In 1984, Oklahoma parents Ann and John Henry realized there was not a qualified teacher in Oklahoma who knew how to teach reading to their child with dyslexia. The Henrys researched the best methods for teaching reading to a child with dyslexia and discovered the scientifically-based answers were south of the Red River at the Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children (TSRHC) in Dallas.
Through a generous initial donation from Katheryne B. Payne, for whom the organization was named, Payne was able to send a reading therapists to TSRHC to participate in a reading training program named Alphabetic Phonics, a multisensory, evidence-based method of teaching learners with dyslexia to read, write, and spell. These reading therapists returned to Oklahoma to train others in Alphabetic Phonics methods, and over the next 10 years, Payne successfully trained 50 dyslexia reading therapists.
In 1995, due to the high demand of the successful Payne reading therapy training program, Payne began expanding its training offerings to include a number of other multisensory, evidence-based curricula appropriate for use in a variety of teaching situations. Currently, Payne provides teacher training in a full-range of multisensory phonics based curricula for class room teachers, reading therapists, and reading tutors.
In its first 30 years, Payne trained over 18,000 teachers from all across Oklahoma by regularly offering teacher training in any community that seeks to expand their knowledge of dyslexia and use multisensory structured language techniques with students in the classroom.
Payne Education Center is the only accredited International Multisensory Structured Language Education center in the state of Oklahoma. Payne was among the first 15 training centers in the world to receive this certification for its curricula, meeting the best practice standards of teacher training in Structured Multisensory Language Foundations.