Meet the Authors

Phyllis Blaunstein

Phyllis Blaunstein is a national leader in education policy and public engagement. She worked extensively with state boards of education to develop state policies to ensure an effective education for all children as the former Executive Director of the National Association of State Boards of Education, was an Education Policy Fellow with the Institute for Education Leadership and a member of the regulations writing team for the first law that guaranteed the right to an education for children with disabilities, P.L. 94-142, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act.

Trained as a speech and language pathologist, Blaunstein directed the Speech and Hearing Clinic at the University of Tennessee Research Hospital where she worked with physicians, medical students, high risk infants and their parents and staffed the Birth Defects Clinic. She was a member of the faculty of the Department of Audiology and Speech Pathology at the University of Tennessee. Her work in language disorders is the precursor of her interest in providing children research based skills for learning to read.

Blaunstein started her career as a secondary school English teacher and was shocked to learn that her class of high school juniors was unable to read. This was her first indication that students could get through the education system without the most fundamental skill — reading.

Currently, Blaunstein is Senior Counsel at Widmeyer Communications specializing in social marketing — using commercial marketing techniques to promote social issues.

G. Reid Lyon

G. Reid Lyon is the Executive Vice President for Research and Evaluation at the American College of Education in Dallas, Texas. Dr. Lyon also serves on the Whitney International University team, part of Global Education’s mission to create high-quality institutions in key regions of the world to make postsecondary education accessible for all qualified students. He was a research psychologist and Chief of the Child Development and Behavior Branch within the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the NIH. In that capacity, he was responsible for the direction and management of research programs in developmental psychology, cognitive neuroscience, behavioral pediatrics, reading and human learning and learning disorders. He was also responsible for translating NIH scientific discoveries relevant to the development and education of children to the United States Congress and other governmental agencies.

Dr. Lyon has authored, co-authored and edited over 120 journal articles, books and book chapters addressing learning differences and disabilities in children and the development of evidence-based education policies at the national level. He was a member of the President’s Commission on Excellence in Special Education and served as an advisor to President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush on child development and education research and policies from 2000 to 2005.