Elfrieda (Freddy) H. Hiebert

Elfrieda “Freddy” H. Hiebert is the president and CEO of TextProject, a nonprofit that provides open access resources for teaching beginning and struggling readers. Hiebert has had a long career as a literacy educator, first as a teacher’s aide and teacher of primary-level students in California, then as a teacher educator and researcher at the universities of Kentucky, Colorado-Boulder, Michigan, and California-Berkeley. Her research, which addresses how fluency, vocabulary, and knowledge can be fostered through appropriate texts, has been published in numerous books and scholarly journals, including the International Literacy Association’s (ILA) The Reading Teacher and Reading Research Quarterly. Through documents such as Becoming a Nation of Readers and Every Child a Reader, she has contributed to making research accessible to educators. Hiebert’s contributions have been recognized through awards including the American Educational Research Association’s Research to Practice Award and ILA’s William S. Gray Citation of Merit.