Benita Blachman Ph.D.

Benita A. Blachman, Ph.D., is an expert in reading and language arts whose work has focused on phonological processing, early reading acquisition, and evidence-based interventions to prevent reading failure. She served for many years on the faculty of the Syracuse University School of Education, where she was a professor in the Reading and Language Arts Department and coordinated the graduate program in learning disabilities; she also held appointments in special education, psychology, and communication sciences and disorders. Blachman earned her doctoral degree in educational psychology from the University of Connecticut and previously worked as a special education teacher, reading specialist, and learning disabilities consultant.

Blachman is the lead author of Road to the Code: A Phonological Awareness Program for Young Children, an 11‑week, developmentally sequenced program designed to build phonemic awareness and letter–sound correspondence in kindergarten and first‑grade children. She is also coauthor, with Darlene Tangel, of Road to Reading: A Program for Preventing and Remediating Reading Difficulties, an evidence‑based literacy program for students in grades 1–3 that targets accuracy and fluency in decoding. Her broader research on phonological awareness and decoding has been widely cited, including in the National Reading Panel report, and is recognized through the Benita A. Blachman Award for