Marjorie Youmans Lipson
Marjorie Y. Lipson, PhD, is a professor emeritus at the University of Vermont, where she taught undergraduates in the elementary education program and graduate students in reading/language arts. She is currently the principal investigator of the Vermont Reads Institute, a consortium of research and development projects focused on improving literacy achievement in grades K-12. Prior to receiving her doctorate at the University of Michigan, she taught elementary school in a Spanish-English bilingual setting in the midwest, and for several years in Washington, DC. Her scholarship focuses on reading comprehension, reading difficulties, and factors influencing literacy success. Her research related to successful schools and school change has been published in Elementary School Journals, Journal of Literacy Research, and The Reading Teacher. She is co-author, with Karen Wixson, of Assessment & Instruction of Reading and Writing Difficulties: An Interactive Approach, now in its fourth edition, and has recently published a text providing guidance to teachers in grades 3-6, Teaching Reading Beyond the Primary Grades. She has served on a variety of International Reading Association committees and is co-chair of IRA’s Commission on Response to Intervention (RTI). She has served on the board of directors of the National Reading Conference and on numerous journal editorial boards, and was recently named University Scholar at the University of Vermont for 2008-2009.

Karen K. Wixson
Karen Wixson has published widely in the areas of literacy curriculum, instruction, and assessment, and is co-author of a popular text on the assessment and instruction of reading and writing problems. She is a professor of education at the University of Michigan and was dean of the School of Education there from 1998-2005. Prior to receiving her doctorate in reading education at Syracuse University, she worked both as a remedial reading and a learning disabilities teacher. She is a long-time consultant to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading tests and currently serves on the Planning Committee for the development of the 2007 NAEP Reading Framework. She recently served as co-director and principal investigator for the U.S. Department of Education's Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement (CIERA), and is co-chair of the International Reading Association’s Commission on Response to Intervention (RTI). She is co-author, with Marjorie Lipson, of Assessment & Instruction of Reading and Writing Difficulties: An Interactive Approach, now in its fourth edition. She also co-authored The Alignment of State Standards and Assessments in Elementary Reading, a report originally commissioned by the National Research Council's Committee on Title I Testing and Assessment and published by CIERA.