Timothy Shanahan

Timothy Shanahan is an American literacy education researcher and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He began his career as a primary grade teacher in Michigan before earning his PhD in education in 1980 and joining the UIC faculty, where he founded and directed the UIC Center for Literacy from 1991 to 2013. He served as director of reading for Chicago Public Schools from 2001 to 2002 and was elected president of the International Literacy Association in 2004. His research covers the relationship between reading and writing instruction, the limitations of cloze testing as a reading assessment, and disciplinary literacy, work he pursued with his wife Cynthia that helped shape the Common Core State Standards adopted across more than forty states. He served on federal panels including the National Reading Panel and chaired the National Early Literacy Panel, was appointed to the National Institute of Literacy board, received the P. David Pearson Award for Scholarly Impact in 2017, and was inducted into the Reading Hall of Fame in 2007.