The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act requires that functional behavior assessments be conducted under certain circumstances for students with disabilities. Functional assessments may include indirect assessments (e.g., rating scales, interviews), direct-descriptive assessments (e.g., direct observations with conditional…

The current meta-analysis examined the use of deep touch pressure (DTP; e.g., weighted vests) with students with disabilities. DTP is a form of sensory integration therapy that is currently used extensively in schools with students with autism and other disabilities. Each study in the analysis was evaluated using the Council for Exceptional…

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004, and the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002, added instructional responsibilities for school principals specific to students with disabilities. However, these laws did not require additional training in special education policy or instruction for principals, despite the existence of…

Confusion among school leaders regarding how to interpret and implement special education legislation, and specific federal and state policies and mandates such as a free and appropriate public education (FAPE), in the least restrictive environment (LRE) at the school-site level has existed since the 1970s and continues to exist. This…

Assistive technologies are often promoted to schools, parents and educators as tools to assist students with special needs by providing a compensatory value, to remediate learning problems and to promote personal independence. These technologies range from simple spellcheckers to more complex speech recognition systems and educational software.…

In this column, Crisis Management in the Schools Interest Group members summarize recent crisis management publications. The first article summarized was a meta-analysis of the risk factors associated with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) among adults. The second study looked at the presence of life stressors among students who were expelled…

Seven narrative and systematic reviews published since 2000 and focusing on self-determination for individuals with disabilities are reviewed in this narrative metasynthesis. The authors distinguish their work from other metasynthesis work by calling it a "narrative metasynthesis" because they include both narrative reviews and…

Nearly four decades have passed since the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) ensured access to public education for students with disabilities in the United States. During the years following its introduction, there was a growing recognition that helping students, especially students with disabilities, in their transitions from…

The relationship between functional or life skills curricula (the intervention) and transition-related outcomes for secondary-aged youth with disabilities is explored in this systematic review. A total of 50 studies intervening with 482 youth with (largely) disability labels of moderate to severe mental retardation were reviewed. The findings of…

The purpose of this study is to compare attitudes toward inclusion among general education (GE) and special education (SE) teachers. Between 1997 and 2007, many changes took place within the Individuals with Disabilities Act and in 2002 the introduction of No Child Left Behind. This meta-synthesis examines the teacher's attitude towards inclusion.…

The relationship between transition planning/coordinating interventions and transition outcomes for secondary-aged youth with disabilities was explored in this systematic review. A total of 31 studies intervening with 859 youth with a wide variety of disabilities were reviewed. Using the transition intervention framework of Kohler and Field (2003)…

This paper focuses on transition programs for youth to postsecondary education, broadly considered. It addresses the following questions: (1) What models or programs of transition exist? (2) On what basis can we say one transition program is more effective than another? In other words, how is successful transition defined? (3) How are…

Federal legislation requires states to publicly report on the participation and performance of students with disabilities on statewide assessments. Publicly reporting this information means that it will be more accessible to educators and laypeople, and it can be used in evaluating educational programs for and assessing the progress of this…

IDEA and NCLB support the case for including English language learners with disabilities in standards-based reform and school accountability efforts. Few states make statewide data on the participation and performance of English language learners with disabilities publicly available. Therefore, district assessment data on English language learners…