Through a lens of cultural capital, this dissertation explored the complex implementation of Section 504 policy in public high schools, focused on how school-level characteristics and the state-level litigious educational environment impact the qualifying rates of 504 plans. This study of the 2017-18 school year employed data from national…

Schoolwide Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports (SWPBIS) is a tiered program that provides three levels of behavior and social-emotional support for students. Tier one is for all students, tier two is for some students in need of targeted or some additional intervention, while tier three is for few students who need the most intensive…

Research indicates inadequate evidence-based practice (EBP) implementation for autistic adolescents in schools, despite schools being the most accessed service system by autistic youth. It is critical for school personnel to have a systematic approach to select and adopt autism EBPs. The Autism Community Toolkit: Systems to Measure and Adopt…

This project study focused on the writing and implementation of the transition plan that gives students with disabilities the proper guidelines and tools to help them in life after high school. Guided by the human capital theory in education, the purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of how high school special education teachers…

The problem addressed by this study was that School-wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (SWPBIS) is not consistently being implemented with fidelity by special education teachers in urban high schools in California, which can have negative academic and behavioral impacts on students with disabilities. This qualitative descriptive…

People with disabilities consistently advocate for their right to be self-determined. Decades of research highlight the positive impacts of self-determination intervention on in-school and post-school outcomes of secondary students with disabilities. Increasingly, self-determination interventions are being implemented in inclusive contexts for…

High school students with mild to moderate disabilities are being educated in the full inclusion classroom. As inclusive settings increase, the importance of determining a structured way to implement full inclusion programs has risen. Currently, there are no structured plans to follow when implementing a full inclusion program. Narrative methods…

This article examines current technology-aided instruction and intervention (TAII) available for autistic transition-age youth (TAY) in the United States and existing policies that may support or hinder the delivery of these interventions. Specifically, we focus on policies that might influence the delivery of TAII to autistic TAY. After a careful…

High schools hold great potential as contexts within which educators implement evidence-based practices shown to change post-school outcomes for youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Unfortunately, educators feel unprepared to use transition and disability-focused evidence-based practices. Coaching, as an essential feature of effective…

Check-in/check-out (CICO) is an evidence-based multicomponent intervention widely implemented in elementary and middle schools. The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether an adapted CICO intervention, with CICO components designed to be more developmentally appropriate for adolescents and contextually relevant for high schools, could be…

Including students with disabilities requires schoolwide interventions that are implemented with fidelity (adherence). Collection of fidelity data may become problematic when multiple evidence-based treatments exist in one setting. To address concerns around efficiency of data collection, this study hypothesized that the three sampling approaches…

Few studies exist studying the implementation of a mindfulness program among high school students with disabilities. This study examined outcomes from the implementation of a 6-week "Learning to BREATHE" program, which is a mindfulness-based program for adolescents. This study explores behavioral problems, self-efficacy, self-regulation,…

There is a need for rigorous experimental research on restorative practices in schools as a means to reduce exclusionary discipline and the disproportionate sanctioning of Black students, male students, and students with disabilities. The current study addressed this need in its evaluation of Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility's…

This study reports the results of a single-arm, noncontrolled, Type 3 hybrid effectiveness-implementation trial evaluating virtual reality job interview training (VR-JIT) delivered in five preemployment transition programs comprising 15 schools, 10 administrators, 23 teachers, and 279 youth ages 16-21 years receiving special education…

Although the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Framework has been effective in designing tools and lessons, implementation of the Framework to design entire learning environments possesses its own limitations in research. This paper describes a quasi-experimental study of the effects of a professional development program on teachers'…