NCCRESt

part of the Education Reform Networks

Special Education

• Kerkam by Kerkam v. Superintendent, D.C. Public Schools
  Parents of a student with severe mental retardation sued for reimbursement of costs for a private placement. The Circuit Court remanded for a ruling on "appropriateness" finding that the lower court had applied a "maximizing" standard in its initial opinion.
• Sources of Supply of Teachers for Eight Cogate Areas: National Trends and Predicators
  This report contains national trend and predictor data for the supply of public school K-12 teachers in eight cognate areas: general elementary education; mathematics and science education; language education; social studies education; arts, physical, and health education; business and vocational education; other general education; and special education. Data came from three large national probability samples of teachers taken over 6 years.
• Attrition in special education: Why teachers leave the classroom and where they go.
  A telephone survey of 93 Florida teachers who did not return to their special education teaching position after the 1992-93 year, found the largest portion of teachers who left did so because they were dissatisfied with conditions of work. In addition, the majority of leavers remained in education.
• Walczak v. Florida Union Free School District
  The IDEA does not require states to "...maximize the potential of handicapped children..." however the "door of public education must be opened in a 'meaningful' way..." "This is not done if an IEP affords only the opportunity for only 'trivial advancement'..." An appropriate education under the IDEA is one that is "likely to produce progress, not regression.".
• Daniel R.R. v. State Board of Education
  When a parent is examining the educational opportunities available for his handicapped child, he may be expected to focus primarily on his own child's best interest. Likewise, when state and local officials are examining the alternatives for educating a handicapped child, the child's needs are a principle concern.
• Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Second Edition
  The textbook for training bilingual education teachers addresses psychological and social questions that enable teachers to define more clearly what they want to do in a classroom, and offers theoretical and practical information for a variety of social contexts. The first section addresses individualism and the social nature of bilingualism, and includes chapters on these issues: defining bilingualism; measurement of bilingualism; the role of languages in society; language revival and maintenance; ways in which children and adults become bilingual; foundations of second language learning research and theory; the relationship between bilingualism and intelligence; bilingualism and cognitive processes; cognitive theories of bilingualism and their implications for curriculum design.
• Carter v. Florence County School District No. 4
  The 4th Circuit Court reiterated (and the U.S. Supreme Court later affirmed) the, Rowley, language re: the educational standards, but added that the 4th Circuit has noted in prior cases that "...Congress did not intend that a school system could discharge its duty under the [Act] by providing a program that produces some minimal academic advancement, no matter how trivial.
• Preparing on-the-job teachers fro urban schools: Implications for teacher training
  
• Overrepresentation of Minority Students in Special Education: A Continuing Debate
  This article reviews historically the overrepresentation of Latino and African-American students in special education; examines the influence of court cases, debate about systemic issues, demographic and socioeconomic changes, the construction of minority students' school failure, and the fallacy of the cultural diversity-disability analogy; and offers solutions.
• Reflections from beginning special education teachers
  
• Using the interrupted behavior chain strategy to teach initial communication skills to students with severe disabilities
  
• Improving the retention of special education teachers. Final report. RTI project 5168
  A 3-year research and development project examined ways to improve the retention of special education teachers in the Memphis (Tennessee) City Schools. Several individual studies identified sources of dissatisfaction with teaching and the conditions that would encourage career longevity among teachers.
• Ethnicity and special education research: Identifying questions and methods.
  Part of a special issue on emerging trends and issues in research for the education and treatment of children with behavioral disorders. The overrepresentation of African-American students in special education and particularly with serious emotional disturbance (SED) or mild mental retardation has been documented by considerable research.
• Predicting employment for students who leave special education high school programs.
  A hierarchical regression analysis featuring 35 community, family, student, and school program characteristics, entered in a controlled order, was used to assess prediction of employment. Results showed that personal characteristics (especially being male and having living skills and academic skills) dominated the prediction of postschool employment.
• The pitfalls and promises of special education practice
  
• Culturally Responsive School-Wide Positive Behavior Support
  This paper synthesizes current literature that points to a cultural incongruence between students and teachers as the underlying mechanism for disparity in school practices involving both special education placement and the application of disciplinary strategies. The need for and considerations of culturally responsive School-Wide Positive Behavior Support (SW-PBS) are explored as a potential approach for reducing the discrepancy in special education referrals and application of disciplinary policies.
• Need for funding and role of bias downplayed in new study on the over-identification of children from diverse backgrounds for special education. Press Release.
  
• Cultural Diversity, Families, and the Special Education System: Communication and Empowerment
  
• Lenn v. Portland School Committee
  "The IDEA does not promise perfect solutions to the vexing problems posed by the existence of learning disabilities in children and adolescents. The Act sets more modest goals; it emphasizes an appropriate rather than ideal, education; it requires an adequate rather than optimal, IEP..
• Across-Program Collaboration to Support Students With and Without Disabilities in a General Education Classroom
  We conducted a program evaluation of a multi-component intervention using general education/special education collaborative teaming to increase the academic achievement and social participation of students with and without disabilities. A team of general, special, and bilingual educators, parents, and an outreach consultant developed Unified Plans of Support (UPS) for three students whose academic performance was substantially below grade level and whose social participation was limited.
• Maximizing School Guidance Program Effectiveness: A Guide for School Administrators & Program Directors
  Twenty-three brief chapters provide administrators a comprehensive guide to school counseling that describes practices, problems, and processes for which school counselors' expertise may be relied on. Chapters are: (1) "Comprehensive School Counseling Programs" (Z.
• Achieving the complete school: Strategies for effective mainstreaming
  
• Project BESTT: A Training Model for Rural, Multicultural, Bilingual Special Education
  Rural schools along the New Mexico-Mexico border face unusual challenges in meeting the special education needs of a culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) population. This population includes Anglo Americans, Mexican Americans, Mexicans, and American Indians.
• Special and general education teachers in public schools: Sources of supply in national perspective.
  This paper provides data on supply and demand for special education teachers from a national probability sample of 46,599 public school teachers from the 1990-91 Schools and Staffing Survey. In comparison with general education, there was a greater percentage demand in special education, and special education filled a higher percentage of open positions with reentering experienced teachers.
• Culturally diverse students in special education: Legacies and prospects
  
• Capistrano Unified School District v. Wartenberg By and Through Wartenberg
  The district appealed a hearing officer's decision requiring it to reimburse the parents of a student with a learning disability for private placement. The court ultimately determined that the district's proposed placement was inappropriate based on the facts and that..
• Representation of culturally/linguistically diverse students
  
• Special Education or Racial Segregation: Understanding Variation in the Representation of Black Students in Educable Mentally Handicapped Programs
  The disproportionate representation of black students in special education programs has been well documented, yet explanations for the overrepresentation are rare. Using a unique sample of U.S.
• Democratic Dispositions and Cultural Competency: Ingredients for School Renewal
  This article argues that the current school reform movement of high-stakes testing is misguided. It advocates that democratic dispositions and cultural competency be included in the major goals of schooling and proposes that the purpose of schooling should be determined through public deliberation within diverse communities.
• Whither didst thou go? Retention, reassignment, migration, and attrition of special and general education teachers in national perspective.
  The Teacher Followup Survey of 4,798 public school teachers found higher annual turnover for special education teachers than for general education teachers, in both attrition from public school teaching and transfer among public schools. General and special education teachers who left did not differ significantly in postteaching activities or plans to return to teaching.
• Placing Children in Special Education: A Strategy for Equity
  
• A NEW ERA: Revitalizing Special Education for Children and their Families
  
• Grouping practices and reading outcomes for students with disabilities
  Grouping practices, also referred to as ability/homogeneous grouping or tracking, separate students according to their perceived achievement and ability. This is done to provide instruction based on their perceived achievement/ability levels.
• Ethnocentrism and Black Students with Disabilities: Bridging the Cultural Gap, Volume I
  This book investigates the educational methods, achievements, and teacher expectations among black and white students with disabilities. It finds that poverty, racism, cultural differences between blacks and whites, and inferior socioeconomic conditions are the main causal factors that result in black children being "labeled" as exceptional and placed in special education classes at an alarmingly disproportionate rate.
• Developmentally Appropriate Practice. ERIC/EECE Report
  Annotates selected ERIC documents and journal articles discussing issues related to developmentally appropriate practice (DAP). Topics include DAP in early childhood and elementary settings and regular and special education, the current debate regarding DAP and multicultural education, student evaluation, teachers' and parents' beliefs regarding DAP, and the relationship to whole-language orientation.
• A Multicultural Model for Deaf & Hard-of-Hearing Students: Program for Deaf Adults
  This document describes the multicultural Program for Deaf Adults (PDA) at LaGuardia Community College at the City University of New York. The PDA offers a comprehensive education through an extensive variety of both degree and continuing education courses.
• Knable ex. Re. Knable v. Bexley City School District
  After district failed to convene an IEP meeting for student, parents unilaterally withdrew child with behavior disorder from school, enrolled in a private school and sued for reimbursement. Court held that substantive harm, resulting in a denial of a FAPE under IDEA, occurs when the procedural violations of IDEA seriously infringe upon the parents' opportunity to participate in the IEP process, and procedural violations that deprive an eligible student of an individualized education program or result in the loss of educational opportunity also will constitute a denial of a FAPE.
• Retention and attrition of teachers at the district level: National trends in special and general education.
  This study used existing databases to analyze, from a national perspective, the turnover of special education teachers (SETs) at the district level due to district migration, teaching field transfer, and exit attrition. The study also investigated district retention of SETs as a function of district location and teacher experience.
• Foundations of Education, Volume I: History and Theory of Teaching Children and Youths with Visual Impairments. Second Edition
  This text, one of two volumes on the instruction of students with visual impairments, focuses on the history and theory of teaching such students.
• Progress without punishment: Effective approaches for learners with behavior problems.
  Recent years have seen dramatic changes in the theory and practice of special education and human service systems. The focus has shifted away from artificial and restrictive environments to deinstitutionalization, community integration, and the development of programs in public schools and vocational and residential settings.
• Sacramento City Unified School District v. Rachel H.
  The District strenuously disagrees with the district court's findings that Rachel was receiving academic and non-academic benefits in a regular class and did not have a detrimental effect on the teacher or other students. It argues that the court's findings were contrary to the evidence of the state Diagnostic Center and that the court should not have been persuaded by the testimony of Rachel's teacher, particularly her testimony that Rachel would need only a part-time aide in the future.
• Bilingual Learners and the Code of Practice
  Questions the interpretation that the most urgent task in the context of the introduction of the Code of Practice on Identification and Assessment of Special Educational Needs in the United Kingdom is assessment that facilitates identification of bilingual learners with special educational needs, as distinct from their linguistic needs. (SLD).
• Isolation timeout used with students with emotional disturbances.
  This 1-year-long study investigated the use of isolation timeout as a behavioral control intervention in a special educational facilities. Subjects were 156 students with emotional disturbance.
• Negotiating the special education maze: A guide for parents and teachers
  Designed to assist parents and teachers in understanding the complex procedures of special education, this book describes the process for obtaining school services for children with disabilities. An introduction reviews six major provisions of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) that relate to children's rights to a free, appropriate public education and parent involvement in decision-making.
• Head start children finishing first grade: Preliminary data on school identification of children at risk for special education
  A study investigated identification rates of children at risk for special education among U.S. Project Head Start children completing first grade.
• Hardman, M.L., McDonnell, J., & Welch, M.
  Since its original passage as Public Law 94-142, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) has been the cornerstone of practice in special education. This federal law has enabled all eligible students with disabilities to access a free and appropriate public education.
• Teachers' Perceptions of working conditions: Impact of job design on stress, commitment, and intent to leave
  This report summarizes results of a survey of special educators regarding first, their working conditions related to central office support and, second, the impact of administrative support on their job satisfaction, commitment, and intent to leave.
• Attrition/retention of special education teachers: Critique of current research and recommendations for retention efforts
  Literature review of attrition problem and suggestions for further comprehsive study Investigative efforts need to examine teacher preparation, teacher demographics, conditions of the workplace, and district and state policies.
• JSK By and Through JK v. Hendry County School Board
  "J.S.K.'s parents argue that, to satisfy the second part of, Rowley, , the Board must have provided J.S.K. with what his parents call 'meaningful' educational benefits.
• The Preservice Education of Teachers for Student Diversity: An Analysis of the Special Education Empirical Literature
  This monograph analyzes the empirical literature on multicultural teacher education. The first section summarizes the existing literature in general education and points out strengths and weaknesses.
• Meeting the Special Needs of Dual Language Learners with Disabilities: Integrating Data Based Instruction and the Standards for Teaching English for Speakers of Other Languages
  This paper on meeting the needs of students with disabilities who are learning English as a second language suggests integrating principles from the Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) Standards and Data Based Instruction (DBI). The power of combining intentional language teaching with an action research process is illustrated by four case studies conducted by special education interns in a multicultural setting.
• Improving the retention of special education teachers.
  Final report for RTI Project 5168.
• Multicultural Education and Technology: Perspectives To Consider
  This article discusses multicultural education and educational technology and the digital divide created by lack of access to and use of technology by members of various social identity groups. Educators are urged to re-think technology integration using a multicultural education framework.
• Family-centered practices in early intervention, preschool, elementary and secondary schools
  
• Timothy W. v. Rochester N.H. School District
  Timothy W. is a child with complex developmental disabilities, spastic quadriplegia, cerebral palsy, weizure disorder, and cortical blindness.
• The shortage of fully certified teachersnin special and general education.
  
• Implementing best practices for all students in the local schools; Vermont Statewide Systems Support Change Project.
  when Vermont was awarded its 1988 systems change grant, the State had been working on systems change for several years through previous Federal grants and related State initiatives. Consequently, the activities undertaken through this grant supplemented work already conducted, including efforts to build consensus among stakeholders on necessary changes to special education service delivery and a vision for best practices.
• The shortage of fully certified teachers in special and general education.
  Based on a sample of 46,599 public school teachers, a study investigated the certification status of both special and general education teachers. Results indicated a chronic annual shortage of about 29,000 fully certified teachers in special education, a level that was almost twice the number in general education.
• RTI Adoption Survey
  In February-March of 2008, The Council of Administrators of Special Education (CASE) and Spectrum K12 School Solutions conducted a web survey of K12 school administrators to assess the level of adoption of Response to Intervention (RTI). The objective of the survey was to provide a benchmark for districts to evaluate their rate of RTI adoption relative to other districts.
• Kindergarten Plus: Integrating Children with Disabilities into Early Childhood Classrooms
  New York City's SuperStart Plus and Kindergarten Plus programs provide a developmentally appropriate learning environment that encourages both general- and special-education children's language, cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development. Teachers integrate multicultural and English-as-a-Second-Language strategies into their teaching.
• Creating tomorrow's schools today: Stories of inclusions, change and renewal
  This book discusses the inclusion of children with disabilities in general education settings and provides accounts of successful inclusive school communities.
• Multicultural Teacher Education in Special and Bilingual Education
  This introductory article to the special issue summarizes following articles, which describe the status of research on multicultural education and special education, the development, implementation, and evolution of multicultural education courses at two major research universities, and findings about the impact of coursework on the thinking and actions of preservice and novice teachers.
• Number and type of personnel employed and needed to provide special education and related services to children and youth with disabilities.
  
• The Theoretical Foundations of Professional Development in Special Education: Is Sociocultural Theory Enough?
  This article reviews sociocultural, multicultural, and critical pedagogical theories and suggests that an adequate and sufficient theoretical framework for professional development in special education must explicitly and directly address issues of power, discrimination, and relative status that underlie dilemmas of practice. It offers vignettes of such dilemmas, with reference to the 1998 Council for Exceptional Children's professional standards.
• Social skills instruction in secondary education: Are we prepared for integration of difficult-to-teach students?
  
• To assure the free appropriate public education of all children with disabilities.
  It is the purpose of this Act to assure that all handicapped children have available to them, within the time periods specified in section 612(2) (B). a free appropriate public education which emphasizes special education and related services designed to meet their unique needs, to assure that the rights of handicapped children and their parents or guardians are protected, to assist States and localities to provide for the education of all handicapped children and to assess and assure the effectiveness of efforts to educate handicapped children.
• Teachers' perceptions of administrative support.
  This report summarizes results of a survey of special educators regarding first, their working conditions related to central office support and, second, the impact of administrative support on their job satisfaction, commitment, and intent to leave. Major findings regarding teacher attitudes toward central office administrators include a perceived administrative distance with a sense of being managed from a distance and a lack of proactive assistance and a perceived dissonance in priorities and values between teachers and central office administrators.
• Instructional strategies in mainstream classrooms: Prediction of the strategies teachers select
  Fifty mainstream teachers in grades 3-12 were surveyed concerning their experience and educational background, their attitudes toward teaching effectiveness, and their mainstream classes. Both teacher attitudes toward personal teaching efficacy and class size predicted variance in the teachers' selection of educational strategies for their mainstream classes.
• Cultural Diversity, Families, and the Special Education System: Communication and Empowerment
  This monograph addresses the way parents of minority students perceive the special education system, with specific attention to these parents' views of the process by which their children are designated as "handicapped.".
• Curriculum Reform To Address Multicultural Issues in Special Education
  This paper focuses on the outcomes of the social forces that operate against African American males in school and society and their all too frequent placement in special education programs, with the core of the problem remaining in the Institutions of Higher Education (IHE).
• Evaluating OCR's Enforcement Efforts to Protect Minority Students from Inappropriate Identification and Placement in Special Education
  
• Reading differences between low-achieving students with and without learning disabilities: A meta-analysis
  Seventy-nine studies were chosen that allowed us to calculate reading performance differences between low achievers with and without an LD label. The substantive and methodological features of the 79 studies were coded to identify potential sources of effect size (ES) variance.
• Reducing the Disproportionate Representation of Minority Students in Special Education. ERIC/OSEP Digest #E566
  This digest summarizes the problem of over-representation of minority students in special education and offers suggestions to reduce this disproportionate representation. It notes concerns of the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) and the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) that minority students are being misclassified and receiving inappropriate services and/or discriminatory placement in special education.
• Metropolitan Board of Public Education v. Guest
  Parents of a first-grader with autism challenged the district's proposal to change his placement from a regular kindergarten with supplementary aids and services to a special education classroom for two-thirds of the school day.
• National TEEM Outreach: Transition into the Elementary Education Mainstream. Final Report
  This final report describes activities of a 3-year federally supported program designed to enable school systems to establish and implement systematic transition planning to meet the multicultural needs of preschool-aged children with disabilities and their families moving into kindergarten and other general education settings.
• Pathways to teacher learning in multicultural contexts: A longitudinal case study of two novice bilingual teachers in urban schools
  
• Managing change in a research university special education program.
  This article describes the restructuring of the Special Education Teacher Education program at the University of Washington. Analysis indicated a paradigm shift as well as intense collaborative activity and significant programmatic and curricular modifications.
• Special education for the mildly retarded: Is much of it justifiable?
  
• Why didst thou go? Predictors of retention, transfer, and attrition of special and general education teachers from a national perspective.
  The Teacher Followup Survey of 4,798 public school teachers found that teacher turnover decreased as the following variables increased: age, the number of dependent children, the level of certification, the number of years since the last degree was earned, teaching experience, and salary level. Strategies to maximize teacher retention are discussed.
• Collaborative Teaching: Many Joys, Some Surprises, and a Few Worms
  Discusses a professional-development course for educators, team-taught by three faculty members that combined the content of courses in multicultural education, special education, and human development. Each teacher describes his or her experiences and the issues addressed; student comments are examined; and the requirements for and benefits of effective team teaching are explored.
• Students identified as seriously emotionally disturbed in school-based day treatment: Cognitive, psychiatric, and special education characteristics
  A study analyzed the diagnostic profiles of students in school-based day treatment. The treatment histories of 85 students who attended either a rural or a suburban program were used as the basis for the study.
• CEC launches initiative on special education teaching conditions
  
• Poolaw v. Bishop
  In the first case, the Court rejected the parents' suggestions of inadequate supplementary aids and services for their child with a severe hearing impairment. As a result, the student could be placed in a school specializing in educating students with hearing impairments.
• Annual Needs Assessment, 1998: Region V Head Start-Child Care Partnerships & Training and Technical Assistance Needs in the Area of Disabilities
  The Great Lakes Quality Improvement Center for Disabilities (Region V QIC-D or GLQIC-D) serves Head Start Programs in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin, and conducts an annual needs assessment of the Head Start Disability Services Coordinators. For 1998, 264 coordinators completed the survey, which gathered information regarding Head Start-Child Care partnerships and initiatives, training and technical assistance needs regarding parents with disabilities, and needs in library resources regarding disabilities.
• Are the Culturally Diverse Needs of Children Being Met in Special Education?
  A mail survey was conducted of 149 students (grades 4-8) with special needs in 19 school systems in inner city, suburban, and rural settings to determine their knowledge of cultural diversity and to identify their educational needs in this area.
• Violent and nonviolent children's and parents' reasoning about family and peer violence
  A study examined the moral reasoning patterns of violent children with emotional and behavioral disorders (E/BD) and their aggressive parents. Interviews were conducted with 17 boys enrolled in a highly restrictive special education day treatment program designed for violent children with E/BD and their 18 care providers and a matched control group of 16 children and their care providers from a nonclinical population.
• Pathways to Teacher Learning in Multicultural Contexts: A Longitudinal Case Study of Two Novice Bilingual Teachers in Urban Schools
  This longitudinal case study focused on the learning trajectories of two novice bilingual education teachers in urban schools. Changes in and relationships between these teachers’ knowledge, beliefs, and interactive thinking about teaching culturally diverse learners were traced.
• Early Childhood Special Education for Children with Disabilities, Ages Three through Five: An Introduction. Revised
  This introduction to a reference guide for early childhood special education personnel in North Dakota discusses the purpose of the guidelines, the North Dakota philosophy on the importance of early intervention programs, and quality indicators of early intervention programs.
• Supporting professionals-at-risk: Evaluating interventions to reduce burnout and improve retention of special educators
  Studied 92 educators and two interventions--a series of stress management workshops and a peer-collaboration program. The interventions improved known factors for teacher burnout, job satisfaction and organizational commitment.