Doug Fuchs

Professor and Nicholas Hobbs Chair in Special Education and Human Development

Ph.D., University of Minnesota, 1978

Research Area

Instruction of students at risk for school failure because of disability or poverty; peer-mediated learning; classroom assessment; school improvement and school reform; urban education; special education policy.

Short Biography

Douglas Fuchs received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in educational psychology with an emphasis in special education and school psychology. During his career he has taught first graders with serious emotional problems in a special school in Baltimore; taught in a fourth-grade classroom in Pennsylvania; and was staff psychologist for the Minneapolis public schools' special education preschool program. He currently holds the Nicholas Hobbs Endowed Chair in Special Education and Human Development at Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, where he is also co-director of the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center Reading Clinic. Dr. Fuchs has been principal investigator of 35 federally-sponsored research grants, most of which have come from the U.S. Department of Education. This research has focused on the development of pre-referral interventions, peer-assisted learning strategies in reading and math, curriculum-based measurement procedures, and methods of reintegrating students with high-incidence disabilities into mainstream settings.

He is the author or co-author of more than 200 articles in peer-review journals, and has won best paper awards for several of these publications, including the American Educational Research Association's Palmer O. Johnson Award, the American Psychological Association's Fellows' Award (Division 16), the Samuel A. Kirk Award (Division for Learning Disabilities of the Council for Exceptional Children), and Best Paper of the Year Award (National Association of School Psychologists). He was recently identified by Thompson ISI as one of 250 most highly cited researchers in the social sciences. In 2001, he was named Joe B. Wyatt Distinguished University Professor by Vanderbilt University. With Lynn Fuchs in 2003 and 2005, respectively, he was given the Career Research Award by the Council for Exceptional Children and the Distinguished Researcher Award by the Special Education Research SIG of the American Educational Research Association. From 1987 to 2002, he was co-editor of The Journal of Special Education.

Learn More about Doug Fuchs:

Courses Taught | Selected Publications
Awards | CV | Media Mentions

Media Mentions

Double Vision - Lynn and Doug Fuchs Top Researchers in Learning Disability
Personalized strategies for children with learning disabilities add up to big benefits for everybody.

Fuchs Quoted on Importance of Stimulus Bill
In stimulus bill, U.S. funds for schools double.

Response to Intervention and Learning Disabilities Video
Developmental Disabilities Grand Rounds, "Response to Intervention and Learning Disabilities" with Doug Fuchs, Ph.D., and Lynn Fuchs, Ph.D., Nicholas Hobbs Chairs in Special Education discuss RTI research conducted in Metro Nashville Public Schools

Doug Fuchs on Response to Intervention
The challenges of RTI implementation in the classroom

To make it all add up
Reforms to both math education and the education of math teachers are needed to put U.S. students back on top

Doug Fuchs quoted in Wall Street Journal
Experts and parents voice concerns that the inclusion of special-education children in regular classes is becoming a pretext for cost-cutting, hurting the children it was supposed to help.

Top tier: Special education faculty pioneer responsiveness to intervention
RTI provides increasingly intensive interventions in a three-tier system to students who are not achieving to academic expectations

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