School work is designed to challenge students and help them meet grade-level academic standards. Students with disabilities have the right to learn and participate in the general education curriculum. Public school districts must provide these students with the services, accommodations, and modifications that they need to learn the same material…

The overidentification and misidentification of English Language Learners in special education has been a systemic issue since the 1960s. When students are mis-identified for special education, they are denied access to Free Appropriate Public Education and the Least Restrictive Environment. Although there has been countless research depicting…

Administrators in school systems strive to ensure that the identification of giftedness in elementary students results in proportional demographic representation. Overly stringent or biased gifted identification results in deserving students receiving fewer opportunities-to-learn and exacerbates the excellence gap. My aim in this action research…

The relationships between response to intervention (RTI) data, cognitive ability, academic achievement, identification methods, and specific learning disability (SLD) identification have been studied extensively in recent years; however, an empirically supported method of identifying a learning disability has yet to be agreed upon. Without a…

One in five children experiences a diagnosable mental disorder. However, adolescents have been overlooked in programming and policy responses to mental health issues. Mental health issues contribute to poor academic performance, lower rates of high school graduation, disrupted development, increased health risk, role transition from adolescent to…

Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurobiological in origin, is characterised by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities and is encountered in one in every five children. Teachers' pedagogical knowledge plays an important role in the education of students with dyslexia.…

The purpose of this article is to discuss sources of confusion for school district personnel that have resulted in overidentification (i.e., false positives) and underidentification (i.e., false negatives) of 504-only students. The organizing framework for these sources of confusion is the applicable three-pronged legal definition for eligibility…

Screening for autism spectrum disorder is the first step toward early detection and diagnosis, thereby impacting the likelihood of children accessing early intervention and, importantly, improving long-term outcomes. This systematic review aimed to (a) establish a clear baseline of autism spectrum disorder screening tools currently used throughout…

We investigated the variability across states in the prevalence of learning disabilities (LD) as reported by the U. S. Department of Education's Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP). This expanded upon the work of Hallahan and colleagues on interstate prevalence rate variability of special education disability categories by focusing on a…

The Dyslexia Pilot Project provided funding to school districts to implement a multitiered system of support (MTSS) framework for the prevention, early identification, and early intervention of reading difficulties. This article describes the evaluation of the multiyear Dyslexia Pilot Project for students in kindergarten through Grade 2. The…

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…

Purpose: Best practice for developmental stuttering remains a topic of debate. In the clinical forum following the introduction, four fluency experts balance the evidence and expertise to describe their approach to assessment and treatment.

Across the last century, the condition known as "intellectual disability" (ID) has been labeled by assorted terms, its key features have varied, and recommendations for its identification have been divided. In light of recent changes to the diagnostic criteria for ID and to federal legislation, this study was designed to compile and…

Anti-Black racism is a pervasive issue in the autism field that affects the autism service pathway, which ranges from identification of concerns to ongoing service navigation. In this short report, we provide a working model of the autism service pathway and highlight ways in which anti-Black racism affects all components of the pathway. We…

When considering the parent voice as an individual subjective reality, it is observed as unique to the parent and not shared by others. This research sought to explore if parent voices could constitute intersubjective realities; inviting narratives from parents and professionals that may reveal a shared existence. The first theme explored the…