Dr. Robert B. Cooter, Jr. holds the position Distinguished Professor of Urban Literacy Research at The University of Memphis. In March of 2006, Robert Cooter and Dr. J. Helen Perkins, also of The University of Memphis, were selected by the International Reading Association to be the next editors of The Reading Teacher, the largest literacy education journal in the world. His primary research focus pertains to research-based reading instruction for children living at the poverty level.

Professor Cooter founded The Memphis Literacy Academy, an outreach program in Memphis City Schools dedicated to raising the expertise and of hundreds of inner-city teachers of reading, and is also co-principal investigator for the Memphis Striving Readers Program (grades 6-9 content areas), a $16 million middle school literacy research project in Memphis City Schools funded under a major grant by the U.S. Department of Education for 2006-2011.

Dr. Cooter formerly served as the first ?Reading Czar? (associate superintendent) for the Dallas Independent School District (TX) and engineered the district?s highly acclaimed Dallas Reading Plan involving the training of approximately 3,000 teachers in ?comprehensive literacy instruction.? In March of 1998, Cooter was recognized as a ?Texas State Champion for Reading? by then-Governor George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush as a result of the successes of the Dallas initiative.

Cooter has authored or co-authored nearly 100 journal articles and some 19 books in reading education. His books include the best-selling Teaching Children to Read: Putting the Pieces Together (Merrill/Prentice Hall), an evidence-based reading (SBRR) text currently used at over 200 universities; Strategies for Reading Assessment and Instruction: Helping Every Child Succeed (Merrill/Prentice Hall) which is at present the top text in reading assessment in the U.S., Perspectives on Rescuing Urban Literacy Education: Spies, Saboteurs, & Saints (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates), The Flynt/Cooter Reading Inventory for the Classroom (Merrill/Prentice-Hall), and The Comprehensive Reading Inventory (Merrill/Prentice Hall), a new norm-referenced reading assessment tool to be published in fall 2006.

A native of Nashville, Tennessee, Bob lives in Memphis with his wife, Dr. Kathleen Spencer Cooter, a popular Special Education and school leadership professor, author, and researcher at The University of Memphis.