special-education
(7)
Say It With Your Eyes
Tobii Dynavox turns eye movements into speech for people who have lost their voice. Here is how a Pittsburgh-and-Stockholm company built the tools that let hundreds of thousands of people be heard.
The Brooklyn Nonprofit Building a One-Stop Village Around Every Child
Yeled V'Yalda began with 78 children. Four decades later, its answer to fragmented family services is a network where preschool, therapy, nutrition and parent support can meet under one institutional roof.
Marker Learning
Marker Learning is a New York-based company that makes learning-disability evaluations more accessible and less time-consuming. Founded by Stefan Bauer and Emily Yudofsky - both diagnosed with dyslexia as children - the company began by bringing remote, lower-cost psychological assessments for conditions like dyslexia and ADHD to families and schools. It has since built an AI-assisted report-writing platform for special education teams and school psychologists that turns referral and assessment documents into structured, citation-backed draft reports, cutting report writing from hours to minutes while keeping clinical judgment with the evaluator.
Scientific Learning, a Carnegie Learning Company
Scientific Learning, now part of Carnegie Learning, builds neuroscience-based reading and language software that rewires how struggling readers process language. Its flagship Fast ForWord program treats reading difficulty at its root - the brain's ability to process sound and sequence information - rather than drilling worksheets. Born from lab research by four scientists in 1996 and acquired by Carnegie Learning in 2020, the company has delivered cognitive-skills and reading interventions to students in more than 40 countries, backed by decades of peer-reviewed research.
Huddle Up
Huddle Up (formerly DotCom Therapy) partners with K-12 school districts to deliver high-quality speech therapy, occupational therapy, mental health, and school psychology services for students with IEPs. Combining licensed providers in all 50 states with a proprietary technology platform, the company offers both virtual and in-person care to close special-education staffing gaps. Founded in 2015 to reach students in remote Alaska, it has delivered more than 1 million therapy sessions and now serves close to 1,000 school districts nationwide.
Parallel
Parallel (Parallel Learning) is a New York-based special education company that connects school districts with licensed clinicians - school psychologists, speech-language pathologists, behavioral counselors, and specialized instructors - through a proprietary teletherapy and case-management platform. Founded in 2021 by Diana Heldfond, who was diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia as a child, Parallel helps schools deliver legally required IEP services to students with learning and thinking differences when in-person staff are scarce. The company has raised about $48.9 million and reported that 98% of its students met or exceeded their IEP goals in the 2024-2025 school year.
MEandMine
MEandMine is a Silicon Valley startup that uses AI and neuroscience-backed games to surface the silent struggles of K-12 students. Its platform delivers ten minutes a day of personalized, gamified skill-building, while an AI engine flags psychological risk by analyzing 160+ in-game behaviors, giving teachers and counselors real-time signals for early intervention.