In 2025, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) will have been the primary law driving the field of special education for 50 years. A contentious area of disagreement has been the relationship between two primary mandates of the law: the obligation of schools to provide a free, appropriate public education (FAPE) to eligible…

This article introduces a series of papers that explain and illustrate how a higher order thinking curriculum can be designed for a full spectrum of students, including students with learning disabilities. The article discusses an approach in which concepts, rules, and strategies are taught by organizing content around the process of noting…

The author reviews the background and development of the PAC (Parallel Alternate Curriculum) Program, designed to improve the learning of all students (including learning disabled students) by helping teachers maintain them in the mainstream classroom. Adminstrative support is cited as a key element in the program's success. (CL)

The author describes his concerns over mainstreaming, especially as the practice applies to LD students. He quotes other special educators' misgivings about mainstreaming and decries the lack of long range planning in the field. (CL)

Results of a study involving 14 learning disabled students show that self-monitoring procedures are readily adaptable for use by learning disabled pupils in the regular classroom setting and that using self-monitoring procedures correctly is an important variable to consider when implementing them. (Author/CL)

Regular and special educators (N=334) identified the social skill competencies necessary for successful performance in secondary mainstream settings. Competencies fell into three major areas: appropriate work habits, respect for others and their property, and ability to follow school rules. (Author/CL)

The developmental bypass teaching technique (which provides students an opportunity to bypass their learning deficits) was studied with regard to social studies achievement and classroom behaviors in 50 learning disabled junior high school students. (Author/PHR)

Data do not support the findings of previous studies on the sociometric status of handicapped children in the regular classroom; i.e., LD children would rate significantly lower in terms of popularity than their peers who are non-LD. (Author)

The author considers the future of learning disabilities, particularly in relation to mainstreaming, the perceptual deficit hypothesis, and the psychoneurology of learning. (SBH)

An elementary school principal and mother of a son with learning disabilities (LD) offers a personal perspective on educational trends such as resource rooms, content mastery, and inclusion. The paper argues that regular classroom teachers are not trained to teach LD students and that adequate support for mainstreamed LD students would be…

The author reviews issues related to grading learning disabled students that may cause problems between special and regular education teachers. He suggests that too many regular teachers have confused and arbitrary grading policies and that a pass/fail approach may be a wiser alternative. (CL)

The sociometric standing of 42 primary-aged learning disabled students was investigated in a sparsely populated rural area where learning disabled children were mainstreamed in an elementary school in which an "open concept" delivery of services system was in operation. (Author/SBH)

Three papers present the positions of national organizations on full inclusion of students with learning disabilities in regular education classrooms, including the Learning Disabilities Association of America, Council for Learning Disabilities, and National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilities. All three papers call for a continuum of…

The guest editorial by W. Cruickshank criticizes as facile the assumption that the least restrictive environment for learning disabled children is a regular classroom. (GW)

A special education administrator raises questions about separating learning-disabled students from the regular education classroom for specialized instruction, proposes strategies to accommodate learning difference and address specific learning needs in the regular instructional program, and suggests the need to reevaluate the benefits derived…