Committed to the Success of Every Educator and Student

Linda Diamond, CORE’s President, previously served as a public school teacher, principal, Director of Curriculum and Instruction for a K–12 school district, and Senior Policy Analyst with an emphasis on school to career, charter schools, and school reform. Mrs. Diamond is also the co-author of CORE’s professional books Teaching Reading Sourcebook, Assessing Reading: Multiple Measures and Vocabulary Handbook.

Mark Simmons, CORE’s Chief Operating and Financial Officer, brings more than 20 years experience building the financial management, administrative and accounting  functions in  small and large organizations. Prior to CORE, Mark held senior financial and accounting positions with firms in the service and manufacturing sectors including GEA, Guess? and Crimson Consulting Group. Mark is a specialist in strategic planning and partnerships, operations processes, ROI, internal control, cost management and margin improvement. Mark holds a Master’s Degree in Finance from the University of Colorado, Denver.

Dale Webster is CORE’s Chief Academic Officer. He leads the Educational Services division and is responsible for the day-to-day operations, training, and quality control of CORE’s educational consulting and management staff. Dale brings 20 years of experience in teaching, professional development/technical assistance, research, state-level policy work and administration, and curriculum development to schools and districts across the country.

Dale earned a bachelor’s degree in liberal studies and a California Multiple Subjects Teaching Credential from San Diego State University, a master’s degree in educational psychology from the University of Houston, and a Ph.D. in education at the University of California, Irvine, where his research focused on vocabulary development for English learners. Dale has served on the California Curriculum Commission, an advisory body to the California State Board of Education on curriculum frameworks and textbook adoptions, as well as numerous other state and local educational panels. Dale is also president of Interactions for Peace, a nonprofit organization that teaches peaceful problem-solving skills to youth, and he is a board member of the San Diego branch of the International Dyslexia Association.

Dean Ballard is the Director of Mathematics for CORE. Dean holds a Master’s degree in math education from Sonoma State University (SSU) and secondary teaching credentials for both mathematics and English. Dean has 18 years of experience in the classroom teaching all levels of math from 5th grade through AP Calculus. Additionally, he has 20 years’ experience as a math consultant providing professional development for both elementary and secondary math teachers, writing curricular and exam materials, directing programs, and speaking at local and national math events (NCTM, NCSM, NABE, CABE, CMC, TODOS and others). As CORE’s Director of Mathematics since 2010 Dean has developed CORE’s math trainings, overseen CORE’s expert math team and services, and worked extensively with schools, teachers, and consultants on effective instruction and implementation of rigorous standards through their core and intervention programs. Dean is a member of NCTM (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics), NCSM (National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics), CMC (California Math Council), and TODOS: Mathematics for All.

Brian Blanning is CORE’s Educational Services Resource Manager. He has been with CORE for more than 17 years and is responsible for client scheduling, materials fulfillment, consultant logistical support, editorial project management and event management.

Prior to CORE, Brian was a project manager with the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and an event manager for a technology magazine.

Dr. Baker is a Research Professor at the Center on Research and Evaluation (CORE) at Southern Methodist University (SMU), and a Senior Research Associate at the Center on Teaching and Learning (CTL), University of Oregon. He was the founding Executive Director of CORE and the Associate Director and Research Director of CTL. Dr. Baker has been Principal Investigator on numerous education grants from the Institute of Education Sciences and other federal agencies. Dr. Baker is interested in the role of scientific research in education policy and practice, especially related to improving student outcomes. He is particularly interested in the challenges faced by English learners and by children struggling with learning difficulties. Dr. Baker’s research has focused on developing and testing academic interventions, and the mechanisms that underlie effective interventions.

Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan is a bilingual speech and language pathologist, a certified teacher, dyslexia therapist, certified academic language therapist and a qualified instructor. Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan is the President of the Valley Speech Language and Learning Center in Brownsville, Texas and works with the Texas Institute for Measurement, Evaluation and Statistics at the University of Houston.

Elsa has spent the last 15 years working in national research projects sponsored by the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development and the Institute of Education Sciences, a research arm of the United States Department of Education. Each national project was related to the development of language and literacy skills among Spanish-speaking English learners. She has worked with teams of researchers designing assessments and interventions for English learners who struggle with reading.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan is currently the Chairperson of the National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilities, a Past-Vice- Chairperson of the International Dyslexia Association (IDA) as well as Past Editor-in-Chief of all IDA publications, Past Chairperson of the Texas State Board for Speech Pathology and Audiology and Past Chairperson of the Texas State Dyslexia Advisory Board. She has also served as a board member of the Academic Language Therapy Association, Southwest Regional Education Laboratory and Texas Comprehensive Center at the American Institutes for Research.

Elsa has written many scholarly articles, curricular programs, and book chapters related to the oracy and literacy development among English learners. She is currently working on a textbook for teaching English learners. It is her hope that pre-service teachers will have the opportunity to learn evidence-based practices for teaching literacy to a diverse population of students.

David J. Chard, Ph.D., is the Dean ad Interim of Boston University’s Wheelock College of Education and Human Development and Professor of Special Education.  Prior to coming to BU, Dr. Chard served as the 14^th President of Wheelock College. Dr. Chard has published more than 100 articles, monographs, book chapters, and books. He is a member of the International Academy for Research in Learning Disabilities and has served in leadership roles in numerous professional organizations. Dr. Chard has been a classroom teacher in California, Michigan, and in the U. S. Peace Corps in Lesotho in southern Africa. In October of 2011 Dr. Chard was nominated by President Barack Obama to serve on the Board of Directors of the National Board for Education Sciences.  He was confirmed in 2012 by the U.S. Senate and elected chair of the board in 2013. In 2016, he was reappointed by President Obama for a second 3-year term. He has served as a member of the All Stars National Board since 2016.

Claude Goldenberg, Ph.D. is Nomellini & Olivier Professor of Education, Emeritus. He is author of Successful school change: Creating settings to improve teaching and learning (Teachers College); co-author with Rhoda Coleman of Promoting academic achievement among English learners: A guide to the research (Corwin); and co-editor with Aydin Durgunoglu of Language and literacy development in bilingual settings (Guilford). He has published and been on the editorial boards of various literacy and education academic and professional journals. Previous projects focused on improving literacy achievement among English learners in elementary and middle school, language and literacy development among Mexican children in Mexico, and a randomized control trial of an early literacy intervention in Rwanda. Current projects include consulting for the US Department of Justice on English learner issues and chairing a research advisory panel on early childhood education for Arizona’s First Things First.

Michelle K. Hosp, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Special Education at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. A nationally known trainer and speaker on problem solving and the use of progress monitoring data, she has worked as the Director of the Iowa Reading Research Center, a trainer with the National Center on Progress Monitoring and the National Center on Response to Intervention, and is currently on the technical review committee for the National Center on Intensive Intervention. Her research focus is on reading, and MTSS/RTI in relation to CBM and CBE. Dr. Hosp has published numerous articles, book chapters, and books related to reading and effective decision making practices.

Dr. Edward J. Kame’enui is a native Hawaiian, born in Hilo, Hawaii and raised in Kalihi on the Island of Oahu. He graduated from the Kamehameha Schools, a school for native Hawaiian children. Dr. Kame’enui’s scholarly interests are in reading, writing systems, language development, and academic interventions which he attributes to his experience growing up speaking “pidgin English” fluently, reading connected text infrequently and dysfluently, and communicating, albeit haphazardly, with his deaf mother and bigger twin brother.

From 2005-2007, Dr. Kame’enui served as the nation’s Founding Commissioner of the National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER) in the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), which serves as the research and statistical arm of the U. S. Department of Education. He has had the honor of speaking at the White House, participating in round tables and other WH events (e.g., UNESCO presentation in Paris) with then First Lady, Mrs. Laura Bush, and directing several national federal research and technical support initiatives on reading. He also served on the original advisory boards for the PBS television shows “Between the Lions” and WETA’s “Reading Rockets.” He is Dean-Knight Professor Emeritus  at the College of Education, University of Oregon.

Dr. Kame’enui has co-authored 20 college textbooks, including 5^th editions of two books, on teaching reading, curriculum design, vocabulary instruction, higher order thinking, and classroom management. He has more than 200 publications including 120+ refereed research articles and 55 book chapters on a range of topics including learning disabilities, early reading intervention, vocabulary instruction and development, school-wide reading improvement, the design of high quality educational materials, and the architecture of instruction.

During the almost 30-year period from 1990 to his full retirement in 2018, Dr. Kame’enui and his colleagues at the Center on Teaching and Learning (CTL) (for which he is the Founding Director) were awarded more than $70 million of federal, state, and private research and training funds, which included directing and implementing several national and state reading and academic intervention initiatives.