NATIONAL INSTITUTE 
FOR LEARNING DEVELOPMENT

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The National Institute for Learning Development (NILD) Educational Therapy® program was developed over forty years ago and was designed to work with struggling students.

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NILD is endorsed by The International Dyslexia Association, The Feuerstein Academy, and ACSI.

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Students with specific learning disabilities have average to above average cognitive ability yet have difficulty with academic performance. Students enrolled into the various NILD programs at Master’s Academy have met specific criteria and agree, as a family, to fully participate in all aspects of the program. The goal of NILD Educational Therapy® is to “help students learn and reason more effectively and increase their capacity to learn, which results in life-long learning and lasting cognitive change.”

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Master’s Academy began in 1998 and within a few years the first four students were enrolled into the NILD Educational Therapy® program the only NILD program on the Treasure Coast.  We have served well over 100 students under the umbrella of NILD. Our programs include:

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• DISCOVERY PROGRAM provides Educational Therapy services for students with specific learning disabilities. The focus of our one-on-one and small-group, individualized interventions are to strengthen the underlying causes of learning difficulties rather than simply treating the symptoms as tutoring does.

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• RX 4 DISCOVERY MATH provides intervention for students that will build and strengthen number sense, math fluency, math vocabulary, and problem-solving strategies.

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• RX for DISCOVERY READING provides explicit and systematic individual or small group reading instruction that includes activities for phonological processing, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension development.

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• SEARCH AND TEACH is an early identification and intervention program developed to meet the educational needs of young learners before they experience the frustration of learning failure.

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Master’s Academy accepts the McKay Scholarship. The McKay Scholarship for Students with Disabilities Program, originally created in 1999, provides scholarships for eligible students with disabilities to attend an eligible public or private school of their choice. Students wishing to use the McKay Scholarship, for a specific learning disability, will have their services provided through the NILD program. The McKay Scholarship pays for NILD services.  Any scholarship funds left over are applied to the regular tuition.

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Our goal, when accepting students into our NILD program, is for each one to meet with success in the regular classroom and here at Master’s Academy; therefore, each student is prayerfully considered on a case-by-case basis.

 

At Master’s Academy, the NILD Program Coordinator meets with each potential family taking into consideration the class they would be entering into, the severity of the deficits, and whether or not the family is fully committed to the NILD program philosophy.  We believe all students who have specific cognitive weaknesses can benefit from NILD

Educational Therapy®, but we recognize Master’s Academy is not equipped to meet the needs of all students.