In an effort to reduce state spending on special education in public schools, New Jersey moved to census-based funding as part of the new school funding formula, the School Funding Reform Act (SFRA), adopted in 2008. The census approach funds all districts using the statewide average classification rate and a statewide average "excess…

The Individuals with Disabilities Educational Act (IDEA) safeguards the learning of students with disabilities and protects them from nondiscriminatory assessments that identify their disabilities and align them with the special education support and services required. However, when the IDEA is not adequately followed, students with disabilities…

This case highlights the moral and ethical dilemmas that principals and educators confront when making decisions about special education classification and placement, particularly in the context of racial disproportionality. These decisions are complex, influenced by the requirements of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and…

Intelligence tests are important tools in psychology and education; however, the stability of scores and use of intelligence tests has always been surrounded by some controversy. Since its conception in 1905, intelligence testing has become one of the most prominent tasks for school psychologists worldwide. Today's need for frequent use of…

This study examines the effects of English Learner (EL) status on subsequent Special Education (SPED) placement. Through a research-practice partnership, we link student demographic data and initial English proficiency assessment data across seven cohorts of test takers and observe EL and SPED programmatic participation for these students over…

Black students are about 1.5 times more likely to be receiving special education (SpEd) services relative to white students. While there is concern that this implies some black students are inappropriately placed in SpEd, the impacts of the disproportionate representation of minority students in SpEd remains unclear. Using administrative data from…

This study examined when students with disabilities graduated high school and how graduation patterns differed for students based on selected demographic and educational factors. Utilizing statewide data on students with disabilities from Massachusetts from 2005 through 2012, the author conducted discrete-time survival analysis to estimate the…

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, American psychologists began addressing problems related to the intellectual capacity of students enrolled in public schools. This paper focuses on the role and influence of psychologists in addressing these problems, specifically the difficulty of classifying students deemed feeble-minded and…

This study examines the community-wide effects of investments in two early childhood initiatives in North Carolina (Smart Start and More at Four) on the likelihood of a student being placed into special education. We take advantage of variation across North Carolina counties and years in the timing of the introduction and funding levels of the two…

The purpose of this study is to analyze the Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) data that states and U.S. territories report from the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) and discuss the status of the most restrictive special education placement settings for students with disabilities. In this analysis, we found that (a) states do not set…

This paper analyses the relationship between Norwegian school reform implementation and the use of special education. After the introduction of the national reform programme called the "Kunnskapsloftet" ("Knowledge promotion") in 2006, the use of special education has increased dramatically in Norway. As part of the national…

Special education today in the Ukraine is dramatically different than its early origins which stressed communal guardianship for persons with disabilities to its current movement to inclusive education. The journey to inclusive education was inconsistent due to a variety of elements such as the collapse of the Russian Monarchy, a series of…

Although educators continue to provide all students access to their grade-level curriculum, students with disabilities are not performing academically in accordance with state standards. The purpose of this sequential transformative mixed methods study was to investigate academic and/or behavioral differences between an inclusion classroom and a…

In California, Algebra I is the 8th grade math content standard. The United States Department of Education found the annual 8th grade General Math California Standards Test to be out of compliance with the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 since it assesses 6th and 7th grade math standards and not Algebra I math content. In response to the…

This is the 32nd Annual Report to Congress on the Implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 2010. Section 664(d) of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) (P.L. 108-446), as reauthorized in 2004, requires that the Department of Education report annually on the progress made toward the provision of a free…