Presented is an evaluation of a program in seven schools in New York City which provided 19 special classes for 174 doubly handicapped students--mentally retarded and severely physically handicapped--ranging in age from 5 to 21 years old. Among findings listed are that the 30 higher functioning Ss who were given the Wide Range Achievement Test did…

Evaluation of a leisure skill instruction program with five high school age students with severe disabilities found generalization of trained skills in activities with nondisabled peers. Additionally, attitude scores of high school peers showed a significant improvement following four months of interaction with a disabled student. (DB)

The mission for Urban SEALS (Special Education Academic Leaders), a federally funded doctoral preparation program, is to prepare doctoral-level special educators, including those who are culturally and/or linguistically diverse (CLD) to assume leadership roles in the education of urban students with disabilities who are CLD. This report provides…

In response to the current federal initiative to evaluate the impact of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Personnel Preparation program, the authors summarize prior efforts to evaluate the program and identify common themes and gaps in that work. Also, the authors pose issues and questions for those who seek to understand the impact…

In the United States, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (2004) mandates functional assessment based behavioral support plans for all students with disabilities who display challenging behavior. However, very few studies have been undertaken to examine the effectiveness of the functional assessment-based behavioral plans with high…

Addressing federal mandates regarding both the delivery of transition services and access to the general education curriculum has been a challenge for secondary special educators. A practice common to both initiatives, however, has been efforts to promote self-determination. This study examined the impact of promoting self-determination as an…

This report describes major activities and accomplishments of the Arkansas Rehabilitation Research & Training Center on Enhancing Employability of Individuals with Disabilities from May 15, 1996 through May 14, 1997. The Center has a 5-year contract in the priority area of enhancing employability of individuals with severe disabilities. The…

This final report describes the PEERS (Providing Education for Everyone in Regular Schools) Project, a 5-year collaborative systems change project in California to facilitate the integration of students with severe disabilities who were previously served at special centers into services at regular schools and the integration of students in special…

This paper presents an example of "optimistic research," a qualitative approach which focuses on positive interventions helpful to practitioners, in this case an examination of programs successfully integrating people with severe disabilities. The study evaluated 40 programs through site visits which focus on observation, interviews, and…

An intensive early intervention program was evaluated by assessing gains made by 44 special needs children (age 2) in cognition, gross motor, fine motor, receptive language, and expressive language domains. Comparison of actual to predicted posttest scores did not reveal significant gains in any domains. In cognition, gross motor, and fine motor…

This article describes a project that will make a positive impact in today's special education classroom. Teachers will learn how to use Problem Based Learning (PBL) units as a tool to empower students with special needs to become more confident, independent, successful students. It will also shatter the stereotype that students with special needs…

This paper relates a teacher's story about a classroom-based research project undertaken with a Year 3 to 7 Special Area Resource class, located in a Mainstream Primary School in the south west of Adelaide. The class consisted of 11 students verified as students with disabilities under the DECS disability criteria. The students' age range (from 8…

Students with learning disabilities and other types of disabilities who attend post-secondary education settings may often require reasonable accommodations to succeed. While the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is designed to protect students with disabilities from discrimination, many students are unaware of their rights and how to request…

The purpose of this study was to discover if there was a statistically significant relationship between the self-reported instructional leadership practices of North Carolina superintendents and the achievement of their students with limited English proficiency (LEP) and students with disabilities (SWDs) as measured by the percent of students who…

In recent years, an increasing number of states have been moving towards the development and implementation of longitudinal data systems for tracking the progress of individual K-12 students with disabilities across their academic careers up to and including their postsecondary activities. In an effort to avoid duplication of data collection…