In teacher team meetings, at parent-teacher conferences, and in Renée’s office as she talks to research partners, one word comes up repeatedly: neuroplasticity. Everyone is talking about how Carroll School changes brains and transforms students’ lives. But how?

The bedrock of a Carroll education is a robust structured literacy approach layered with programs and supports that educate the whole child. Samuel Orton and Anna Gillingham—creators of the OG approach—have long substantiated that reading is a linguistic task that can be taught. At Carroll, we do that very successfully – but that’s not the whole story.

More recent work by neuroscientists and fMRI brain scanning technology has shown that reading also requires many non-linguistic cognitive skills, such as rapid decision-making, reaction time, processing speed, executive function, and working memory. For students with dyslexia, strengthening these underlying cognitive skills builds the capacity for structured literacy to have a greater impact.

Targeted Cognitive Intervention (TCI) is doing just that. TCI uncovers students’ cognitive weaknesses and assigns an individualized series of activities to strengthen the core cognitive skills—the same skills that stand in the way of efficient reading.

What impact are we seeing?

A 10-year longitudinal study at Carroll School reveals that students are making faster than expected annual progress in oral reading fluency (a key indicator of reading mastery) when TCI is added to their individualized learning plans. This is significant because those who struggle to learn to read typically fall further and further behind rather than progress. With Carroll’s unique recipe of OG instruction and TCI, data reveal students are advancing faster than typical readers and maintaining progress more efficiently over time.

Why does this matter?

Carroll School is deeply committed to empowering students with what they most need to thrive, now and in the future. Our interventions and innovation strengthen the neural pathways that cultivate strong readers and lifelong learners. We are changing brains and transforming outcomes.