Claire White

Claire White serves as research coordinator for the Strategic Education Research Partnership directing a middle school literacy program developed in cooperation with the Boston Public Schools, Harvard University, and others. She is also an adjunct lecturer in the Teacher Education Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education where she teaches courses on the language and literacy development of English language learners. She writes and presents extensively on academic language and vocabulary development for struggling readers, focusing particularly on the challenges faced by low-income and limited English proficient children. Her coauthored article, "Closing the Gap: Vocabulary Needs of English Language Learners" appeared in Reading Research Quarterly in 2004. Prior to this work, she worked as an education specialist at the Massachusetts Department of Education in the Office of Language Acquisition and Academic Achievement providing training in ELL literacy issues to teachers, administrators and state education leaders. Formerly an ESL and bilingual teacher, White completed her doctoral dissertation on Latino parents' support for their children's literacy development at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.