Purpose: The purpose of this qualitative study was to identify and describe the assessment models school psychologists use to identify African American students with SLDs in three of the K-12 school districts in Riverside County. A second purpose of this study was to determine how school psychologists within three districts of Riverside County…

Previous studies of K-12 dyslexia legislation have described broad trends in legislative content, such as the presence or absence of screening and intervention requirements. This study uses document analysis to provide a finer-grained description of the laws to highlight critical variation in policy that will directly affect (a) the number and…

Michael Shaughnessy, shares a conversation with Helen Dudeney, a private consultant who has been actively involved in working with gifted children since 1988. She was originally, trained and worked as an accountant and was very involved with working with children through volunteering for many years as a leader in the Scout Association. She started…

This document discusses specific learning disabilities identification (SLD ID) determination implications and considerations with distance learning and school reentry due to COVID-19.

The purpose of this narrative synthesis is to determine the reliability and validity of retell protocols for assessing reading comprehension of students in grades K-12. Fifty-four studies were systematically coded for data related to the administration protocol, scoring procedures, and technical adequacy of the retell component. Retell was…

This study compared oral personal and fictional narratives of diverse (African American and Caucasian) students with and without learning disabilities. Naturalistic conversation with embedded narrative prompts and supports provided the context for narrative elicitation. The participants were 82 fourth to seventh graders from urban and suburban…

The study in this article examined the relationship of school counselors' reports of demands and resources in their work environment to perceived stress, biographic factors, and caseload characteristics. Participants were 227 school counselors in Texas. Paperwork requirements and size of caseload were rated the most demanding aspects of their job,…

In 1997, the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act of 1990 was amended to require that assistive technology be considered when preparing an individual education program (IEP). This study explored involvement of Midwestern music educators in the IEP development process as well as their knowledge and attitudes regarding use of assistive…

The detection of cognitive patterns in children with learning disabilities (LD) has been a priority in the identification process. Subtest profile analysis from traditional cognitive assessment has drawn sharp criticism for inaccurate identification and weak connections to educational planning. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to use a new…

This article describes how actuarial methods can supplant discrepancy models and augment problem solving and Response to Intervention (RTI) efforts by guiding the process of identifying specific learning disabilities (SLD). Actuarial methods use routinized selection and execution of formulas derived from empirically established relationships to…

English language learners (ELLs) who are in the process of acquiring English as a second language for academic purposes, are often misidentified as having Language Learning Disabilities (LLDs). Policies regarding the assessment of ELLs have undergone many changes through the years, such as the introduction of a Response to Intervention (RTI)…

Gifted and talented students who also have a specific learning disability (SLD) are typically referred to as twice-exceptional and are among the most underserved students in our schools. Previous special education laws promoted a wait-to-fail approach; therefore, gifted students with SLD often were overlooked because their average academic…

This study explores No Child Left Behind's required timetable for English language learners (ELLs) to reach English language proficiency within five years, as outlined in the Annual Measurable Achievement Outcomes (AMAOs), despite the lack of research evidence to support this as a reasonable expectation. Analysis was conducted on the archived data…

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the differences between students with LD and SLI on emotional psychopathology and cognitive variables. In particular, the study examined whether cognitive, emotional, and psychopathology variables are significant discriminatory variables of speech and language disordered groups versus those…

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 allows schools to use a child's response to research-based intervention (RTI) as a part of procedures to identify students with learning disabilities. This paper considers whether RTI-based assessment models meet ethical and legal standards for acceptable assessment practices.…