Flynt/Cooter Comprehensive Reading Inventory, The: Assessment of K-12 Reading Skills in English & Spanish

A first-of-its-kind, comprehensive reading inventory for assessing the "Big Five" components of reading instruction as identified by the National Reading Panel: phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. It offers the simple, straightforward miscue analysis method for assessing students' levels of competency in reading comprehension and fluency, and offers easily administered assessment tools for discerning students' development in phonemic awareness, phonics, and vocabulary.

The Flynt/Cooter informal reading inventory is recognized as the top choice of thousands of classroom teachers for its ability to help them quickly and reliably assess the reading skills and needs of their students. The Flynt/Cooter is considered an essential tool in preparing the next generation of P-12 teachers serving native English speakers, and/or English learners via the Classroom Reading Inventory: Español Version (CRI: Español) provided on the book's new accompanying PDToolkit. In addition, the CRI has been the choice of many reading and literacy researchers seeking an evidence-based and validated instrument for use in high stakes research.

Robert B. Cooter, Jr. currently serves as Dean of the Annsley Frazier Thornton School of Education and Ursuline Endowed Chair of Teacher Education at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky. Author of numerous books and articles on reading instruction, his primary research focuses on the improvement of literacy instruction for children living at the poverty level. From 2006―2011 Cooter was co-editor of The Reading Teacher, the world’s largest circulation refereed journal for literacy educators (International Reading Association).

Dr. Cooter previously served as the first “Reading Czar” (associate superintendent) for the Dallas Independent School District (TX). In 2007, he and colleagues J. Helen Perkins and Kathleen Spencer Cooter received the national Urban Impact Award from the Council of Great City Schools. His latest work involves the implementation of a new Ph.D. program at Bellarmine University focused on developing “change agents” interested in improving education outcomes for children living in poverty circumstances.

E. Sutton Flynt currently serves as Professor of Literacy Education and Director of Teacher Education at the University of Memphis. Dr. Flynt has almost 40 years of teaching experience as a classroom teacher in the public schools, university professor, university department chairperson, and dean of a college of education. He has consulted with school districts in eight different states and served on state departments of education task forces in Louisiana, Kansas, and Tennessee.

Dr. Flynt has numerous professional publications in his areas of interest primarily focusing on literacy assessment, pre-service teacher preparation, and content area reading instruction. In 2007―2008 he coauthored a featured column on content literacy in The Reading Teacher. He has frequently presented scholarly works at such professional venues as the World Congress on Reading, the Annual Conference of the International Reading Association, the American Educational Research Association, and the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness. Professor Flynt’s most recent research has focused on empirically determining the efficacy of Response to Intervention (RTI) Tier II commercial materials on the literacy achievement of K―2 students in urban and rural school districts.

Kathleen Spencer Cooter is Professor of Early Childhood/Special Education and School Leadership at Bellarmine University in Louisville Kentucky. Previous to fall 2008, she was Associate Professor of Special Education at the University of Memphis. In addition she served as outreach coordinator for the New Teacher Center, an exciting project working in conjunction with the Memphis City Schools to enhance teacher retention in urban schools. Professor Cooter also served as principal investigator for the Tennessee Early Intervention System (TEIS) serving the needs of children of over 3,000 families in West Tennessee.

Prior to joining the Special Education faculty at the University of Memphis, Dr. Cooter and a group of parents and committed community and university leaders raised some $3 million and founded the Texas Christian University RISE School, now known as Kinderfrogs, a special school serving the needs of infants with Down syndrome. In October of 2001, Dr. Cooter received the “Employer of the Year Award” from the Fort Worth business community for her successes in employing adults with Down syndrome as staff members at the TCU RISE School. Together with Starpoint School, a special school for students having learning disabilities, Cooter directed the teaching and research activities of both TCU’s laboratory schools. Upon her leaving in December 2003, TCU announced that a new wing would be added to Starpoint School as a gift from a grateful benefactor and named in her honor.

For two decades Professor Cooter worked as a teacher and administrator in both private and public schools serving children with special learning needs. As a teacher, Dr. Cooter worked primarily with special education students in preschool, elementary, middle and high school settings. Kathy was honored as a Texas Teacher of the Year in her role as a special education professional. For more than fifteen years Kathleen Cooter has developed and served as the lead professor in a popular course for practicing school leaders known as the Principals’ Fellowship in Texas, Tennessee and Kentucky. This program has been credited with helping to turn around low performing schools’ in the areas of reading and writing.