differences."
It is among the largest donors in
this field, and has chosen to fund a
variety of groups, including school
districts and universities in North
Carolina and elsewhere; Teach For
America and its global partner Teach
for All; the National Center for Learning Disabilities; and CAST, a nonprofit
that is the backbone of the universaldesign-for-learning movement.
The foundation is driving toward a
broad understanding that far more
children need extra support than are
currently legally entitled to it through
the Individuals with Disabilities Act.
Those children are in general education classrooms, with teachers who
may have little or no knowledge about
different ways of learning.
The work of the foundation is personal, said Stacy Parker-Fisher, the
director of the learning-differences
program for the Oak Foundation. The
family behind the foundation has per-

sonal experience with dyslexia and
with seeing how children who struggle
academically can be marginalized, she
said.
"They had resources to support
their family members through private
placements. However, they recognize
that most children don't have access to
those resources. That really guided the
program to an equity focus," she said.
The Oak Foundation was founded
in 1983 by Alan Parker, a British accountant and one of the original partners of the Duty Free Shoppers group.
(Parker-Fisher is not a member of the
foundation's founding family.) Parker's
children also sit on the board of the
organization, and one of them lives in
North Carolina.
In addition to its work with learning
differences, the Oak Foundation has
six other program aimed at fighting
child abuse, protecting the environment, and supporting international
human rights. In 2014, the foundation
gave about $246 million, $7.6 million
of which was related to learning differences.

First Foray
Its first foray into the field came
years before the official formation
of the program, when it gave money
in 2002 to CAST and to All Kinds of
Minds, a nonprofit that trains teachers to understand the science of learning. Before joining the foundation,
Parker-Fisher, who started her career
as a special education teacher in Illinois, was the vice president of All
Kinds of Minds.
In 2009, the foundation officially
launched its learning-differences program. One of its frequent recipients
has been the 12,000-student Chapel
Hill-Carrboro City, N.C., school district, which leads a consortium of nine
other districts in the area to support
response to intervention, a method
of providing systematic academic assistance to struggling learners. The
most recent two-year grant to the district was awarded in 2014, for about

$150,000.
The support has allowed members
of the North Carolina RTI Consortium
to travel to different educational conferences, and has linked school district
leaders with other experts in the field,
said Alisha Schiltz, the RTI/504 coordinator for Chapel Hill-Carrboro City.
Without the foundation's support,
the 12,000-student district would still
have been able to implement an RTI
program, "but it would have taken
more time," Schiltz said. Also impor-

PROVIDING SUPPORT
Since 2009, the Oak Foundation has made grants totaling more than
$28 million to support students with learning differences. See examples
at right. (Some organizations have received grants over multiple years.)
tant is that the consortium provides
a way for school districts to communicate with each other about best
practices, and to advocate with state
education officials.
In the field of research, the foundation has been a longtime supporter
of the National Center for Learning
Disabilities, which recently released
a study on young-adult outcomes for
students who were diagnosed with
a learning or attention issue in high
school, as well as youths who were not
formally diagnosed but felt they also
struggled. The center received a threeyear grant in 2013 for $475,000 from
the foundation.
Many of those students who were
not formally diagnosed reported difficulties similar to those of students
who received special education services, the study found. What appeared
to mitigate the problems for all students was a strong sense of connection
to the community, self-confidence, and
family support.
James Wendorf, the executive director of NCLD, said that just a handful
of philanthropies are making investments in this area-often, as with
Oak, because there's a family connec-

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6 | EDUCATION WEEK | October 28, 2015 | www.edweek.org

tion to dyslexia or some other learning
disability. Those foundations include
the New York-based Poses Family
Foundation, the Peter and Elizabeth
C. Tower Foundation in Getzville, N.Y.,
and the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation in New Haven, Conn.
"We know these are issues that cut
across demographic categories," Wendorf said. "There are many other philanthropies and individuals who are
touched and who are connected to our
cause but who may not yet have for-

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mally developed philanthropic strategies and made investments. The good
news is there are more funders today
than there were 10 years ago. There is
an incredible surge in collaboration."
The Oak Foundation has also
funded a variety of projects with Teach
For America in the area of learning
differences, including work with the
organization in North Carolina and
assistance in establishing a global fellowship for teacher-coaches. The foundation's "thought leadership," as Teach
For America leader Rachel Brody described it, has helped Teach For America shape its own program for helping
its teachers reach all kinds of learners.
Once called the special education and
ability initiative, The program is now
known as the diverse-learner initiative, said Brody, the effort's senior
managing director.

Focused Contribution
Foundations like Oak may not get
the same amount of press as giant
organizations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation or the Walton Family Foundation, which have
donated billion of dollars in the K-12
field, said Frederick M. Hess, the director of education policy studies at
the American Enterprise Institute.
Hess, who also writes a blog for Education Week, has written extensively
on K-12 philanthropy.
But the Oak Foundations' work is
more representative of the philanthropic field, he said, adding that such
foundations are valuable because
they're more nimble than public entities, and can allow more room for experimentation.
"Philanthropy can be the venture
capital of education," Hess said. "Small
foundations can really play a significant role in giving things a chance to
succeed."
The focus on learning differences
as a broad umbrella is in contrast
to other efforts going on in disability
advocacy. For example, Decoding Dyslexia, a parent-led group with chapters in all 50 states, has been working
to get dyslexia categorized as a specific
disorder recognized both in state and
federal legislation.
"When our kids are just thought of
as struggling readers, they're not always given the evidence-based practice that we know that they need,"

$300,000
2015
RoadTrip Nation:
To pay for a group of
students with learning and attention
issues to travel around the country to
interview leaders "who have defined
their own roads in life, despite having
had a learning or attention issue."

2014
$409,999
Massachusetts
Advocates for
Children: To support the organization's
Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative.
Trauma-sensitive schools support all
students, including those with learning
differences.
2013
$1 million
New Classrooms:
To explore the use
of a technology tool that would
"foster [students'] awareness and
ownership of their learning."

2012
$250,000
Chapel HillCarrboro City
Public Schools: To expand a mentor
program aimed at students of
color, while providing academic
support for students with learning
differences.

2011
$3 million
University of
North Carolina:
To help recruit, retain, and support
students with learning differences
in college through CollegeSTAR, a
support program.

$203,000
2010
Project Eye to Eye:
To grow the number of Eye to Eye
chapters. Project Eye to Eye pairs
middle and high school students
with learning differences with trained
college-student mentors.

SOURCE: Oak Foundation

said Deborah Lynam, one of Decoding Dyslexia's founding members.
Decoding Dyslexia and organizations
such as Oak are linked by their goal
to support the same types of children,
Lynam said. "But I definitely see it as
a strategic difference," Lynam said.
Last year, the Oak Foundation went
through a process to refine and refocus its philanthropic efforts. It plans to
focus on six areas within the broader
umbrella of learning differences, including strengthening teacher capacity, enhancing parent engagement,
and supporting efforts to help students become active partners in their
own education.
"We're continuing to work with educators to shift their mindset," ParkerFisher said. "And most importantly,
we want to bring students into those
conversation."

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Education Week - October 28, 2015

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