Educational Software Pioneer Returns to Peabody

Fall 2006, Ideas in Action

There’s no place like home, or at least no place like Vanderbilt’s Peabody College, for “new” faculty member Ted Hasselbring.

Hasselbring returns to Peabody this fall as research professor of special education after spending six years as the William T. Bryan Professor and Endowed Chair in Special Education Technology at the University of Kentucky. Prior to that, Hasselbring taught at Peabody from 1982 to 1999 in the Department of Special Education. He also served as codirector of the college’s Learning Technology Center and was a Vanderbilt Kennedy Center investigator.

Hasselbring returns to Vanderbilt to continue his research with educational software to help struggling students gain the literacy and mathematical skills they lack. He is best known as the creator of Read 180, a reading software program now managed by Scholastic, Inc. Read 180 is in more than 10,000 schools and has been used by more than 1 million students. Last year, revenues from the software program brought in more than $4 million to Peabody.

“We welcomed him back with open arms,” said Camilla Benbow, the Patricia and Rodes Hart Dean of Education. “Ted’s innovative application of technology to education is well known. More important is his commitment to help students, especially those who have learning disabilities, achieve academically. Peabody has long held the same commitment, so it is a pleasure to welcome him home.”

Read 180 is a software program that students use every day in classrooms to build fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. Originally called the Peabody Learning Laboratory, it started as a pilot project in Orlando, Fla., schools.

“They contacted us because they had a problem with a high dropout rate, a high truancy rate and significant behavior problems,”Hasselbring said. “When they analyzed these kids, they found out that none of them could read. So they realized, ‘we don’t have a dropout problem, we have an illiteracy problem.’”

Hasselbring and his colleagues developed and tested their literacy program over five years in the Orlando schools. “We found that for every year we spent on intervention, we would get two to four years of growth in fluency,” he said.

Back at Vanderbilt, Hasselbring looks forward to collaborating with researchers across the university to identify and support similar projects that can translate into classroom applications.

“As a researcher, one thing that you want to know is that your research is making a difference out in schools. I hear weekly from teachers and kids about how their lives have changed because of Read 180,” he said. “I think we have an opportunity to do that again here at Peabody because there is so much good research going on.”

Hasselbring is currently interested in exploring a math application based upon the principles of Read 180.

“As bad as the reading problem is, I think the math problem is at least as significant, so we’re looking into a math intervention program,” he said.

Though not teaching, Hasselbring expects to work closely with faculty to seek out opportunities to share research with the future teachers Peabody trains.

“I felt in the past that my research really influenced what I was doing in the classroom,” he said. “The Peabody faculty comprises very good researchers, and as we learn things at Peabody, the faculty are very good at bringing that cutting-edge research to the classroom.”

Hasselbring has won competitions for educational software sponsored by the Council for Exceptional Children and Johns Hopkins University. He has held committee posts with the National Governor’s Association and the National Academy of Sciences.He also has been a visiting scholar at the National Institute of Special Education in Tokyo, Japan; the China Disabled People’s Federation in Beijing, China; and the U.S. Information Agency in Minsk, in the former U.S.S.R.

A prolific scholar, Hasselbring has authored or coauthored three books, 40 book chapters and numerous journal articles.He has been principal investigator or coprincipal investigator for grants totaling more than $19 million.

Hasselbring earned his Ed.D. from Indiana University in 1979, majoring in special education. Prior to joining Peabody, he taught at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.