Dr. Jessica Toste (she/her) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Special Education and University Distinguished Teaching Professor at The University of Texas at Austin. She holds research affiliations with the Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk and the Center for Research to Community Impact. Her program of research is focused on understanding how best to support students’ reading development. Her work investigates methods of intensifying interventions for students with persistent reading challenges and reading disabilities (RD), including data-based instructional decision-making to and targeting psychosocial processes, such as motivation and self-determination. She is the principal investigator of research grants from the U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences. She was also a fellow with the Research Institute for Implementation Science in Education (2022-2024). Read more about her research projects and publications.

 

Jess is an award-winning teacher. She was inducted into UT Austin's Academy of Distinguished Teachers (2025), recipient of the President's Associates Graduate Teaching Excellence Award (2023), Dean's Distinguished Teaching Award (2022), and was named one of the 2017 “Texas 10,” nominated by UT alumni as a professor who inspired them during their time on the Forty Acres. Read more about her teaching.

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Jess is the Editor-in-Chief of The Reading League Journal, associate editor for the Journal of Learning Disabilities, and has previously served as President of both the Council for Exceptional Children’s Division for Research (DR) and Division for Learning Disabilities (DLD). She was awarded the 2022 Floyd G. Hudson Outstanding Service Award from the Council for Learning Disabilities (CLD).

 

She has previously served on the Board of Directors for Disability Rights Texas (DRTx) from 2016 to 2022, including two years as the elected Board Chair. DRTx is the federally designated legal protection and advocacy agency for people with disabilities in the state of Texas. Jess became involved locally and nationally with GLSEN in 2011. GLSEN is the leading organization on LGBTQ+ issues in K-12 education and she served on the National Board of Directors from 2017 to 2023. She also served on Advisory Board of the UT University Charter School System from 2017 to 2023. Learn more about Jess’ advocacy and leadership.

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Jess is a proud alum of McGill University, where she completed her PhD in educational psychology in 2011 with Dr. Nancy Heath. She was further trained in reading intervention research as a Fulbright Scholar at the Florida Center for Reading Research (FCRR) at Florida State University, and postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Special Education at Vanderbilt University. She worked for many years as an elementary teacher and reading specialist in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.