Acknowledgments
This study represents a collaborative effort of school districts, schools, teachers, researchers, and professional development providers. We appreciate the willingness of the school districts, schools, and teachers to volunteer for the study, participate in the professional development, and respond to many requests for data, feedback, and access to classrooms. We were also fortunate to have the advice of an expert technical working group. Members included Tom Cook, Northwestern University; Linnea C. Ehri, City University of New York; Barbara Foorman, Florida State University; Mary M. Kennedy, Michigan State University; Andrew C. Porter, University of Pennsylvania; Brian Rowan, University of Michigan; Latrice M. Seals, educational consultant for the Houston Independent School District; Michael Seltzer, University of California, Los Angeles; William Shadish, University of California, Merced; and Joseph Torgesen, Florida State University. We also benefitted from the informed feedback on the study’s statistical analyses and report from the following people at the American Institutes for Research (AIR) and MDRC: George Bohrnstedt, Terry Salinger, James Kemple, Charles Michalopoulos, and Gordon Berlin.
We would like to thank all those who provided the professional development during the study, including the coaches within the study districts; the LETRS facilitators at Sopris West, and the coaching facilitators at the Consortium on Reading Excellence (CORE), as well as the members of the intervention team who provided monitoring support: Kirk Walters, Judith Littman, and Terry Anstrom. We also thank Michelle Cantave, Amber Noel, Sara Yonker, Consuelo Aceves, Kristen Hodge, Shelley Rappaport, and Jeanna Hicks for coordinating the classroom observations and survey administration and data processing; Sandra Tang and Jeannette Moses for all their support to the staff conducting data collection and processing; Lynne Blankenship and the conference staff for all their support in managing many of the study’s professional development activities; Susan Sepanik and Adam Wodka for their excellent research assistance with the student records; all of the staff at REDA International, Inc., MDRC, and AIR who helped us collect and process data throughout the study; and the AIR and MDRC staff who helped us start the study up during the early years: Reuben Jacobson, Courtney Tanenbaum, Steve Hurlburt, Robert Ivry, Jason Snipes, Kristin Porter, and Jean Eisberg. Finally, we would like to thank our report editors, Holly Baker, Mike Rollins, and Maria Stephens who helped to make the report useful and understandable.