The relationships between response to intervention (RTI) data, cognitive ability, academic achievement, identification methods, and specific learning disability (SLD) identification have been studied extensively in recent years; however, an empirically supported method of identifying a learning disability has yet to be agreed upon. Without a…

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) prevalence estimates derived from a single data source under-identify children and provide a biased profile of case characteristics. We analyzed characteristics of 1,919 children with ASD identified by the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network. Cases ascertained only at education sources were…

Background: In 2007 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported a higher prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in New Jersey, one of the wealthiest states in the United States, than in other surveillance regions. Objective: To examine the association of socioeconomic status (SES) with ASD prevalence. Methods: Information…

Models of Response to Intervention (RTI) include parameters of assessment and instruction. This study focuses on assessment with the purpose of developing a screening battery that validly and efficiently identifies first-grade children at risk for reading problems. In an RTI model, these children would be candidates for early intervention. We…

Tests of the validity of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children Third Edition Arithmetic, Coding, Information, and Digit Span (ACID) profile among 612 students with learning disabilities revealed that the ACID profile does not efficiently separate children with disabilities from those without disabilities. No ACID cutting score significantly…

This study of language performance tracked 34 poor children from kindergarten through second grade. The best kindergarten predictor for eventual diagnosis with a specific language impairment was a combination of the score on the Oral Vocabulary subtest of the Test of Oral Language Development and the score on a combination of experimental tasks.…

Developmental and criterion reading and writing measures were administered to 300 primary-level students, revealing that elimination of IQ in the definition of learning disabilities would dramatically affect who is identified as learning disabled. A two-stage assessment model analyzing absolute criteria without IQ and relative criteria with IQ is…