Donna Scanlon B.S. '76, Ph.D. '87
Donna Scanlon’s work has profoundly reshaped and redirected fundamental beliefs and practices related to reading instruction. Scanlon, a professor in the University at Albany’s Department of Reading, has built a national reputation as a researcher, scholar and educator in children’s literacy.
At a time when visual-perceptual theory and its proponents enjoyed almost unquestioned professional credence, Scanlon and her colleague, Frank Vellutino, empirically demonstrated that children’s acquisition of reading skills was linguistically, not perceptually, based. They then produced convincing evidence that contradicted, and eventually undermined, the widely held belief that reading disability resulted from neurological or cognitive abnormalities. Their research, instead, identified environmental and instructional factors as the basis of most learning problems.
This work served as a foundation for the 2004 amendments to the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act that ushered in the school reform movement known as “response to intervention” (RTI), a method that provides early, systematic assistance to children who experience learning difficulties. “These changes in federal law fundamentally altered the manner in which children with disabilities are identified and instructed,” said Kevin Quinn, chair of UAlbany’s Department of Education and Counseling Psychology. “Drs. Scanlon and Vellutino showed that not only was it possible to reduce the incidence of reading disability, but that doing so changed the basic cognitive process that apparently predisposed some children toward disability. This work is rightly characterized as truly seminal.”
Based on her research, Scanlon and her colleagues have developed an approach to early literacy instruction and intervention that has been highly effective in helping teachers reduce reading difficulties in early grades. It is one of the few literacy interventions that such organizations as the International Reading Association cite as truly evidence based, and it is widely recommended to teachers as best practice. Scanlon’s book Early Intervention for Reading Difficulties is broadly regarded as an important resource for teachers in the early elementary grades.
“In the last decade there has scarcely been a federal or state initiative to address the ways in which reading is assessed and taught in schools to which Dr. Scanlon has not been invited to contribute,” noted Quinn. In recent years, Scanlon has served at the national level on the Department of Education’s Reading First Federal Advisory Committee and the International Reading Association’s Response to Intervention Commission. She also has repeatedly lent her expertise to the National Institute of Health in setting a research agenda focused on children with learning disabilities. At the state level, Scanlon has played an integral role in conceiving and implementing an initiative to promote RTI school reform efforts.
Currently, her research focuses on teacher education with the goal of preparing teachers to be optimally effective in supporting literacy learners, especially those who struggle. Also, with her colleague Kim Anderson, she has launched an effort to bridge the “research-to-practice” gap and has developed approaches to providing low-cost, high-quality distance-learning opportunities for teachers in schools invested in developing Response to Intervention approaches.
Scanlon exemplifies excellence in education. She has clearly demonstrated her dedication to the profession, and her outstanding achievements in research, scholarship and teaching have produced significant and lasting positive outcomes for educators, their students and the students of tomorrow.
