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…

School psychologists are well served to stay up to date on trends in special education law, particularly with respect to determinations when school teams' decisions are challenged. This allows them to focus on proactive best practices that foster accurate specific learning disability (SLD) identification and active collaboration with parents. This…

After dropping steadily from 2000-2001 to 2013-2014, the percentage of students identified under the IDEA classification of specific learning disabilities (SLD) levelled off and increased slightly until the latest data available (2017-2018; NCES, 2019). Despite the recognition in the IDEA amendments of 2004 of response to intervention (RTI) as…

For this 23rd article in the series reviewing recent court decisions concerning appropriate school psychology practice from both professional and legal perspectives, the topic is the substantive standard for free appropriate public education (FAPE) under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), with a focus on the classification of…

This article provides a systematic and impartial analysis of the law, including hearing and review officer as well as judicial decisions, specific to the intersection of response to intervention (RTI) and school districts' ongoing affirmative obligation of child find. The results reveal that this intersection has not been the subject of…

Specific learning disability (SLD), although moderately declining in recent years, continues to account for the highest enrollment among the eligibility classifications under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA; Zirkel, 2013b). The recognition of response to intervention (RTI) in the 2004 amendments of the IDEA as an approach for…

The legal dimension of response to intervention (RTI) has been the subject of considerable professional confusion. This brief article addresses the issue in three parts. The first part provides an update of a previous iteration that compared 12 common conceptions, referred to here as the "lore," with an objective synthesis of the…

This article begins by describing a scenario in which a fourth-grade learning disabled student's individualized education program (IEP) team came together to develop his IEP and in so doing made a number of procedural and substantive errors. The purpose of this article is to examine the procedural and substantive requirements of the Individuals…

This third article in a series of reviewing recent court decisions concerning appropriate school psychology practice from both professional and legal perspectives, asks readers to consider the summary of a Maine case presented with regard to the issue of eligibility under the classification of specific learning disabilities (SLD) under the…

This article provides a concise and objective synthesis of the federal legislation, regulations, and agency policy interpretations; state laws; and case law, including hearing officer and complaint investigation decisions, concerning specific learning disability (SLD) identification since the 2006 IDEA regulations. The results reveal wide latitude…

A range of changes, in politics and economics internationally as well as in thought about learning and society, now make the time right for a re-think of inclusive education, a re-think that ceases to employ the constructs and cliches of the past in explaining students' difficulties at school. There exists new discourse on difference, which throws…

A class-action lawsuit has been filed in California on behalf of children identified as educationally handicapped but not given a special program due to a state statute which limits enrollment to two percent of the student population. (DB)

Discusses the implications of "Gluckenberger v. Boston University," a case involving the claim of discrimination against students with learning disabilities. The discussion focuses on the inherent conflict between enforcing antidiscrimination law and the freedom of a university to control its own academic standards in the context of dealing with…

This article reports on starkly contrasting portraits of special education that the justices are sure to hear on the first day of the new U.S. Supreme Court term. In a case from New York City, the 1.1 million-student district argues that school officials made every attempt to provide an appropriate education plan under the federal Individuals with…

In a recent court case, Andrew H. K. Wong was dismissed from University of California at Davis medical school. He sued the university for discrimination, in violation of the American with Disabilities Act (ADA), but lost. Unfortunately, these types of court decisions and the overly mechanistic and rigid interpretations of ADA are threatening the…