The evaluation report describes the Student Training at Retail Stores (STARS) Project in New York City. The program's mission was to develop and implement a three-semester program of intense occupational, vocational, and career education to enhance job skills and secure retail sales jobs for high school juniors with mild learning, speech,…

Intended for teachers, this guide defines behavior disorders and discusses their identification and assessment as well as classroom strategies. The first section, a user guide, considers placement alternatives for students with special education needs and provides an overview of the material presented in the remainder of the manual. Section I…

A federally funded research project investigated the relationship between academic learning time (ALT) and achievement of 43 educable mentally retarded, emotionally disturbed, and learning-disabled students, aged 7-13, in grades 1-5. The project's final report, titled "An Analysis of the Impact of Instructional Time within Different Service…

The Mainstream Assistance Team (MAT) project is a 3-year research program designed to develop, implement, and validate a prereferral intervention model. The model is a least-restrictive, preventative, ecologically-based, problem-solving approach, using a multidisciplinary team composed of a school psychologist, special educator, and general…

Phase 2 of a three-phase project examined the secondary education background and employment adjustment of handicapped youth in rural counties in Florida. (Phase 1 was a pilot study.) Subjects were former special education students in five rural project counties who had been identified as needing services in the area of educable mental retardation,…

A rationale is presented for evaluation of effective educational practices for mildly handicapped students in all mainstreamed classes, followed by discussions of mainstreaming evaluations that have been conducted. Areas of relevant research are also presented. Finally, a model of an effective evaluation system is offered. (Author/KM)

Describes three studies which explored the use of computer assisted instruction with mildly handicapped secondary school students. Comparisons with non-handicapped students are made in vocabulary development, using drill and practice; concept instruction in elementary logic, using a tutorial approach; and problem solving in health education, using…

Forty-nine adolescents were studied to investigate the initial and long-term efficacy of job-related social skills instruction for students with mild to moderate handicaps. The study determined that students could acquire the skills during classroom instruction and use the skills effectively in simulated situations that reflected actual work…

A model of service delivery to rural handicapped children trains classroom teachers onsite to be "Cooperative Extension Service Agents" within their schools. University faculty bring graduate coursework to the school site and "Agent" teachers provide special education inservice assistance to fellow teachers, facilitating local…

Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP), ICW Employment Services of Indiana County, ARIN Intermediate Unit #28, and Indiana County Vo-Tech cooperated in a 1-year pilot project to explore employment opportunities for rural high school seniors with mild disabilities. These agencies created a four-tier program that included job preparation, job…

Summarizes 14 mathematics word-problem-solving intervention studies for elementary and secondary students with disabilities or who were at-risk for math failure. Interventions included representational techniques (diagramming), strategy-training procedures (cognitive and metacognitive), task variations (sequencing and word-problem context), and…

The Adolescent Behavior Checklist is a self-report scale used to assess the likelihood that an adolescent with mild mental retardation or borderline intelligence has a diagnosable mental illness. The scale was found to be more effective in screening in adolescents with psychiatric diagnoses than in screening out adolescents without psychiatric…

This study of 1,477 rating forms on students (grades 6-12) with mild disabilities attending mainstream vocational courses found that curriculum-based vocational assessment is a feasible means of assessing student career/vocational behaviors and skills. A two-factor solution representing work-related behaviors and generalized instructional outcomes…

This paper addresses the dilemma faced by the requirement that educators provide appropriate and effective education for higher functioning students with autism, while lacking the necessary knowledge to provide such interventions. The first section discusses the diagnosis of autism (especially noting the presence of a "triad" of deficits…

This qualitative study of teachers'"sensemaking" about changing professional relationships and inclusive education involved interviews and observations of three teachers over the course of a school year. The teachers, one each from regular and special education and a "collaborating teacher," were employed in an urban upper elementary school in the…