Gary A. Troia
Gary A. Troia, PhD, CCC-SLP is an associate professor of special education at Michigan State University and a principal investigator with the Literacy Achievement Research Center located at MSU. He was a faculty member at the University of Washington in Seattle before taking his current position at MSU. Prior to receiving his doctorate from the University of Maryland in 2000, he worked 10 years in the public schools as a special educator and speech-language pathologist, and 6 years as a university clinical supervisor. Dr. Troia is a consulting editor for several journals and an associate editor of Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools. He is the editor of the book Instruction and Assessment for Struggling Writers: Evidence-Based Practices, and a co-editor of Putting Writing Research into Practice: Applications for Teacher Professional Development, both published by Guilford Press. With colleagues Froma Roth and Colleen Worthington, he has co-authored a phonological awareness intervention program called Promoting Awareness of Sounds in Speech (PASS), published by Attainment Company, for young at risk children. Along with Janine Certo and Natalie Olinghouse, he is currently developing a genre study resource for classroom teachers titled Growing Writers: Teaching Writing to Students of All Abilities. Dr. Troia has authored over thirty research papers and book chapters and has given numerous presentations about his work in the areas of phonological processing, writing assessment and instruction, and teacher professional development in literacy. Curriculum Vitae.

 
Ongoing Projects:
Alignment across K-12 Writing Standards, Assessments, Achievement, and Postsecondary Expectations: A State-by-State AnalysisThis four-year study, funded by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, addresses five research questions:

  • How specific and cognitively demanding are states’ K-12 writing content standards and assessments?
  • How are states’ K-12 writing content standards aligned with their assessments?
  • How do states’ K-12 writing content standards reflect evidence-based instructional practices in writing and, similarly, how do states’ K-12 large-scale writing assessments reflect research-informed assessment practices?
  • How do states’ grades 9-12 writing content standards and large-scale assessments reflect postsecondary writing expectations?
  • Do alignment indices (e.g., congruence) of states’ content standards and assessments explain a significant proportion of variance in writing achievement on NAEP writing scores?
Recent LARC Presentations: