Donald Compton, Ph.D.

Professor of Psychology and Education

Florida Center for Reading Research
Psychology C234U
Florida State University
1107 W. Call Street
P.O. Box 306-4304
Tallahassee, FL 32306

Phone: 850-644-9080
Email: dcompton@fcrr.org

Dr. Compton is Professor of Psychology at Florida State University/Florida Center for Reading Research. He was formerly Professor and Chair of Special Education and a John F. Kennedy Center Investigator at Peabody College, Vanderbilt University. He earned a Ph.D. from Northwestern University’s School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, with a specialization in learning disabilities. While working on his Ph.D., and for several years after its completion, he was employed as a learning disabilities resource teacher in Skokie, Illinois. Compton then worked for four years as an assistant professor in the department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. He then accepted a NICHD post-doctoral research fellowship at the Institute for Behavior Genetics, University of Colorado. From there he accepted a position at Vanderbilt University that he held until the spring of 2015. He then accepted his current position with the Florida Center for Reading Research at Florida Sate University. Compton is experienced in designing, managing, analyzing, and disseminating data from cross-sectional and longitudinal studies as well as randomized control studies. His research involves modeling individual differences in the development of children’s reading skills and the identification and treatment of children with reading disabilities. Compton has served as PI and Co-PI on multiple NICHD and IES studies using randomized controlled trials to evaluate academic interventions for children with learning difficulties. He has over 75 peer-review publications and is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Educational Psychology, Journal of Learning Disabilities, Scientific Studies of Reading, and Exceptional Children. Compton is the past President of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading and currently serves as associate-editor of Scientific Study of Reading.