Donald Deshler is the director of the Center for Research on Learning (CRL) and the Gene A. Budig Professor of Special Education at the University of Kansas. The work of the CRL focuses on the validation of academic strategies to enable adolescents to meet state assessment standards and to 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 high school dropout rate in a world in which students must be prepared to meet increased academic and employment standards. Dr. Deshler and his colleagues have completed more than $172 million of contracted research and development work related to the Content Literacy Continuum, a tiered intervention framework for raising literacy achievement for all adolescents.

Dr. Deshler serves as an advisor on adolescent achievement to several other organizations, including Carnegie Corporation of New York, the National Governors Association, the Council on Families and Literacy, and the U. S. State Department. He recently received a presidential appointment to the National Institute for Literacy’s advisory board. Dr. Deshler has presented on education policy regarding adolescent literacy for the nation’s governors at the James B. Hunt Institute for Educational Leadership and Policy and has testified before 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. Dr. 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. Dr. Deshler’s most recent textbook (written with Annemarie Palincsar, Gina Biancarosa, and Marnie Nair) is called Informed Choices: Principles and Programs for Adolescent Literacy.