Comparison of short and long duration consultant-driven prereferral interventions with 60 general elementary educators, 60 pupils with special needs, and 22 consultants found that both variants were equally effective in improving teacher perceptions of their students and in decreasing referrals for testing and possible special education placement.…

Forty-three general educators were assigned to one of three versions of the Behavioral Consultation model, to assess the model's effects on problem behavior of difficult-to-teach intermediate-grade students. Observations of student behavior indicated that more inclusive Behavioral Consultation versions exerted stronger effects than the least…

This article examines a 1995 treatment validity model as a framework for identifying learning disabilities. This model: (1) examines both student performance and responsiveness to instruction; (2) delays special education referral until the effects of individual student adaptations in the regular classroom have been explored; and (3) verifies that…

The Mainstream Assistance Team (MAT) Project is a 3-year program to develop, implement, and validate a prereferral intervention model with nonhandicapped difficult-to-teach students. This paper presents a rationale for prereferral assessment and intervention focused on the increasing numbers of mildly handicapped students enrolled in special…

The investigation assessed the effects of three increasingly inclusive versions of the Behavioral Consultation (BC) model on problem behavior in mainstream classrooms, in an effort to develop an effective and efficient approach to pre-referral intervention. Subjects were 43 general educators, their 43 most difficult-to-teach nonhandicapped…

This paper reports the results of a study that investigated the reading differences between students who were low achieving, both with and without the label of learning disabilities (LD). Seventy-nine studies were chosen to calculate reading performance differences between low achievers with and without the LD label. The substantive and…

Prereferral intervention is designed to reduce referrals for special education placement, by modifying teacher instruction or management of difficult-to-teach (DTT) pupils prior to formal referral. A 3-year project is described in which Mainstream Assistance Teams offer consultation services to teachers in elementary and middle schools. The…

The Mainstream Assistance Team (MAT) project is a 3-year research program designed to develop, implement, and validate a prereferral intervention model. The model is a least-restrictive, preventative, ecologically-based, problem-solving approach, using a multidisciplinary team composed of a school psychologist, special educator, and general…