Rhode Island is committed to ensuring that all educators receive fair, accurate, and meaningful educator evaluations that provide information that can help all support professionals improve and refine their practice. Currently, local education agencies (LEAs) in Rhode Island may submit a district-designed model for approval that complies with the…

Rhode Island is committed to ensuring that all educators receive fair, accurate, and meaningful educator evaluations that provide information that can help all support professionals improve and refine their practice. This document describes the process and basic requirements for the Rhode Island Model Support Professional Evaluation and Support…

Rhode Island educators believe that implementing a fair, accurate, and meaningful evaluation and support system for support professionals will help improve student outcomes. The primary purpose of the Rhode Island Model Support Professional Evaluation and Support System (Rhode Island Model) is to help all support professionals do their best work…

Purpose: Video modeling is an intervention strategy that has been shown to be effective in improving the social and communication skills of students with autism spectrum disorders, or ASDs. The purpose of this tutorial is to outline empirically supported, step-by-step instructions for the use of video modeling by school-based speech-language…

School success in the 21st century requires proficiency with expository discourse--the use and understanding of informative language in spoken and written modalities. This occurs, for example, when high school students read their textbooks and listen to their teachers' lectures, and later are asked to demonstrate their knowledge of this complex…

Students with disabilities are increasingly receiving services in the general education classroom, and as a result, speech-language pathologists (SLPs) are using a variety of flexible models to meet the needs of these students. Although some schools continue to provide pullout service delivery models for speech-language therapy, many are…

This study used a mail survey to gather information from 409 school-based speech-language pathologists (SLPs) in the state of Michigan regarding the types of language assessment procedures they employed when assessing children's language skills. Descriptive data regarding respondents' demographic, caseload, and employment characteristics were also…

A limited body of research on language deficits in children with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) exists. However, initial studies have found a direct relationship between language deficits and EBD. Reading, writing, and math deficits have been found to co-occur in children with EBD and language deficits. Additionally, antisocial behaviors…

In our professional lives in schools, hospitals, private practices, and universities, speech-language pathologists often pride ourselves on being communication experts--but are we? We may know how to diagnose and treat a wide range of communication disabilities, but can we effectively get our message across to our colleagues and families? Raymond…

Students with language impairment often experience serious and far-reaching effects of reading comprehension problems on their academic performance. The complexity of the problems and the characteristics of effective intervention necessitate a collaborative approach among general education teachers, special education teachers, and speech-language…

To date, research, development, and implementation efforts in responsiveness to intervention (RTI) approaches have focused on prevention and often identification of learning disabilities. In this article, the authors extend the conversation to considering an RTI-type approach as being useful in changing the way prevention and identification of…

Purpose: This article provides an evidence-based perspective on what school communities can do to lower the prevalence of reading difficulties among their pupils through preventive interventions. It also delineates the roles that speech-language pathologists (SLPs) might play in these interventions. Method: This article is organized to first…

With the enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act 2004, our nation has an explicit mandate to put reading first. Recognizing the fundamental connection between language and literacy, teachers and speech-language pathologists have become more…

Visual Phonics is an instructional program to provide print awareness, alphabet knowledge, and sound-letter correspondence for children with hearing loss who experience difficulty developing a foundation of phonemic awareness skills. Its purpose is "to clarify the sound symbol relationship between spoken English and print" (Waddy-Smith…

Speech-language pathologists face many service delivery challenges in school-based settings. Traditionally operating from a disorder model, the school speech-language pathologist rarely takes advantage of the opportunity to work with students who may benefit from enhanced communication skills training. The Communication Lab approach is an 8-week…