Director of the Center for Research on Learning (CRL) and the Gene A. Budig Professor of Special Education

Don Deshler, Ph.D. is director of the Center for Research on Learning (CRL) and the Gene A. Budig Professor of Special Education in the School of Education at the University of Kansas. The work of the CRL focuses on the validation of academic strategies to enable for adolescents to meet state assessment standards and successfully graduate from college prepared to compete in the global economy. The CRL’s work addresses ways to close the large “achievement gap” and reduce the escalating drop out rate within a world in which students must be prepared to meet increased academic and employment standards. Deshler and his colleagues have completed in excess of $172 million of contracted R & D work related to the Content Literacy Continuum – a tiered intervention framework for raising literacy achievement for all adolescents.

Deshler serves as an advisor on adolescent achievement to several organizations including the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the National Governor’s Association, the Alliance for Excellent Education, the Council on Families and Literacy, and the U. S. State Department. He recently received a presidential appointment to serve as a member of the National Institute for Literacy Advisory Board. He has presented on matters of educational policy regarding adolescent literacy to the nation’s governors at the James B. Hunt Institute for Educational Leadership and Policy and has testified in Congress and several state legislatures on secondary school reform. Through the Aspen Institute, he has worked with members of Congress to shape policies addressing the challenges of high school reform. Deshler is the recipient of numerous awards including the J.E. Wallace Wallin Award for leadership in educational research, the Maxwell J. Schleifer Distinguished Service Award, and the Higuchi Research Achievement Award. Deshler’s most recent textbook (with Annemarie Palincsar and Marnie Nair) is Informed Choices: Principles and Programs for Adolescent Literacy.