The Project Team
Principal Investigator: Dr. Jill Allor
Dr. Allor brought to the team extensive leadership experience in large-scale federal research projects, special education, and curriculum development. A former special education teacher, her research is school-based and focuses on reading acquisition for struggling students, including those with learning and intellectual disabilities. She received her doctorate in special education from Peabody College of Vanderbilt University. She previously coordinated a large scale research grant whose principal investigators were Drs. Patricia Mathes and Joseph Torgesen. Her most relevant work to the proposed project was as PI of one of three OSEP/IES- funded national centers on mental retardation and literacy. (See vita for recent publications related to this project.) She is the author or co-author of numerous articles, curricular materials, and presentations. She is on several editorial boards of education journals. She had primary responsibility for leading this project.
Co-Principal Investigator (Co PI): Dr. Stephanie Al Otaiba
Dr. Al Otaiba also contributed expertise in large-scale federal research projects, special education, and curriculum development. She is also a former special education teacher and her research is school-based and focuses on reading acquisition for struggling students, including those with learning and intellectual disabilities. She received her doctorate in special education from Peabody College of Vanderbilt University in 2000 and subsequently conducted research through the Florida Center for Reading Research and taught in the School of Education at Florida State University. She ran large grants as a PI of Project 2 of Florida’s Learning Disabilities Center Grant funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Development (ending in 2011) and was a Co-Investigator on Florida’s Reading for Understanding Grant funded by IES. She has published over 100 articles and chapters. She is on a review panel for IES, is Editor of the Journal of Learning Disabilities, and serves on several editorial boards of education journals.
Co-Principal Investigator (Co PI): Dr. Paul Yovanoff
Dr. Yovanoff received his Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Oregon in 1992 with a specialization in psychometrics and quantitative research methodology. He brought considerable expertise in methodology for estimating intervention effects, having served routinely as a methodologist on federally sponsored research and as an IES reviewer. He has extensive research (and teaching) experience in applied quantitative research design and educational measurement modeling, including the use of multi-level modeling procedures for estimating item and examinee parameters. He has published numerous related articles.
Instructional and Technology Specialist: Dr. Jennifer Cheatham
Dr. Cheatham brought to the team a unique combination of skills and experiences. She is a former reading teacher and has expertise in curriculum development. She was a research assistant working for Dr. Allor on Project Maximize and has expertise in data analysis. Her dissertation work examined the impact of multiple-criteria early reading text for early readers and she has a track record of publishing with Dr. Allor.
Current Project Coordinator: Dr. Miriam B. Ortiz
Miriam received her Ph.D. in Education and Human Development from Southern Methodist University in 2017 with a focus on Special Education and Response to Intervention. She moved to Dallas from Tallahassee, Florida having been a K-12 teacher for students with severe behavior and emotional disabilities. Miriam has worked closely with Dr. Stephanie Al Otaiba and Dr. Jill Allor to improve reading skills and achievement of struggling students and students with disabilities. Miriam’s current research interests include improving academic outcomes for children with or at-risk for disabilities as well as assisting struggling readers of all ages using the response to intervention model. Miriam has been co-author on several peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters on the topic of reading instruction for students with varying disabilities.
Instructional Coach and Doctoral Student: Carlin Conner, M.Ed.
Carlin is currently pursuing her PhD in Education at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Carlin has been living in Dallas for the past 4 years, originally placed there as a member of Teach for America to teach special education. Before coming to Dallas, Carlin completed her Bachelor of Science in Child and Family Development at the University of Georgia (UGA). While at UGA, Carlin also received a certificate in Disability Studies, which ultimately inspired her to get involved in the field of special education. During her 4 years in Dallas, Carlin worked as a 3rd-5th grade special education teacher at Uplift Williams Preparatory, a Charter School with a majority ESL population. She worked with students of all abilities: learning disability, Down syndrome, traumatic brain injury, Autism, behavior disorders, and more, in both inclusive and self-contained settings. She was named District Special Education Staff Member of the year for the 2015-2016 school year, during which time she also worked as a resident coordinator for special education at her entire K-12 campus. In May 2016, Carlin received her Master’s degree in Special Education at SMU.
Instructional Coach and Doctoral Student: Kristi Baker, M.Ed.
Kristi is currently pursuing her PhD in Special Education from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Born and raised in Texas, Kristi earned her Bachelor of Science in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of Houston and her Master’s in Special Education from Southern Methodist University. Over the past 10 years, Kristi has worked with a broad spectrum of students in elementary through high school with varying disabilities and is passionate about serving students with special needs. Most recently, Kristi has worked with other teachers within a local, urban charter district as the special education coordinator. In this role, she worked to implement systems to ensure that all schools within the district had the resources needed to serve their growing populations of students with IEPs and 504 plans. Kristi plans to focus her work on interventions that address the over-classification of minority students in special education.
Instructional Specialist: Dawn Manaster Levy, M.Ed.
Dawn has coordinated and participated in several research and evaluation projects in the Simmons School of Education and Human Development since 2005. Throughout her career, Dawn’s primary focus has been reading research. Her principal interests include early childhood education specifically early literacy interventions and reading interventions for children with intellectual disabilities. Dawn earned her undergraduate degrees from The University of Texas at Austin and her Master’s in Education from SMU. Dawn taught general and special education for nine years in Texas public and private schools. Dawn has worked in multiple capacities on Project Maximize, Project Scale Up, Passport to Literacy and Project Intensity.
Instructional Specialist: Dr. Diane Gifford
Dr. Gifford has extensive elementary school teaching, administrative, and research experience. Having spent several years as the Director of Curriculum at a local elementary school, she has also worked as the project coordinator on two mathematics formative assessment and teacher resources development projects. Recently, she was a content writer/developer and member of the Southern Methodist University project team for the state of Texas Response-to-Intervention mobile app. Dr. Gifford earned her doctorate in Education with a specialization in reading comprehension at SMU. Her dissertation research focused on the screening and identification of children with specific comprehension deficits using standardized and alternative screening measures for word reading and linguistic comprehension.
Behavioral and Fidelity Specialist: Dr. Francesca Jones
Dr. Jones brought extensive experience conducting research with students with special needs as well as with research fidelity. She earned her Ph.D. in special education with an emphasis on behavioral disorders. She has served on several research projects, including Project Maximize with Dr. Allor.
Coordinator and Doctoral Student: Ashley Moorshead, M.Ed.
Ms. Moorshead is a former special education teacher with experience in curriculum development and a variety of reading programs. She received her M.A. in Special Education from Cal State Dominguez Hills. She contributed to the team in a variety of ways, including helping with literature reviews, collecting data, and collaborating with the team to influence the curriculum.
Coordinator: Melinda McGrath, M.Ed.
Melinda graduated from the University of Houston with a Masters in Counseling and Education. She earned a teaching certificate in Special Education, working with grades 1st through 5th, before moving into reading research. She was then recruited by the University of Texas to join a team of intervention reading instructors for three years researching intervention reading programs for first graders at risk for reading failure. Transferring to Southern Methodist University, SMU, in Dallas, TX, she worked as an Instructional Developer collaborating with the publisher, SRA, McGraw Hill, to create teacher training manuals and help revise curricular material for publications. She traveled with the US Department of Education for two years providing professional development workshops on the components of effective reading instruction, reading strategies, and the development of technology as a coaching choice in the classroom. She has worked on several federally funded reading research grants as a Project Coordinator, Instructional Specialist and Master Reading Coach throughout Houston and Dallas supporting teachers to achieve better reading outcomes for their students. She established a tutoring center at SMU providing academic support to struggling students, with an emphasis on evidence based reading instruction.
Advisory Board
Dr. Elfrieda H. Hiebert brought expertise related to texts (and vocabulary selection within texts) for beginning and struggling readers. Her primary role was to assist with selecting existing texts for higher bands and with selecting themes and vocabulary for texts we were designing. She earned her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is currently President and CEO of TextProject, Inc., a nonprofit company that supports research and disseminates information on texts for beginning and struggling readers. She is also research associate in the Department of Education, University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research has been recognized with the William S. Gray Citation of Merit (2008; International Reading Association), election into the Reading Hall of Fame (2008), and election as a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association (2011).
Dr. Anne van Kleeck brought expertise on preliteracy and language development, shared book reading, and assessment and her primary role was to provide guidance about language levels of texts. She is the Callier Research Scholar at the Behavioral and Brain Science at UT Dallas. She earned her PhD from the University of Washington and her research focuses on preliteracy development, assessment, and intervention for children with language disorders including work on a book-sharing intervention targeting early semantic relations. She has an extensive publication record.
The next four advisory board members provided feedback on interventions, placement ,and progress monitoring assessments.
Dr. Diane Browder, the Snyder Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC), brought to the project extensive experience with students with significant cognitive disabilities. Her primary role was to provide feedback and input regarding the development of the intervention and implementation of pilot studies. Dr. Browder has written over 70 articles, book chapters, and books in special education. She has conducted several large grants related to students with ID and recently published a reading curriculum specifically designed for students with intellectual disabilities, the Early Literacy Skills Builder.
Dr. Lynn Ahlgrim-Delzell, a Professor of Research at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, has extensive experience with students with significant cognitive
disabilities. She has written over 40 articles, book chapters, books, and other publications in special education including work on teacher self-efficacy. She has over 23 years experience conducting research using a variety of research methods including RCTs, survey, qualitative, and mixed methods for large grants. She is co-author of the Early Literacy Skills Builder and Early Reading Skills Builder specifically designed for students with ID.
Dr. Christopher J. Lemons is a Professor of Special Education at Vanderbilt University where he teaches courses in assessment, research methodology, and reading instruction. His research focuses on effective methods of teaching reading to children who struggle to learn to read and he has experience as a trainer and researcher with peer tutoring. He is currently PI on Project ERIC (supported by IES), an intervention study aimed at teaching children with Down Syndrome to read. His primary role was to provide feedback and input regarding the development of the intervention.
Dr. Matthew Burns is a Professor of Educational Psychology, Coordinator of the School Psychology Program, and Co-director of the Minnesota Center for Reading Research at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Burns has been involved in over $9.5 million of federal, state, and private foundation funded research, and has published over 125 articles and book chapters in national publications. He is the Editor of School Psychology Review and a past Editor of Assessment for Effective Intervention. Dr. Burns' research focuses on systematically matching interventions to student skill deficits through a response-to-intervention framework and his primary role was to work with us to ensure assessment informs this instructional match for bands.
Consultants
Two consultants provided assistance with the development of the books and materials, an educational technology consultant (Dr. Anthony Cuevas), and a children’s book author (Dr. Cecilia Minden). Dr. Cuevas earned his Ph.D. in Instructional Design from Florida State University in 1995 and has extensive technology experience, particularly in online professional development. Dr. Minden was director of the Language and Literacy Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is currently a Literacy Consultant and has authored or co-authored over 100 books for children. She earned her doctorate in reading education from the University of Virginia. She has collaborated with Dr. Allor on previous publishing projects and established a successful working relationship.
Dr. Allor brought to the team extensive leadership experience in large-scale federal research projects, special education, and curriculum development. A former special education teacher, her research is school-based and focuses on reading acquisition for struggling students, including those with learning and intellectual disabilities. She received her doctorate in special education from Peabody College of Vanderbilt University. She previously coordinated a large scale research grant whose principal investigators were Drs. Patricia Mathes and Joseph Torgesen. Her most relevant work to the proposed project was as PI of one of three OSEP/IES- funded national centers on mental retardation and literacy. (See vita for recent publications related to this project.) She is the author or co-author of numerous articles, curricular materials, and presentations. She is on several editorial boards of education journals. She had primary responsibility for leading this project.
Co-Principal Investigator (Co PI): Dr. Stephanie Al Otaiba
Dr. Al Otaiba also contributed expertise in large-scale federal research projects, special education, and curriculum development. She is also a former special education teacher and her research is school-based and focuses on reading acquisition for struggling students, including those with learning and intellectual disabilities. She received her doctorate in special education from Peabody College of Vanderbilt University in 2000 and subsequently conducted research through the Florida Center for Reading Research and taught in the School of Education at Florida State University. She ran large grants as a PI of Project 2 of Florida’s Learning Disabilities Center Grant funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Development (ending in 2011) and was a Co-Investigator on Florida’s Reading for Understanding Grant funded by IES. She has published over 100 articles and chapters. She is on a review panel for IES, is Editor of the Journal of Learning Disabilities, and serves on several editorial boards of education journals.
Co-Principal Investigator (Co PI): Dr. Paul Yovanoff
Dr. Yovanoff received his Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Oregon in 1992 with a specialization in psychometrics and quantitative research methodology. He brought considerable expertise in methodology for estimating intervention effects, having served routinely as a methodologist on federally sponsored research and as an IES reviewer. He has extensive research (and teaching) experience in applied quantitative research design and educational measurement modeling, including the use of multi-level modeling procedures for estimating item and examinee parameters. He has published numerous related articles.
Instructional and Technology Specialist: Dr. Jennifer Cheatham
Dr. Cheatham brought to the team a unique combination of skills and experiences. She is a former reading teacher and has expertise in curriculum development. She was a research assistant working for Dr. Allor on Project Maximize and has expertise in data analysis. Her dissertation work examined the impact of multiple-criteria early reading text for early readers and she has a track record of publishing with Dr. Allor.
Current Project Coordinator: Dr. Miriam B. Ortiz
Miriam received her Ph.D. in Education and Human Development from Southern Methodist University in 2017 with a focus on Special Education and Response to Intervention. She moved to Dallas from Tallahassee, Florida having been a K-12 teacher for students with severe behavior and emotional disabilities. Miriam has worked closely with Dr. Stephanie Al Otaiba and Dr. Jill Allor to improve reading skills and achievement of struggling students and students with disabilities. Miriam’s current research interests include improving academic outcomes for children with or at-risk for disabilities as well as assisting struggling readers of all ages using the response to intervention model. Miriam has been co-author on several peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters on the topic of reading instruction for students with varying disabilities.
Instructional Coach and Doctoral Student: Carlin Conner, M.Ed.
Carlin is currently pursuing her PhD in Education at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Carlin has been living in Dallas for the past 4 years, originally placed there as a member of Teach for America to teach special education. Before coming to Dallas, Carlin completed her Bachelor of Science in Child and Family Development at the University of Georgia (UGA). While at UGA, Carlin also received a certificate in Disability Studies, which ultimately inspired her to get involved in the field of special education. During her 4 years in Dallas, Carlin worked as a 3rd-5th grade special education teacher at Uplift Williams Preparatory, a Charter School with a majority ESL population. She worked with students of all abilities: learning disability, Down syndrome, traumatic brain injury, Autism, behavior disorders, and more, in both inclusive and self-contained settings. She was named District Special Education Staff Member of the year for the 2015-2016 school year, during which time she also worked as a resident coordinator for special education at her entire K-12 campus. In May 2016, Carlin received her Master’s degree in Special Education at SMU.
Instructional Coach and Doctoral Student: Kristi Baker, M.Ed.
Kristi is currently pursuing her PhD in Special Education from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Born and raised in Texas, Kristi earned her Bachelor of Science in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of Houston and her Master’s in Special Education from Southern Methodist University. Over the past 10 years, Kristi has worked with a broad spectrum of students in elementary through high school with varying disabilities and is passionate about serving students with special needs. Most recently, Kristi has worked with other teachers within a local, urban charter district as the special education coordinator. In this role, she worked to implement systems to ensure that all schools within the district had the resources needed to serve their growing populations of students with IEPs and 504 plans. Kristi plans to focus her work on interventions that address the over-classification of minority students in special education.
Instructional Specialist: Dawn Manaster Levy, M.Ed.
Dawn has coordinated and participated in several research and evaluation projects in the Simmons School of Education and Human Development since 2005. Throughout her career, Dawn’s primary focus has been reading research. Her principal interests include early childhood education specifically early literacy interventions and reading interventions for children with intellectual disabilities. Dawn earned her undergraduate degrees from The University of Texas at Austin and her Master’s in Education from SMU. Dawn taught general and special education for nine years in Texas public and private schools. Dawn has worked in multiple capacities on Project Maximize, Project Scale Up, Passport to Literacy and Project Intensity.
Instructional Specialist: Dr. Diane Gifford
Dr. Gifford has extensive elementary school teaching, administrative, and research experience. Having spent several years as the Director of Curriculum at a local elementary school, she has also worked as the project coordinator on two mathematics formative assessment and teacher resources development projects. Recently, she was a content writer/developer and member of the Southern Methodist University project team for the state of Texas Response-to-Intervention mobile app. Dr. Gifford earned her doctorate in Education with a specialization in reading comprehension at SMU. Her dissertation research focused on the screening and identification of children with specific comprehension deficits using standardized and alternative screening measures for word reading and linguistic comprehension.
Behavioral and Fidelity Specialist: Dr. Francesca Jones
Dr. Jones brought extensive experience conducting research with students with special needs as well as with research fidelity. She earned her Ph.D. in special education with an emphasis on behavioral disorders. She has served on several research projects, including Project Maximize with Dr. Allor.
Coordinator and Doctoral Student: Ashley Moorshead, M.Ed.
Ms. Moorshead is a former special education teacher with experience in curriculum development and a variety of reading programs. She received her M.A. in Special Education from Cal State Dominguez Hills. She contributed to the team in a variety of ways, including helping with literature reviews, collecting data, and collaborating with the team to influence the curriculum.
Coordinator: Melinda McGrath, M.Ed.
Melinda graduated from the University of Houston with a Masters in Counseling and Education. She earned a teaching certificate in Special Education, working with grades 1st through 5th, before moving into reading research. She was then recruited by the University of Texas to join a team of intervention reading instructors for three years researching intervention reading programs for first graders at risk for reading failure. Transferring to Southern Methodist University, SMU, in Dallas, TX, she worked as an Instructional Developer collaborating with the publisher, SRA, McGraw Hill, to create teacher training manuals and help revise curricular material for publications. She traveled with the US Department of Education for two years providing professional development workshops on the components of effective reading instruction, reading strategies, and the development of technology as a coaching choice in the classroom. She has worked on several federally funded reading research grants as a Project Coordinator, Instructional Specialist and Master Reading Coach throughout Houston and Dallas supporting teachers to achieve better reading outcomes for their students. She established a tutoring center at SMU providing academic support to struggling students, with an emphasis on evidence based reading instruction.
Advisory Board
Dr. Elfrieda H. Hiebert brought expertise related to texts (and vocabulary selection within texts) for beginning and struggling readers. Her primary role was to assist with selecting existing texts for higher bands and with selecting themes and vocabulary for texts we were designing. She earned her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is currently President and CEO of TextProject, Inc., a nonprofit company that supports research and disseminates information on texts for beginning and struggling readers. She is also research associate in the Department of Education, University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research has been recognized with the William S. Gray Citation of Merit (2008; International Reading Association), election into the Reading Hall of Fame (2008), and election as a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association (2011).
Dr. Anne van Kleeck brought expertise on preliteracy and language development, shared book reading, and assessment and her primary role was to provide guidance about language levels of texts. She is the Callier Research Scholar at the Behavioral and Brain Science at UT Dallas. She earned her PhD from the University of Washington and her research focuses on preliteracy development, assessment, and intervention for children with language disorders including work on a book-sharing intervention targeting early semantic relations. She has an extensive publication record.
The next four advisory board members provided feedback on interventions, placement ,and progress monitoring assessments.
Dr. Diane Browder, the Snyder Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC), brought to the project extensive experience with students with significant cognitive disabilities. Her primary role was to provide feedback and input regarding the development of the intervention and implementation of pilot studies. Dr. Browder has written over 70 articles, book chapters, and books in special education. She has conducted several large grants related to students with ID and recently published a reading curriculum specifically designed for students with intellectual disabilities, the Early Literacy Skills Builder.
Dr. Lynn Ahlgrim-Delzell, a Professor of Research at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, has extensive experience with students with significant cognitive
disabilities. She has written over 40 articles, book chapters, books, and other publications in special education including work on teacher self-efficacy. She has over 23 years experience conducting research using a variety of research methods including RCTs, survey, qualitative, and mixed methods for large grants. She is co-author of the Early Literacy Skills Builder and Early Reading Skills Builder specifically designed for students with ID.
Dr. Christopher J. Lemons is a Professor of Special Education at Vanderbilt University where he teaches courses in assessment, research methodology, and reading instruction. His research focuses on effective methods of teaching reading to children who struggle to learn to read and he has experience as a trainer and researcher with peer tutoring. He is currently PI on Project ERIC (supported by IES), an intervention study aimed at teaching children with Down Syndrome to read. His primary role was to provide feedback and input regarding the development of the intervention.
Dr. Matthew Burns is a Professor of Educational Psychology, Coordinator of the School Psychology Program, and Co-director of the Minnesota Center for Reading Research at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Burns has been involved in over $9.5 million of federal, state, and private foundation funded research, and has published over 125 articles and book chapters in national publications. He is the Editor of School Psychology Review and a past Editor of Assessment for Effective Intervention. Dr. Burns' research focuses on systematically matching interventions to student skill deficits through a response-to-intervention framework and his primary role was to work with us to ensure assessment informs this instructional match for bands.
Consultants
Two consultants provided assistance with the development of the books and materials, an educational technology consultant (Dr. Anthony Cuevas), and a children’s book author (Dr. Cecilia Minden). Dr. Cuevas earned his Ph.D. in Instructional Design from Florida State University in 1995 and has extensive technology experience, particularly in online professional development. Dr. Minden was director of the Language and Literacy Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is currently a Literacy Consultant and has authored or co-authored over 100 books for children. She earned her doctorate in reading education from the University of Virginia. She has collaborated with Dr. Allor on previous publishing projects and established a successful working relationship.
