Carol McDonald Connor

She was married to Jay Connor, who is the founder and CEO of a company that uses Connor's Assessment-to-instruction (A2i) software. They have three children. Connor died May 14, 2020 of ovarian cancer.

In the early 90s, she accepted a position as a speech-language pathologist at the Cochlear Implant Program University of Michigan Medical Center, where she spent five years working with deaf children with cochlear implants. In a 2018 interview with UC Irvine's Dean Richard Arum, Connor cites her experience at the Michigan Medical Center in her transition to literacy research, as she became interested in the reading gap between hearing children and deaf children with implants.

In 2017, Connor received a four-year IES grant to develop electronic-books intended to provide adaptive support to improve reading comprehension, including strategies such as word learning, question generation, and summarization. She was the project's Principal Investigator, with co-investigator Danielle McNamara.

Connor was the editor of The Cognitive Development of Reading and Reading Comprehension (2016), a text on theories of reading comprehension development. She also co-edited Advances in Reading Interventions: Research to Practice to Research (2015) and co-authored Improving Literacy in America: Guidelines from Research (Current Perspectives in Psychology) (2005).

Connor was also the Principal Investigator of the Assessment Team of the Early Learning Research Network, which seeks to develop tools and policies that positively impact early learning outcomes through third grade. Connor's team is developing a technology-supported classroom observation system, the Optimizing Learning Opportunities for Students (OLOS) Early Learning Observation System. The Network describes it as "an innovative, multidimensional assessment system" that will "generate reports to match effective recommended instructional practices with observed learning opportunities." The work is supported by a five-year grant from the IES that began in 2016.

Connor was named a 2015 fellow of the American Education Research Association (AERA) and a 2016 fellow of the APA.

In 2007, the American Psychological Association (APA) awarded Connor with the Richard Snow Award for "significant contributions to the field of educational psychology."

In 2006, the IES awarded Connor with the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE, 2006) for "innovative research in the development and evaluation of an instructional tool to improve literacy instruction" for her research on individualized student instruction interventions.

In 2004, Connor was the Principal Investigator of a three-year grant from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) to develop the Individualized Student Instruction (ISI) intervention system, which includes the A2i software. The intervention consists of a teacher training program and professional development in the design of targeted, individualized instruction, generally delivered to small groups of students with similar instructional needs. The A2i software supports teachers in developing individualized student instruction plans with specific recommendations on the type and quantity of instruction needed based on assessment data generated several times throughout the school year. The software employs algorithms that make use of the child-by-instruction effects that Connor has documented in her research, by which specific types of instruction are more or less effective for individual students depending on the specific skills they have at the time of instruction.

She received her PhD in Language, Literacy, and Culture from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2002, under the supervision of Holly K. Craig. She did her post-doctoral work with Frederick J. Morrison at the University of Michigan.

Since 2002, Connor worked as a research scientist and professor around the country, including at the University of California, Irvine, Arizona State University, Florida State University, and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Carol McDonald Connor (February 21, 1953 – May 14, 2020) was an educational psychologist known for her research contributions to the field of early literacy development in diverse learners, in particular for work on individualized student instruction interventions and the lattice model of reading development. She held the position of Chancellor's Faculty and Equity Advisor in the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine.

Carol McDonald was born on February 21, 1953 in Chicago. She began her career in speech-language pathology. After receiving B.S. and M.S. degrees in Speech-Language Pathology from Northwestern University, she spent over ten years working as an ASHA certified speech-language pathologist in Utah, Massachusetts, and Illinois.