• Bio:

    Dr. Samson has worked at all levels of education in a variety of roles, including PreK-college settings. Her previous work includes serving as a bilingual school psychologist in California and Massachusetts, evaluating programs that serve LD populations, and as an assessment administrator for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Dr. Samson completed master’s and doctoral work at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education. She also has a B.A. in Psychology from University of California, San Diego and an M.A. in Psychology from San Francisco State University.

    Professor Samson has taught courses on special education, literacy, child development, and assessment to beginning teachers in traditional and alternative certification programs. She currently teaches courses on Research in Special Education, Reading Methods, and English Language Learners in Special Education.

    Dr. Samson’s research interests focus on teacher quality and children at risk for reading difficulties due to disability, language minority status, and low socioeconomic status. Her previous work includes a nationally representative study of disproportionality in special education, longitudinal studies of reading development from kindergarten through fifth grade, and a report on teacher quality for language minority students in the United States.

    Dr. Samson was a researcher on several randomized controlled studies designed to investigate literacy interventions and ecological effects on child development. Professor Samson’s program of research received support from several organizations, including the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST), and the University of California Linguistic Minority Research Institute (UCLMRI).

    Results from Dr. Samson’s research have been published in the Journal of Learning Disablities, Teaching Exceptional Children, and Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal. Beginning in 2006, Professor Samson served as an editor for the Harvard Educational Review and was co-chair of the editorial review board in 2007 during which time she co-edited a special issue on Adolescent Literacy. Professor Samson is a member of the American Educational Research Association, Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, Society for Research in Child Development, and Council for Exceptional Children.

  • Current Projects:

    A member of the American Educational Research Association, Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, Society for Research in Child Development, and Council for Exceptional Children.

  • Research Areas: Education Policy