Terry Salinger

Chief Scientist for Reading Research, American Institutes for Research (AIR)

Dr. Terry Salinger is a Managing Director and Chief Scientist for Reading Research at the American Institutes for Research. Her specific areas of focus are reading and literacy research and assessment. She is currently the project director for an IES study of the effectiveness of reading interventions for adolescent struggling readers. Additionally, Dr. Salinger provides content expertise on studies investigating pre-service teachers’ preparation to teach beginning reading, developing a curriculum for adult ESL learners, and monitoring the implementation of the Reading First program. She headed a study of the secondary component of the Alabama Reading Initiative, a state-wide effort to enhance reading instruction, and led the project to develop the framework and specifications for the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress in reading.

Dr. Salinger’s professional experiences prior to joining AIR in 1997 include four years as the director of research at the International Reading Association, where she was project director for the development of the National Council of Teachers of English/International Reading Association National Standards for the English Language Arts. She has worked at Educational Testing Service, where she did research on classroom-based assessment approaches. She has close to twenty years in other positions in education, first as a classroom teacher in New York City and then as a professor of reading and early childhood education at the University of Texas at El Paso and the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Salinger has a doctorate in reading, with dual emphases on statistics and curriculum design, has done extensive research on the instruction and assessment of reading and writing; she has published widely, especially in the fields of literacy acquisition and standards-based assessment.

Primary Presenter for: Adapting a K–12 Reading Model for Middle and Secondary Schools