Rollanda E. O'Connor, PhD, is Professor of Education at the University of California, Riverside. She taught reading in special and general education classrooms for many years and has conducted numerous intervention studies in special and general education settings, explored procedures to predict in kindergarten and first grade which children are likely to develop reading difficulties, and followed the reading progress of children who received early intervention. Her longitudinal studies of intervention and assessment led to the development (with Patricia F. Vadasy) of Ladders to Literacy , a collection of phonological and print awareness activities and scaffolding suggestions for children at risk for reading problems, and the book Teaching Word Recognition: Effective Strategies for Students with Learning Difficulties . Dr. O'Connor's current research includes evaluating the effects of early, continuous intervention across the first 4 years of schooling and developing research-based interventions for students with reading difficulties in the intermediate grades. nbsp;

Patricia F. Vadasy, PhD, is Senior Researcher at the Oregon Research Institute in Seattle, Washington. Her background is in early reading acquisition and instruction, instructional design, and intervention research. Dr. Vadasy oversees a research team engaged in research on effective school-based literacy interventions for at-risk and struggling students. She has published findings on her grant-funded intervention research widely in peer-reviewed journals. She is the lead author (with Rollanda E. O'Connor) of the Sound Partners code-oriented supplemental tutoring program and coauthor (with Rollanda E. O'Connor) of the Ladders to Literacy preschool and kindergarten programs.