The Future of the Science of Reading

Jim brings more than 20 years of experience in educational technology, product development, strategy, marketing, and sales support to his position as President, Core and Supplemental Solutions, where he focuses on enhancing and deepening HMH’s basal core business. Most recently, Jim served as Chief Product and Strategy Officer for Achieve3000, where he led a broad portfolio of teams and projects to develop innovative ways to differentiate instruction through blended learning. Jim has also held roles at Pearson, National Geographic, and HMH, where he previously served as Senior Vice President, Product Management and Strategy, working on comprehensive curriculum solutions within the K-12 space. He is passionate about the role of technology within curriculum development, and dedicated to supporting students and teachers. Jim holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Master of Business Administration from the Stern School of Business at New York University.

David Steiner is Executive Director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy and Professor of Education at Johns Hopkins University. In 2020, he finished serving as a member of the Maryland State Board of Education and the Maryland Commission for Innovation and Excellence in Education. He currently serves on the boards of the Relay Graduate School of Education. Most recently, he was appointed to the Practitioner Council at the Hoover Institute, Stanford University.

Barbara Davidson is a former classroom teacher whose career has been dedicated to advancing three levers for producing K–12 academic improvements: the role that high-quality curriculum plays in supporting teacher excellence, the importance of building students’ background knowledge of the world as they learn to read and write, and the octane that specific evidence-based instructional practices can provide for learning. Barbara runs StandardsWork (www.standardswork.org) and serves as Executive Director of the Knowledge Matters Campaign (www.knowledgematterscampaign.org) which, among other things, sponsors the Knowledge Matters School Tour designed to “find the good and praise” districts that are utilizing these three levers to change outcomes for students. Davidson was editor, with Mike Petrilli and Kathleen Carroll, of the recently published, Follow the Science to School: Evidence-based Practices for Elementary Education.