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Who We Are

The Initial Teaching Alphabet Foundation is a corporation organized under the Membership Corporation Law of the State of New York in March, 1965. The Foundation was formed exclusively for educational and charitable purposes; to promote, maintain and advance education in all its fields, and in particular (but without limiting the generality of the foregoing) by development, standardization, propagation, dissemination, teaching and use of the Initial Teaching Alphabet.

Our Mission Statement

The mission of the ITA Foundation is to promote literacy by providing independent funding for the development and dissemination of best teaching practices in the use and support of the initial teaching alphabet (ITA).

Our Research History

Although substantial research in England and Australia validates the use of ITA for beginning reading instruction in regular classes, it was not until the 1985 that our Foundation sponsored research on the use of this phonetic alphabet for remediation of dyslexia. In My Research Journey with the Initial Teaching Alphabet (ITA), Dr. Jane Flynn Anderson recounts the history of how she came to believe that this phonetic alphabet might solve the persistent phonological deficits of children who had experienced reading failure.

In the thirty-six years since that first study, Dr. Anderson and other ITA intervention pioneers joined our Board to promote the use of ITA for struggling middle and high school students (Shelley Jerviss in Houston and Peggy Westlund in Hutchinson, MN); Latino middle school students (Erin Hempstead Linehan and Edith Galvez in Chicago); and K-8th Title I/ADSIS students (Linda Vaplon in Wabasha, MN).

Download Dr. Anderson’s manuscript below to learn the history of how we’ve used ITA for remediation of dyslexia/reading disabilities. Discussion of our current focus on ITA programs for children and adults learning English as an additional language and biliteracy for Ojibwe children in immersion settings is also included.

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