Barbara R. Foorman, an internationally known authority on language and reading development, has been named the nation's first commissioner for education research. She will lead the National Center for Education Research, a key office in the Institute of Education Sciences (IES)--the research, evaluation and statistical arm of the U.S. Department of Education.

"We searched long and hard to get just the right person in this position," said Grover "Russ" Whitehurst, IES director. "With Barbara Foorman, we won. I'm delighted she's agreed to join us and put her considerable skills behind our efforts to make sure education practices in the nation are backed by rigorous research."

Foorman, who will assume the position in January, is professor of pediatrics at the University of Texas-Houston Medical School and director of the Center for Academic and Reading Skills. Much of her professional life has been devoted to the study of how children acquire language and learn to read.

She is also an authority on reading disabilities and language impairment, the author of two books and more than 100 articles on topics ranging from dyslexia to egocentrism in recent research.

The National Center for Education Research is one of three centers within the IES, an independent arm of the federal Department of Education that was established by the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002. The center's mission is to support rigorous, unbiased research that helps ensure a quality education for all students, improve achievement, reduce worrisome disparities in school performance, and promote equal opportunities and access to higher education.

In conjunction with the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance and the National Center for Education Statistics, the research center's primary goal is to transform education into an evidence-based field in which decision-makers routinely seek out the best available research and data before adopting programs or practices that will affect significant numbers of students.

Foorman has done research and lectured at a number of colleges and universities in the United States and abroad and served on numerous boards, commissions and study panels. She is a member of the executive committee of the Neuroscience Research Center at the University of Texas Medical School and most recently served on the Carnegie/Rand Study Group on Reading to Learn, the children's study advisory committee of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and on a committee laying the groundwork for the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress, the Nation's Report Card.

The new commissioner has been a consultant in state and local education reform, particularly in Texas. She has been helping the Texas Education Agency deliver teacher training and technical assistance to Reading First schools. And she was honored in 2001 by the University of Texas-Health Science Center at Houston for her work on the Texas Primary Reading Inventory, an early reading assessment used in 96 percent of Texas schools and in many other states. In 1999, Texas Monthly named her the only educator among 20 of the most influential Texans.

Foorman received her bachelor's degree from Stanford University, her master's from Harvard University and her Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley.

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