Sparked by her interest in children who have profound difficulties in learning to read, Irene Gaskins founded Benchmark School in 1970. Gaskins designed Benchmark not only to be a special school for helping struggling readers, but she also wanted it to be a laboratory for designing instruction that works for all students. Collaborating with Benchmark's energetic and dedicated faculty, as well as major consultants from around the country, Gaskins has worked on such significant problems as designing word recognition instruction that works for students who previously made little progress in this area, improving reading performance by increasing students' awareness and control of cognitive styles and other personal factors, and designing programs that teach strategies for understanding and learning from texts.
One of the parts of her career that Gaskins likes most is being the teacher, or co-teacher, who pilots and fine tunes the new programs being developed at Benchmark. The results of this work have been published in journals such as The Reading Teacher, Reading Research Quarterly, Journal of Reading Behavior, Language Arts, Elementary School Journal, Remedial and Special Education and Journal of Learning Disabilities. Gaskins is also the author of four books about teaching reading, seven decoding programs, and 56 children's books that accompany a beginning decoding program.
Gaskins is a frequent speaker at state, national, and international conferences and workshops. She has been a member, or chairperson, of International Reading Association (IRA) committees for over 20 years, as well as the editor of a special issue of The Reading Teacher. In addition, she serves on (or has served on) the editorial review boards of The Reading Teacher, Reading Research Quarterly, Journal of Reading Behavior, as well as several other journals. Gaskins is past president of the Delaware Valley Reading Association and was the editor of the DVRA Reader for
over 20 years.
In 1998, Gaskins was recognized as a Distinguished Educator by The Reading Teacher, and in 2001 she received the William S. Gray Citation of Merit for lifetime achievement by the International Reading Association. She has also been cited by the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education as one of the 12 "Women Pioneers" in their history.
*Based on a biography written by Dr. Tim Rasinsky
