Rate My Professor Carolyn Carlson

Carlson’s research specializations include literacy education, proactive censorship and book bans in public schools, dyslexia simulations for preservice teachers, adolescent literacy’s role in dropout prevention and economic development, teacher retention under principal leadership, and the impacts of Common Core State Standards on literacy instruction. She has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals and contributed to edited volumes. Key publications include “An Exploratory Investigation into the Relationship between Text Messaging and Spelling” (New England Reading Association Journal, 2007, 60 citations), “The Profession that Eats its Young: The Effect of Principal Leadership on the Survival Rate of Teachers” (Journal of Arts and Humanities, 2012, 54 citations), “Dropout Factories and the Vaccination Approach: The Impact of the Dropout Rate on the Economy and the Need for Effective Literacy Instruction” (SRATE Journal, 2014, 25 citations), “The Fear of Retaliation: Proactive Censorship by Public School Librarians” (Michigan Reading Journal, 2020), “Fight, Flight, Freeze: The Impact of a Dyslexia Simulation on Preservice Teachers” (The Advocate, 2024), and “These Books Matter: A Banned Books Week Celebration” (Kansas English, 2024). Additional works cover topics like the fundamental right to literacy, affirmative action, and historical figures in African American activism. Carlson has presented at national and international conferences, testified before the Kansas Senate Education Committee on literacy legislation in 2026, and contributed to initiatives like the Blueprint for Literacy and the Center for Literacy. She received Washburn University Employee Recognition in 2013.