Lexia Institute

Will cease operations on Sept. 30, 2026

A message from the founders

Farewell

The Lexia Institute was founded in 1988 as a nonprofit organization dedicated to developing computer applications that improve learning outcomes for students with learning disabilities, particularly dyslexia. Its mission was straightforward but ambitious: to use technology to reduce the instructional burden on teachers while improving student performance. 38 years, countless wonderful experiences, wonderful friends, new colleagues, and gratifying stories later, we have decided to end our Lexia adventure.

 

The Institute was co-founded by Jerry Elkind and John Anton, both Silicon Valley executives whose sons had learning disabilities. Their personal experiences inspired a commitment to creating practical educational tools that would support teachers and help students succeed. Soon after its founding, Carol Murray joined the Institute as Chief Curriculum Advisor. At the time, she also served as Head of School at Charles Armstrong School in Belmont, California. A renowned Slingerland specialist and widely respected teacher of teachers, Carol brought extraordinary insight into literacy instruction and teacher development. Will McKinney joined us soon afterwards, bringing vital knowledge of software and its implementation on multiple platforms. Linda Elkind has supported us throughout as Secretary. Notably, in 38 years we never had an employee.

 

Especially at the outset our work was supported by grants and private donors. For a while our products generated revenue until we finally were able to license our work at no cost.

 

Our early work included evaluating Kurzweil reading machines and their impact on student reading performance. LessonPlanner, an application designed to guide and support teachers using the Slingerland adaptation of the Orton-Gillingham approach to alphabetic phonics instruction, came next. As the need for wider classroom adoption became clear, LessonPlanner evolved into WordSpring™, a Macintosh and Windows application that provides carefully organized word lists drawn from a 25,000-word database covering hundreds of phoneme-grapheme relationships. WordSpring was designed to complement Carol Murray's book Scope and Sequence, and its implementation closely followed Carol's guidance, giving teachers a practical, technology-based resource to enrich instruction while adhering to her carefully structured curriculum. Together, Scope and Sequence and WordSpring became trusted resources for hundreds of teachers and schools throughout the United States, as well as ESL programs in several countries. Their combined influence reached thousands of students through the educators who relied on these tools every day.

 

Carol Murray passed away in 2010 from a blood disorder. Her loss was deeply felt by the thousands of teachers whose professional lives she shaped and by the countless students who benefited from her wisdom. She is remembered with profound gratitude by her longtime Lexia colleagues.

 

The educational landscape continues to evolve, but the principles that guided Lexia's early work remain timeless: thoughtful instruction, dedicated teachers, and technology designed to serve learning,not replace it. Those ideals remain a lasting legacy of the Institute's founding vision.

 

Lexia will cease operations on September 30, 2026. Until then, downloads will remain available on our website, which will close when operations end. We thank those teachers, students, financial and other supporters in the learning disabilities community for our great and long journey.

 

July 2026

 

Lexia's Board: Jerry, Linda, John, Will

 

LEXIA is a nonprofit corporation that provides free lesson planning resources for teachers who use phonics-based methods for literacy instruction for students with dyslexia and other learning disabilities.

 

WordSpring and Scope and Sequence, Lexia's two outstanding lesson planning resources, are now available without charge. We hope that by making these resources free more teachers will use them and thereby be able to provide better literacy instruction to their students. We thank our many supporters for making this possible.

 

WordSpring for word lists

WordSpring is a free comprehensive software word list resource for teachers, tutors, reading specialists, and educational therapists. It is compatible with all methodologies and curricula. Click here to find out more

Scope and Sequence for phonics instruction

Scope & Sequence is an important reference textbook for teachers, tutors, and school administrators who employ a phonics-based approach for literacy instruction.

WordSpring Teaching Examples

We are fortunate to have examples of how Carol Murray used WordSpring in her teaching.

Click here to see an example of how easy it is to use WordSpring to create word lists for spelling

Click here to see an example of how WordSpring can be used to create cvc and nonsense word lists for early decoding instruction, and

Click here to see an example of how you might use WordSpring for the more advanced word attack or decoding skills of syllable division and accenting

WordSpring Guided Tour

This Guided Tour describes the WordSpring software through a series of screen displays that show how a teacher might use it. It will help you determine whether WordSpring meets your teaching needs.