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Sandra Stotsky

Professor of Education Emerita, University of Arkansas

Sandra Stotsky is professor of education emerita at the University of Arkansas, where she held the 21^st Century Chair in Teacher Quality. She served as Senior Associate Commissioner (a professional position) at the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education from 1999-2003, where she was in charge of developing or revising all the state’s K-12 standards, teacher licensure tests, and teacher and administrator licensure regulations. She served on the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education from 2006-2010 (a citizen position), on the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, from 2006-2008, and on the Common Core Validation Committee, from 2009-2010. She was one of the five members of the Validation Committee who would not sign off on the standards.

Stotsky is regularly invited to testify or submit testimony to state boards of education and state legislators on bills addressing licensure tests, licensure standards, and Common Core’s standards (e.g., Utah, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, South Carolina, and Texas). She currently serves on several committees for the International Dyslexia Association and on the advisory board for Pioneer Institute’s Center for School Reform.

She was also editor of the National Council of Teachers of English’s premier research journal, Research in the Teaching of English, from 1991 to 1997. She has published extensively in professional journals and written several books.

Stotsky did undergraduate work at the University of Michigan and completed a doctorate in reading research at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her major publications include The Death and Resurrection of a Coherent Literature Curriculum (Rowman & Littlefield, 2012); Literary Study in Grades 9, 10, and 11: A National Survey (Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers, 2010); What’s at Stake in the K-12 Standards Wars: A Primer for Educational Policy Makers (Peter Lang, 2000); and Losing Our Language (Free Press, 1999, reprinted by Encounter Books, 2002).