Douglas Fuchs

Media Appearances

• How Teacher Shortages Affect Students With Disabilities

  Vanderbilt University professor Douglas Fuchs researches special education. He was a co-lead author on a 2018 study finding that students with disabilities are, on average, more than three years behind their peers. “There are too few special educators with appropriate licensure or certification,” Fuchs tells the Scene. “So schools have no recourse but to hire others who are not nearly adequately trained.”

  January 30th, 2024

• MTSS: What Is a Multi-Tiered System of Supports?

  In addition to testing a student on an IQ test or an achievement test, to see if they had learning disabilities, RTI encouraged educators to try to teach that child in a more intensive way and monitor their response to that, according to Doug Fuchs, the Nicholas Hobbs Chair of Special Education and Human Development at Vanderbilt University. And if the response was strong, that was an argument that the student should not be identified for an individualized education program, or IEP.

  October 13th, 2023

• 3 Reasons Why More Students Are in Special Education

  “General education has become less, not more, capable of accommodating the needs of a lot of kids,” said Doug Fuchs, a research professor in the special education and psychology departments at Vanderbilt University. “And I think that more and more parents and advocates are realizing that the general classroom … just cannot stretch itself to legitimately meet the needs of kids.”

  October 10th, 2023

• It’s time to stop debating how to teach kids to read and follow the evidence

  England, too, started seeing dramatic results after government-funded schools were required in 2006 to teach systematic phonics to 5- to 7-year-olds. When the country implemented a test to assess phonics skills in 2012, 58 percent of 5- and 6-year-olds passed. By 2016, 81 percent of students passed. Reading comprehension at age 7 has risen, and gains seem to persist at age 11. These population trends make a strong case for teaching phonics, says Douglas Fuchs, an educational psychologist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

  April 26th, 2020

• School Closures Due to Coronavirus Could Widen Education Inequality Among Students

  Any amount of time out of the classroom can be detrimental to students' learning, especially for those who are already disadvantaged. When in-person classes resume, a student who is two grade levels behind their typically developing peers will be "much worse off" than their classmates who are on or above grade level, Doug Fuchs, a professor of special education at the Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, told Newsweek. "A lot of these underperforming students are underperforming partly because many schools are incapable of providing them with the intensity of instruction that they really need," Fuchs said. "Many of them are getting something, not enough but something, and taking them out of school now reduces that instruction and attention to virtually nothing."

  March 25th, 2020