Universal Institute Charter School, a Title I school in South Philadelphia, uses instructional software for reading that offers diagnostic features so that teachers can quickly identify individual students' needs and respond to them. Because of the success students experienced in the learning support and summer school environments, the program was…

Response to intervention (RTI) arose, in part, from the limited success of the pre-referral process, an approach advocated in the 1980s and 1990s, and accurately measuring the discrepancy between aptitude and achievement in young children. Reflecting these concerns, when the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) was reauthorized in…

Response to intervention (RTI) can be both a system for providing early interventions to struggling students and a special education diagnostic tool for evaluating and identifying students with specific learning disabilities. Contributing to the very limited literature on state-level approaches, this report describes how nine states define and…

A growing body of evidence indicates that for some children, early incidences of challenging behaviors are predictors of later difficulties. These incidences of challenging behaviors may predict mental health issues, social adjustment issues and/or increased challenging behaviors that will impede school success and impact transition to adult life…

Described is the Early Intervention program of Pennsylvania's Federation Day Care Services which serves young children with learning disabilities or delays in social or emotional development. Reviewed are such program aspects as philosophy of service and objectives (including stress on affective education and problem solving skills), criteria for…

Comparison of student test scores between states, school districts, and even schools continues to be a popular measure of student achievement. However, these comparisons reveal little about the quality or effectiveness of educational programs, only the varying difficulty of educating different populations of students. This report uses U.S. Census…

This article describes the development and use of a new delivery system for education services based on the concepts of mobility and individualized instruction. The system consists of a mobile van equipped with a central IBM computer and 15 student terminals. Traveling through rural Pennsylvania, it offers local teachers a course in special…

The specific focus of this document is on the evolutionary development of the Neighborhood Educational Center Project supported under Title III, 1965 Elementary Secondary Act, which was marked by continual evaluation and appropriate modification. Application of the concepts of individualized instruction was one of the basic means by which the…

In early 1972, the Pennsylvania State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights turned its attention to the growing Puerto Rican population in Philadelphia, a population estimated to be anywhere from 30,000 to 125,000. A two-day open meeting or informal hearing was held on June 6 and 7, 1972, to look at two major problem areas for…

Intended as a guide for professionals and local administrators in initiating and developing early intervention programs for handicapped children, the volume provides descriptions of 10 models and techniques presently utilized in Pennsylvania. Included are reports with the following titles and authors: "A System of Open Learning" (P.…

This document is designed to assist school district personnel in the identification of intervention strategies that have a good probability of increasing the district's mean score on the Goal IV Educational Quality Assessment (EQA) instrument. Appropriate educational research has been reviewed and distilled into seven propositions that are…

Pennsylvania's "Testing for Essential Learning and Literacy Skills" (TELLS) program was instituted during the 1984-85 school year, to identify reading and mathematics problems early in a student's school career. This document describes the intent and legislation behind TELLS, the implementation of the test, population tested, properties…

The purpose of this project was to continue the development and establishment of competencies to prepare teacher educators to work with vocational teachers who teach disadvantaged students. During the project, a list of competencies needed to assist teachers in working with disadvantaged students was developed, along with a list of competencies…

A project was conducted in Pennsylvania to determine what changes might improve the effectiveness of the State's adult basic education (ABE) program. Northcutt's construct of functional competency adult performance level (APL) and Mezirow's program evaluation model provided the basis for the project's two components: APL assessment and program…

This independent learning packet, which is intended for adult literacy tutors, reviews the literature regarding adults with learning disabilities. The packet begins with a learning disabilities pretest. Presented next is the literature review, which includes information on the following aspects of learning disabilities: definition and historical…