Conferences
2007 CREATE Conference
Academic Language and Content:A Focus on English Language Learners in the Middle School
Speaker Biography
DAVID J. FRANCIS (Ph.D., University of Houston, 1985) is a Cullen Distinguished Professor of Quantitative Methods and Chairman of the Department of Psychology at the University of Houston, where he also serves as Director of the Texas Institute for Measurement, Evaluation, and Statistics and Co-Director of the Texas Learning and Computation Center. Dr. Francis obtained a doctoral degree in Clinical-
Neuropsychology from the University of Houston in 1985 with a specialization in Quantitative Methods.
He is a Fellow of Division 5 (Measurement, Evaluation, and Statistics) of the American Psychology Association and is currently a member of the Executive Board of the Council of Graduate Departments of Psychology. He is also a member the Independent Review Panel for the National Assessment of Title I and the National Research Council’s (NRC) Board on Testing and Assessment, and is serving on the NRC’s panel on Developmental Outcomes and Assessment of Young Children. He is currently a member of the IES Review Panel on Reading and Writing, and is a former Chairman of the Advisory Council on Education Statistics, and member of the Technical Advisory Group of the What Works Clearing House. He also served as a member of the National Literacy Panel for Language Minority Children and Youth and as a methodological consultant to the National Reading Panel. He is a frequent advisor to the Department of Education on statistical issues, assessment and accountability, and English Language Learners. He is a Member of the NIH Reviewers Reserve and has served as Chairman of the Mental Retardation Research Subcommittee of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and of various Special Emphasis Review Panels, including most recently the Autism Centers of Excellence. He was a recipient of the 2006 Albert J. Harris Award from the International Reading Association, and has received the University of Houston’s Teaching Excellence Award and the Excellence in Research and Scholarship Award.
Dr. Francis has collaborated in research on reading and reading disabilities, attention problems, developmental consequences of brain injuries and birth defects, and adolescent alcohol abuse. His areas of quantitative interest include modeling of individual growth, multi-level and mixture modeling, structural equation modeling, item response theory, and exploratory data analysis. He currently collaborates on multiple contracts and grants funded by NICHD, the Institute of Education Sciences of the US Department of Education, the National Institute of Deafness and Communication Disorders, the Texas Education Agency, and the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.
He currently directs the Center for Research on Educational Achievement and Teaching of English Language Learners (CREATE), which is the IES-funded National Research and Development Center for English Language Learners, the ELL Strand of the Center on Instruction, and a large program of research on language and literacy development in Spanish-speaking children that is funded by NICHD and IES.
Dr. Francis gave the Welcome and Overview of CREATE and presented Assessment, Accountability, and Instruction for ELLs Under NCLB at the 2007 CREATE Conference.