KU News Release

U.S. Senate confirms professor to National Institute for Literacy Advisory Board

LAWRENCE — The U.S. Senate today confirmed a University of Kansas professor’s presidential appointment to serve on the Advisory Board of the National Institute for Literacy.

Donald D. Deshler was appointed to serve for the remainder of a three-year term expiring Jan. 30, 2008. He is a professor in the Department of Special Education and is director of the Center for Research on Learning at KU.

The National Institute for Literacy provides leadership on literacy issues, including the improvement of reading instruction for children, youth and adults. In consultation with the U.S. Departments of Education, Labor and Health and Human Services, the institute serves as a national resource on current, comprehensive literacy research, practice and policy.

Deshler and his colleagues at the Center for Research on Learning designed the Strategic Instruction Model intervention program used by thousands of schools nationwide. In 2004, Deshler was invited to brief President Bush and first lady Laura Bush on SIM and his research.

SIM is an approach to teaching adolescents who struggle to become good readers, writers and learners. It is based on the reality that for adolescents to meet high standards, they must be able to read and understand large volumes of complex, difficult reading materials. Additionally, they must be able to express themselves in writing. SIM includes instruction in visual imagery, paraphrasing, vocabulary and strategies to learn sentence, paragraph and theme writing. More than 400,000 educators and 3,500 school districts have adopted SIM components, and several states — including California, Connecticut, Florida, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Vermont — have implemented SIM statewide.

Deshler has received the J.E. Wallace Wallin Award from the Council for Exceptional Children and the Learning Disabilities Association Award for outstanding research and service for at-risk populations.

The other appointees confirmed by the Senate were M. Carmel Borders, president of the Tapestry Foundation, an organization that partners with literacy projects that emphasize family literacy and the early literacy environment for children; and Timothy Shanahan, a professor of urban education and director of the Center for Literacy at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

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