Walter E. Dunson, Ph.D., B.C.A.S.E., is the executive director/founder of Cardinal Reading Strategies, LLC.  He has nearly thirty years of experience working with students internationally in the areas of language-based learning and language acquisition.  Dr. Dunson is an author, a lecturer, a senior literacy consultant and trainer, and a special education advocate who is board-certified by The American Academy of Special Education Professionals (AASEP) and The National Association of Special Education Teachers (NASET).  AASEP/NASET members adhere to a strict code of ethics and fulfill continuing education requirements in special education, including evidence-based reading research.  Dr. Dunson serves on the NASET/AASEP Advisory Council for Board Certifications and Professional Development.  Further, he serves on the editorial board of two peer review journals: the Journal of the American Academy of Special Education Professionals (JAASEP) and Special Education Research, Policy & Practice (SERPP). 

A former language training instructor at the Kildonan School in Amenia, NY and the Briarwood School in Houston, TX, Dr. Dunson was mentored through a 2760-hour practicum in the Orton-Gillingham Approach by a founding member of the Academy of Orton-Gillingham Practitioners and Educators (AOGPE).  To provide diagnostic-prescriptive remediation, he has received additional training in:

• • Lindamood-Bell’s Phoneme Sequencing Program for Reading, Spelling, and Speech

  • Visualizing and Verbalizing Program of Concept Imagery for Comprehension and Thinking

  • Seeing Stars Program of Symbol Imagery for Sight Words, Reading, Phonemic Awareness, and Spelling

  • Dr. Jane Fell Greene’s Language! Program, a curriculum for at-risk and ESL students in grades K-12, and includes components for writing, spelling, reading, grammar, and vocabulary

In keeping with the findings of the National Reading Panel, Dr. Dunson also incorporates:

• • Great Leaps for Reading, a program that has been recognized for years as a researched and evidence-based fluency program that enables students to make significant strides in their reading.

  • Six Way Paragraphs, a three-level series that teaches the basic skills necessary for reading factual material through the use of the following six types of questions: subject matter, main idea, supporting details, conclusions, clarifying devices, and vocabulary in context.

  • Sounds and Letters, a manual of cumulative units of phonemic awareness drills intended for use by teachers or speech-language pathologists to build efficiency in the five activities of phonemic awareness (replication, blending, segmenting, substitution, and rhyming).

Dr. Dunson is strong proponent of evidence-based reading research, and a former member of the Board of Directors of the International Dyslexia Association (Houston Branch).  He appeared as a guest on NPR and Project Baltimore, and he presented on the importance of evidence-based reading instruction before the Maryland State Board of Education, the Maryland Higher Education Commission, the Maryland House of Delegates, and the Maryland Senate.  He has served as an expert witness and an educational advocate in cases involving the District of Columbia Public Schools and several county school districts in Maryland and Virginia.  He served as the keynote speaker at the 17th Annual Region 4 Dyslexia Conference in Houston, Texas on December 16, 2016, and he presented a breakout session on the inherent benefits of structured literacy at the Plain Talk About Dyslexia conference in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on October 2, 2025.  In addition to his position as Founder and Executive Director of Cardinal Reading Strategies, LLC, he is a former member of Right to Read-Maryland, a coalition of educational organizations, advocates, and supporters who have the common goal of improving teacher education so that all teachers have the knowledge and tools to teach reading effectively.  Several bills that foster effective reading instruction using the science of reading were introduced in the Maryland legislature by Right to Read-Maryland from 2017-2020.  Dr. Dunson has also served as a guest lecturer at the University of Maryland and as an adjunct assistant professor in Loyola University Maryland’s Graduate School of Education, where he taught evidence-based reading instruction to public and private school educators.  Lastly, he is a former member of the Maryland State Department of Education Elementary Literacy Work Group, a committee chartered to revise the four reading courses at the college/university level that all Maryland teachers must complete to obtain state certification.