Texas Instruments Foundation

The Texas Instruments Foundation was founded in December, 1964. It primarily supports service organizations located in TI plant cities. Grants are also made to educational, research, health, arts and cultural organizations whose purpose is the betterment of community and national life. After many years of supporting a wide variety of diverse social, cultural, and educational interests, the TI Foundation Board decided to focus more attention on social problems found in Dallas (TI's corporate headquarters) by directing resources toward a solution of a specific social problem. Ideally, the Board wanted to emphasize problem prevention. 

After considerable study, including the well-known Perry Preschool Project, the Foundation decided to focus on cost effective, early intervention programs for young children. Perry Preschool The Perry Preschool study, begun in the early 1960s, concerned 123 black youths from families of low socioeconomic status in Ypsilanti, Michigan. At ages three and four, children were randomly divided into an experimental group that received quality preschool education and a control group that received no preschool education. A longitudinal study showed that children from the experimental group performed better on a variety of measures. 

Over their lifetime, this rich preschool experience was estimated to yield benefits to society with a present value over seven times the cost of one year of the program. This research was the impetus that led to the creation of a partnership with Head Start and subsequently the creation of a model Head Start Center. Collaboration with Head Start In 1989, Texas Instruments Foundation commissioned the University of Texas, Arlington (UTA) Community Services Development Center to conduct a study to learn if results similar to those observed in the Perry study could be expected in a preschool project in Dallas, Texas, in the '90s. This research indicated that preschool education for underprivileged children in Dallas could produce substantially similar benefits to those resulting from the Perry Preschool program. 

The UTA survey of preschool programs in Dallas, led to the selection of Head Start of Greater Dallas as a collaboration partner. Head Start, established in 1965 to help break the cycle of poverty, is a federally funded program which provides preschool children of low-income families with comprehensive services to meet their educational, social, health, nutritional, and psychological needs. Through this collaboration (TIF- UTA-Head Start of Dallas), a comprehensive model preschool program, the Margaret Cone Head Start Center, was designed and established in 1990 for ninety four-year-olds in a very poor neighborhood in southeast Dallas. 

The Learning Therapy Program of Southern Methodist University joined the collaboration in 1993 with the purpose of designing a language enrichment program to be used at the Cone Center. This unique, multisensory program, LEAP, has been modified and expanded during the last eight years. At this time the children who attend the Margaret Cone Center enter kindergarten prepared for success.