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…

This study investigates the impact of per-pupil funding on inclusive placements in special education in New Jersey, focusing on factors influencing inclusive practices. Inclusion is a fundamental right for students with disabilities, requiring adequate funding to be effectively implemented. Using hierarchical linear modeling, this research…

The U.S. law governing special education, the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA), requires that students with disabilities be provided a free and appropriate public education (FAPE) in the least restrictive environment (LRE). However, given the interpretive latitude within the law and the wide discrepancy in how this law is applied,…

This qualitative study examined the experiences of parents who sought inclusive education for their children with intellectual disabilities or extensive support needs. Data were collected from 33 participants in the form of narratives that emerged through semi-structured interviews and analyzed using a phenomenological methodology. Findings…

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act is the administrative law that governs special education services and how students with disabilities should be educated. When students are found eligible for special education and related services, the law states that the general education classroom should be the first placement considered where…

Background: The New Jersey Safe Schools Program (NJSS) offers an online professional development certification course, titled "Designing and Implementing Student Training Plans," for NJ high school (HS) teachers developing secondary school student work-based learning (WBL) programs. WBL provides students opportunities to engage in…

The purpose of this research study is to comprehend the perception and practices of New Jersey public school educators serving students in kindergarten through 12th-grade settings, regarding factors impacting placement in the least restrictive environment for special education students. This study explored how educators rate the implementation of…

The purpose of this archival quantitative research study was to investigate the effects of relative age and eligibility for special education through third grade. This study further examined relative age as it related to gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and multilingual learner status on eligibility for special education under the…

Relatively little research focuses on the incidence of declassification among young children who are transitioning from a special education preschool program to kindergarten. The purpose of this exploratory study is to examine the continuity of eligibility for special education from preschool to kindergarten as well as to determine whether or not…

The achievement gap that exists in K-12 education between Latino student students and other races is not only evident but profound. To bridge this gap, underlying factors needed to be explored. One such factor that has affected overall student performance is math anxiety. Researchers have determined that math anxiety has had a tremendous impact on…

Purpose: This study aimed to determine if eligibility for special education and related services (SERS) in New Jersey (NJ) is biased based on a child's racial/ cultural background or socioeconomic status (SES). Method: A Qualtrics survey was administered to NJ child study team personnel including speech-language pathologists, school psychologists,…

In this study, the efficiency of various random sampling methods to reduce the number of items rated by judges in an Angoff standard-setting study was examined and the methods were compared with each other. Firstly, the full-length test was formed by combining Placement Test 2012 and 2013 mathematics subsets. After then, simple random sampling…

In 2016, Union County College began a four-year experiment with corequisite developmental mathematics as part of a grant from the U.S. Department of Education's First in the World (FITW) program. In this experiment, students assessed as needing to take developmental mathematics courses would be eligible to receive a waiver from their developmental…

Unified enrollment systems have become increasingly popular because they facilitate public school choice, streamline burdensome application processes, and ideally increase equity, but there are pros and cons to these systems for charter schools and in general. Our report, "Unified Enrollment: Lessons Learned from Across the Country,"…

The poor quality of many school systems is a serious impediment to social mobility for children from low-income and minority families, who cannot easily pick up and move to communities with good schools. The number of students taking college remediation classes has soared, and too many students graduate high school underprepared to enter either…