Reading Recovery Council of North America announced today that Janet Behrend of UALR’s Department of Teacher Education, is its new president.

She will lead a membership association of more than 5,000 Reading Recovery educators and advocates who are dedicated to helping first graders who struggle with beginning reading and writing.

Behrend said it is an exciting year to be president because Reading Recovery is celebrating its 30th year in the United States.

“In all my years as an educator, I have not come across one program that results in the kinds of changes Reading Recovery can make in the lives of children, teachers, and schools,” she said.

For the past 13 years at UALR, Dr. Behrend has played a key role in providing professional development for Reading Recovery teachers and teacher leaders, traveling across the country to schools that are part of the UALR Reading Recovery network.

She also is actively involved in Partners in Comprehensive Literacy, a school-based reform model training school administrators and literacy teams. Before joining UALR faculty in 2002, she worked for 23 years as a teacher, reading specialist, and Reading Recovery teacher leader in the Kansas City Missouri School District.

Reading Recovery is recognized by literacy researchers across the world—and in the U.S. by the What Works Clearinghouse—for its strong evidence of effectiveness.

Twenty universities across the U.S., including UALR, oversee teacher professional development in 270 Reading Recovery training sites. UALR became a Reading Recovery university training center in 1992, and since has worked with teachers and administrators in several states since that time.

More than two million children in the U.S. and Canada have had Reading Recovery lessons. For students with a full series of lessons, about 75 percent reach grade-level standard in 12 to 20 weeks of daily lessons.