All school districts have children attending who have special dietary needs due to a disability or a food allergy or intolerance. In order for these children to attend school, their dietary needs must be addressed since they are unable to eat meals prepared for the general student population. There is federal legislation which provides guidance…

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) funds programs providing services designed to assist children with a range of delays and disabilities in achieving individualized developmental and functional goals. There are two types of programs. Part C Early Intervention is for children ages birth-2, and Part B Preschool is for children…

Legislation such as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, IDEA(2004), and No Child Left Behind, NCLB (2001) reference that paraprofessionals should be trained and supervised by a certificated teacher. Yet, many special education teachers feel that they are poorly prepared to manage the staff in their classroom. Inadequate teacher…

Assistive technology (AT) is not only beneficial for allowing children with disabilities access to their environment and the curriculum, it is also a required consideration in every IEP according to IDEA. AT is especially important in preschool years as young children are transitioning to public school and gaining valuable new skills. However,…

Access to general education is a federal mandate for all students but a major challenge in middle schools. The problem addressed in this study is a lack of access to the general education curriculum in the middle grades 6th-8th. To solve this problem, the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework was created to provide instructional design…

Higher education diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives have become an imperative for institutional change in an ever-changing pluralistic society. The impact of diversity on college campuses has come a long way since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Chang, 2005), but there is still needed work. Higher education institutions continue to…

There is a nationwide concern among students, parents, and educators regarding high school administrators' inequitable disciplinary practices and students with disabilities (SWD) policies in the U.S. The problem addressed in this study was that high school SWDs in a local Midwestern urban school district have higher rates of suspension from school…

In the U.S. education system, students of color experience multiple forms of marginalization at the intersection of markers of difference. These injustices manifest in multiple forms, such as higher rates of inappropriate referrals to special education, misidentification, conferring stigmatizing labels, and subsequently placing students of color…

How do special education-related professionals parenting children with disabilities experience the special education system? This qualitative exploratory study delves into the experiences of 25 mother-educators who are special education-related professionals navigating the special education system for their children with disabilities. Through…

I provide a broad frame for understanding racial disproportionality in special education by showing how the inequity is a byproduct of the educational debt. I used a single case study design that relied upon qualitative semi-structured interviews, document analyses, and school board meeting transcripts gathered from a mid-sized urban school…

After making instructional changes due to COVID-19 lockdowns, secondary ensemble teachers reported stronger personal connections with students and increased focus on developing individual musicianship. Using an online survey, we examined if and how the shift to online instruction affected secondary music ensemble teachers' perceptions and…

The National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and the School Breakfast Program (SBP) provide federal funding for school lunches and breakfasts served to nearly 30 million children daily in close to 94,000 schools. Because federal spending on NSLP and SBP depends in part on student participation in school meals, it may be of interest to Congress to…

Aversive procedures such as seclusion and restraint are generally viewed as emergency only procedures in school settings. However, they are still used too often to respond to student behaviors in schools. The purpose of this scoping review was to determine which types of documents have been published in peer-reviewed journals, the degree of…

The number of Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) is on the rise, and these institutions now represent about one in five colleges and universities in the United States (Excelencia in Education 2024). Collectively, these two-year and four-year colleges and universities enroll just over a third of all undergraduate students in the nation. HSIs also…

The New Hampshire Department of Education (NHED) designed a school accountability system in 2016 and 2017 to meet the requirements of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015. The system was implemented in 2017 and 2018 for the first time and has been operating continuously since then, except for 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.…