William S. Gray

William S. Gray (1885–1960) was an American educator and literacy advocate.

Gray was born in the town of Coatsburg, Illinois on June 5, 1885. He graduated from high school in 1904 and began teaching in a one-room school house in Adams County, Illinois. After four years of teaching and being a principal he went to Illinois State Normal University for a two-year teacher training course. His studies were influenced by the North American Herbartian movement that emphasized starting with what the child knows and proceeding with an inductive instructional approach.

Gray proceeded to advance his education at the University of Chicago where he earned a baccalaureate in 1913.

He then spent a year (1913–1914) at Teachers College of Columbia University, the only other teachers' college in the country besides Chicago. There, he came under the influence of Edward Thorndike and Charles Judd, both of whom had been influenced by pragmatists William James and John Dewey. Thorndike and Judd were also among the first to apply the new statistical methods of applied psychology to education, considered the most significant development in the whole history of education in the United States, and would later move their work to Chicago.

At Columbia, Gray "turned toward objective measurement, mathematical precision, a critical attitude, efficiency in schools, diagnosis based on results, and the use of research results which supported the economy of silent reading, and the importance of a sequential program of reading instruction ... the very basis of reading instruction in this country for almost the next half century." At the end of his year in Columbia, he earned a Master of Arts degree and a Teachers College diploma, "Instructor in Education in Normal School."

Gray returned to the University of Chicago to earn a Ph.D. in 1916 for one of the first three doctoral dissertations on reading. His was titled "Studies of Elementary School Reading Through Standardized Tests." Gray's academic career at the University of Chicago lasted from 1916–1945. He served as Director of Research in Reading at the Graduate School of Education, at the University of Chicago and became the first president of the International Reading Association. Jeanne S. Chall called him "the acknowledged leader of, and spokesman for, reading experts for four decades." During his lifetime, he was known as one of the most influential persons and researchers in the field. His contemporaries included Arthur Irving Gates (1890–1972); Ernest Horn (1882–1967); and Ruth Strang (1896–1971).

...
Wikipedia