NALC Steering Committee Members
Cynthia Mata Aguilar, Education Development Center, Inc., brings 32 years of experience in working in education. Her experiences as a teacher, a union president, researcher, and professional development specialist inform her work. Ms. Aguilar’s expertise includes adolescent literacy, special education and inclusive practices, school reform in the middle and high school, and diversity, multi-cultural and anti-racism training. She is currently serving at the Center Director for the Center on Family, School, and Community.
Ms. Aguilar is the Adolescent Literacy Team Leader for the New York and New England Comprehensive Centers, two federally funded technical assistance centers that support states’ efforts to raise the academic achievement of secondary school students and meet the goals of No Child Left Behind. Ms Aguilar has been a project director of several federally-funded project that focus on building schoolwide inclusive practices for students with disabilities at the middle and high school. Visionary Middle Schools: Signature Practices and the Power of Local Invention features case studies of three inclusive urban middle schools that created powerful learning environments for their students and teachers. The August 2006 issue of Learning Disabilities: Research & Practice features “Good High Schools for Students with Disabilities.” This study identifies three high performing high schools and the academic and social supports for student with disabilities. Her work with English language learners was highlighted in a chapter “English Language Learners in the Classroom,” in Heinemann’s Adolescent Literacy: Turning Promise into Practice edited by Kylene Beers, Robert Probst, and Linda Rief.
Barbara Cambridge is senior program officer for the National Council of Teachers of English and CASTL associate for the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Past president of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and commissioner for the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, she currently serves on the Boards of the Washington Internship Institute and the Teacher Education Accreditation Council. Cambridge co-directs the Inter/National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research and serves as consulting editor for Change magazine and as editor of the Journal of Teaching Writing. Cambridge is professor of English at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis. Her latest publications include edited books on electronic portfolios for students, teachers, and institutions and on campus support for the scholarship of teaching and learning.
La Verne Flowers is the director of the National Urban Alliance/West Metro Education Program (NUA/WMEP) Literacy Initiative. Her leadership skills and passion for change has led to K-12 teachers, principals and superintendents from 10 school districts and 39 schools receiving professional development in pedagogy to foster high intellectual performance in students. The initiative supports the voluntary integration collaborative between Minneapolis and the suburban MN school districts. Prior to joining NUA, La Verne proudly served as a middle school principal for ten years in NYC and Locust Valley, NY. La Verne’s fifteen years as a teacher from grades 3-8, served as a catalyst to be a “change agent.” Her expertise in professional development blossomed in NYC as a citywide coordinator for the Gifted and Talented Unit and Middle Level Education. In her career, Dr. Flowers was a member of the National School Reform Faculty, member of the NYS Middle Level Education board of directors, evaluator for Tri-State Consortium and RATE Regents Accreditation for Teacher Education Programs.
Linda W. Robinson has served as the president of the National Middle School Association and is currently chair of the National Middle School Association Foundation. After teaching high school, middle school, and elementary school, Ms. Robinson moved into administration where she served for 19 years as principal of a middle school. Her school served as a Carnegie mentor middle school to campuses implementing school reform across the state of Texas and also served as a professional development school with the University of Houston Clear Lake. The school was recognized for its innovative practices, its inclusion program, and its success with all students on state exams. Retired from the public schools after 31 years, Ms. Robinson is currently an educational consultant who serves as a presenter, workshop leader, and coach. Ms. Robinson served as adjunct professor at the University of Houston Clear Lake and later worked with the university as co-principal investigator of a teacher education grant. UHCL named her Distinguished Alumna in 1994. Ms. Robinson is one of the three authors of the NMSA School Improvement Toolkit and serves as a lead consultant in this project.
Helen C. Santiago is currently the Executive Director, New York Education Initiative, K-12 for the College Board located in their New York office. In this role she is responsible for the development of College Board Schools, grades six through twelve in collaboration with the New York City Department of Education the Bill and Melinda Gates, the Michael and Susan Dell Foundations. She is retired from the position of Senior Instructional Manager for Teaching & Learning in the New York City Department of Education. In this capacity, she was responsible for the rollout of the new CORE curriculum in Literacy and Mathematics including elements of professional development commensurate with the major change efforts occurring in New York City.
Ms. Santiago has served in the positions of Community Superintendent in CSD 1 in New York City and Deputy Superintendent in Community School Districts 9 and 3, a Director of Professional Development, Elementary School Principal, Coordinator of Programs and a bilingual teacher not only in New York City but in Biloxi, Mississippi and Dysart, Arizona as well. She is a member of various professional organizations, including NSDC and ASCD, has served as a member of the NSDC Planning Conference Committee and is a Past President of the Association of Deputy Superintendents of the New York City Public Schools. Most recently she has been honored as a Distinguished Educator by the NYCASCD. She has worked as a consultant for the Effective Schools Consortium in NYS and has provided training seminars on Bilingual Education and Leadership Development in New York, Chicago and San Francisco.
Terry Salinger is a managing director and chief scientist for literacy research at the American Institutes for Research (AIR). Her specific areas of focus include literacy research and assessment, teacher knowledge, and teacher preparation. She currently directs or serves as principal investigator on several federally-funded projects, including evaluations of adolescent literacy interventions and explicit literacy instruction for adult ESL students and a study of pre-service teacher preparation in reading. Prior to joining AIR in 1997, Salinger was director of research at the International Reading Association and conducted research on classroom-based literacy assessment at Educational Testing Service. She has also been a university professor and teacher trainer, and spent the first 10 years of her career as a classroom teacher in New York City. Two chapters written by Dr. Salinger appear in the 2007 book Adolescent Literacy Instruction: Policies and Promising Practices, published by the International Reading Association.
Barbara Tierney is the Assistant Director of Government Relations in the Washington, DC office of the International Reading Association.
Barbara’s has expertise in at-risk learners, early childhood education, family literacy, inclusive practices, comprehensive school reform, and community education. She has received commendations from the Kansas State Board of Education, the U.S. Department of Education, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Partnership for Family Involvement, the Kansas Association of School Libraries, the National Family Literacy Exemplary Program Project, and the Jones Institute for Educational Excellence.
As a former principal of a Title 1 Distinguished School, district literacy coordinator, grants program director, K-12 reading specialist and 6-12 ESL instructor, Barbara is a strong advocate for teachers’ and students’ rights in support of excellence and equity in reading education.