Impact

Across the United States, more than $92 billion is spent each year on special education services. On average, it costs over $13,000 per student to meet these needs—and in high-need districts, that cost can rise to $49,000 per student annually. Despite this enormous investment, many bilingual students with reading difficulties—especially those at risk for dyslexia—remain unsupported or misdiagnosed. This gap isn’t about funding alone. It’s about how our systems and curricula are built—and for whom.

In Texas, the urgency is especially clear. Since 2020, the number of students receiving special education services has grown by over 32%, now totaling more than 765,000 children. At the same time, Texas educates over 1.2 million emergent bilingual students, with 92% speaking Spanish at home. Yet few reading programs are designed to serve this population effectively. Most are translations of English curricula—rather than literacy tools grounded in the way Spanish is naturally acquired and read.

While 1 in 5 students struggles with dyslexia, most bilingual children in the U.S. and abroad lack access to reading programs that are both scientifically grounded and linguistically authentic. This mismatch creates a systemic failure. Students are often flagged too late for support, pulled from classrooms for mismatched interventions, or overlooked entirely. Teachers, meanwhile, are rarely trained or equipped with classroom-friendly, culturally relevant strategies that can address these needs early—before a student falls behind. And dyslexia specialists, while essential, are typically positioned outside the classroom, only stepping in after a child has already struggled—by which point the cost of intervention, both educational and financial, is much higher.

Lajam Education Foundation Corporation is changing that.

Our solution is LUZ, a literacy curriculum created from the ground up in Spanish, not translated. LUZ is designed for neurodiverse, bilingual learners, including those with dyslexia or other reading challenges. It embeds dyslexia-informed strategies directly into general classroom instruction—allowing teachers to support students early, without removing them from the classroom or waiting for a formal diagnosis. This approach not only improves reading outcomes for all students, but reduces the need for costly, reactive interventions down the line.

By empowering teachers with LUZ, we enable schools to better serve students using the staff they already have—freeing up specialists to focus on the small number of children with severe, diagnosed dyslexia. This model is both more inclusive and more efficient. It represents a shift from a system that reacts to failure to one that proactively builds literacy from the beginning—especially in the language students speak and think in.

Too often, bilingual students struggle not because they lack ability, but because the system wasn’t designed for them. LUZ changes that. It gives teachers practical, culturally relevant tools. It gives students authentic language-based learning. And it gives schools a cost-effective way to build reading success before expensive interventions become necessary.

Your support makes this transformation possible. With your help, Lajam Education can train more teachers, bring LUZ into more classrooms, and build a model that is both equitable and sustainable. Together, we can ensure that all students—regardless of language, diagnosis, or background—have the chance to read, thrive, and succeed from day one.