Dallas students from an elementary school where at least 80% of students come from low-income families are projected to earn more than their high-income peers over a lifetime, thanks to education built on brain science, according to a study by the University of Texas at Dallas Center for BrainHealth and the Momentous Institute.
A case study tracked the progress of 73 alumni from the Momentous School, a private laboratory school serving students in prekindergarten through fifth grade in Oak Cliff. The 2016-2018 cohorts were compared with national data on outcomes from low-income and high-income students.
Related
Momentous School is operated by the Momentous Institute, a nonprofit that provides mental health services to 5,500 children and their families each year with bilingual licensed therapists.
The Education Lab
The study found that 97% of the Momentous alumni who were tracked received a high school diploma, and 48% received a college degree. By comparison, 91% of the high-income students tracked by National Student Clearinghouse High School Benchmarks Reports earned a high school diploma, and 31% received a college degree.
Using U.S. Career Institute data on average lifetime earnings by education level, the researchers expect the Momentous students — tracked up to the bachelor’s degree level — to earn between $1.3 million and $2.7 million over their lifetimes, totaling $157 million in cohort earnings, according to the report.
Those projections are 26% and 9% higher than the school’s national low-income and high-income peers, respectively, according to the report.
How is this possible?
Momentous School emphasizes brain health, teaching age-appropriate neuroscience and mental health strategies starting at age 3, said Dr. Jessica Gomez, executive director of Momentous Institute.
Students learn about brain structures, like the amygdala, and conduct projects on how the brain works by fourth and fifth grade, said Dr. Andrew S. Nevin, a research professor and the inaugural director of the Brainomics Venture at the Center for BrainHealth at UT Dallas.
All of Momentous’ classrooms display illustrations of how the brain functions, and students learn skills for social and emotional regulation, Nevin said.
The study, led by Gomez and Nevin’s research teams, argues that teaching students neuroscience and mental health from ages 3 to 10 helps them consider how brain health shapes their choices throughout life.
Studying the brain helps students recognize how emotions and stress impact learning, Gomez said. When students know how their brain works, they can better regulate their emotions, manage stress and keep their brain ready to learn, she said.
Understanding how the brain works also allows students to improve their cognitive abilities, such as information processing, decision-making, and innovation, Nevin said. In an increasingly AI-driven world, these skills are crucial for education and the workforce, he said.
“If you don’t have the ability to synthesize the information in a way better than AI can do, you’re not going to have a job in this world,” Nevin said, who added that their study was not submitted for peer review.
Dr. Jennifer Kitil is a postdoctoral research associate with the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois Chicago. Kitil said social-emotional learning strengthens executive functions like self-control and flexible thinking — skills that will remain crucial as the workforce evolves.
“AI can’t make ethical decisions,” said Kitil, who was not involved with the UT Dallas study.
The aspects of social-emotional learning practices related to managing stress, setting goals or solving problems are grounded in brain science, as they strengthen specific brain areas responsible for learning and decision-making, Kitil said.
Caveats
Persuading Texas to adopt neuroscience curricula in public schools would require demonstrating replicable results beyond the Momentous School cohort study, according to the neurologists and scientists interviewed by The News.
These experts caution against overgeneralizing the case study’s broader implications. Nevin acknowledges they used average earnings projections instead of tracking their precise earnings, saying the students could be earning more than their proposed projections.
Dr. Mario De La Garza, who was not involved with the study, is the counseling program director for faculty affairs and a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Counseling at Southern Methodist University.
He supports Momentous Institute, but he also said the study didn’t compare alumni to a control group that received traditional education instead, meaning the study did not have a cohort of Momentous alumni without the brain health education. “A lot of other factors could be at play,” De La Garza said.
“What if it’s wraparound services,” he said, “or what if it’s just teachers that have better relationships with students? I think Momentous is doing all of that, which I would think contributes to these better outcomes.”
Momentous Institute invests approximately $19,200 per student, Gomez said, which includes a food program and college scholarships focused on moving expenses and laptop purchases, among other costs that are not typically covered by school financial aid.
Dr. Andrea Lowden and Dr. Alison Dolce are associate professors at the Department of Pediatrics at the Anne Burnett Marion School of Medicine at Texas Christian University. They’re also child neurologists who co-founded The Epilepsy Care Center and NeuroLab Diagnostics.
The two neurologists, who were not involved with the study, raised concerns about the study tracking too few students, and the possibility of the families who enrolled being more highly motivated to help their children succeed.
Still, the TCU experts said the model could foster a supportive environment, benefiting students’ long-term development.
What’s next
Gomez said she wants to study how their model performs against modern educational challenges and examine alumni’s life satisfaction, overall wellbeing, longevity and relationship quality.
Nevin said the proposed next step is to analyze individual outcomes and investigate possible additional benefits, such as improved mental health and brain performance, better physical health and greater connectedness to people.
While early brain health education is promising, rigorous studies tracking multiple students over several years should occur before advocating for statewide implementation, De La Garza said.
Gomez said their model is already used in 32 states and in seven countries.
“We believe this curriculum is going to help lengthen lifetime expectancy, but also breaks the cycle of trauma,” Gomez said.
“It’s not rocket science,” she said. “It’s more intuitive than you might think. It’s brain science and mental health.”
This reporting is part of the Future of North Texas, a community-funded journalism initiative supported by the Commit Partnership, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, the Dallas Mavericks, the Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, the McCune-Losinger Family Fund, The Meadows Foundation, the Perot Foundation, the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas and the University of Texas at Dallas. The News retains full editorial control of this coverage.