Providing appropriate academic evaluation and intervention services for English learners remains a challenging goal for school support teams. Understanding English language proficiency assessment and universal screening processes can help teams make better decisions when considering possible continued intervention or referral for a comprehensive…

Various stakeholders continue to have concerns regarding the school performance of students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD). In an effort to improve student outcomes, schools may rely on improving student access to general education classrooms (e.g., inclusion). This trend occurs at a time when districts across the nation face…

More research attention and implementation support are needed for mathematics intervention as student achievement in this area continues to fall below desirable levels. Incremental rehearsal is an intervention to help students build reading, vocabulary, and math fluency. Research supports the use of incremental rehearsal for improving math fact…

Oral reading fluency probes are essential for reading assessment, intervention, and progress monitoring. Due to the limited options for choosing oral reading fluency probes, it is important to utilize all available resources such as generative artificial intelligence (AI) like ChatGPT to create oral reading fluency probes. The purpose of this…

Students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) experience some of the poorest outcomes of all students. They are also placed in alternative education (AE) settings more frequently than students in other disability categories. For some of these students, the ultimate goal is to return to the traditional school. A systematic, five-part…

To support students with disabilities who do not respond to typically effective reading intervention, special education teachers are expected to implement evidence-based practices for intensifying intervention. Data-based individualization is an effective, evidence-based practice recommended in research to intensify intervention, but requires…

This column presents a strategy for teachers to use with students with challenging behaviors motivated by a desire to escape a setting. Although many detailed strategies are available for students with behavior problems, few provide a structured approach for working with the students motivated by escape or avoidance. To effectively intervene with…

Students receiving behavioral supports in the third tier of the schoolwide positive behavioral interventions and supports (SWPBIS) framework are often identified as having emotional and behavior disabilities. Although educators implement evidence-based practices with fidelity, these practices are not always effective in supporting students with…

The availability of effective research-based interventions and practices within schools is a growing concern within the field of education. There remains a lack of interventions that have been fully evaluated for use within schools and by school personnel, particularly in the area of social skills interventions. Understanding the need for social…

For many practitioners in schools and clinics, collecting data to show the effectiveness of an intervention is probably one of the most important yet challenging components of intervention implementation. This article provides practitioners with an example case study of how data can be organized and collected to determine the effectiveness of a…

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may encounter difficulties in various aspects of play, including successful entrance into playgroups. This article describes the practical and applied use of an empirically validated strategy that uses graphic symbols to teach young children with ASD to request entrance into playgroups.

With many states moving toward increased accountability for all teachers, special educators, who have long been held accountable through the implementation of individualized education programs and the use of evidence-based practices, have much to offer. Formative instructional practices are evidence-based techniques that are familiar to special…