Roughly one in five American adults, or approximately 53 million people, live with some type of disability, and their unemployment and poverty rates are nearly double the rates of people without disabilities. Labor force participation for people with disabilities is just 20.2 percent--less than a third of the rate of participation among people…

More than 45 individuals representing staff from state departments of education, school districts, testing and testing-related companies, and other educational organizations participated in a forum on June 26, 2018 in San Diego, California to discuss speech-to-text and scribing, the differences in terminology, challenges associated with…

Data indicate children with traumatic brain injury (TBI), especially those with mild TBI (mTBI), represent a significant population within the U.S. school system. Yet, many school professionals report little or no formal coursework for training on the needs of children post-TBI, have minimal or no experience working with children post-TBI, and…

Intended as professional development for both new and experienced special educators, this article provides both the basic requirements and nuanced issues for foundational, successive, and overlapping key components under the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA): (a) child find, (b) eligibility, and (c) free appropriate public…

Purpose: An intervention package, including teaching break requests and tolerance for delay in reinforcement delivery to increase task engagement, was implemented with a 4-year-old child with an autism spectrum disorder who did not engage for a duration commensurate with individual education program team expectations. Method: A multiple-probe…

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is the main federal statute governing special education and early intervention services for children with disabilities from birth through age 21.1 IDEA consists of four parts. Part A contains general provisions, including the purposes of the act and definitions. Part B contains provisions…

Nearly 63% of students with disabilities are included in general education classrooms for some part of their day, and at the high school level, 79% participate in state reading and math assessments (U.S. Department of Education, 2016). Middle and high school classes pose particular challenges because, unlike elementary classrooms, they are usually…

The challenge of serving students with disabilities is familiar to both practitioners and policymakers, especially when it comes to education reform. Charter schools are often viewed as institutions that fail to serve students with disabilities well, or in the same proportions as district-run schools. Sometimes this is true, but it oversimplifies…

The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (Smarter Balanced) strives to provide every student with a positive and productive assessment experience, generating results that are a fair and accurate estimate of each student's achievement. Further, Smarter Balanced is building on a framework of accessibility for all students, including English…

This paper examines the ways in which parents of multilingual deaf children (are able to) participate in annual individualized education plan (IEP) meetings mediated by both signed and spoken language interpreters. Data are drawn from an ethnographic, discourse-analytic study conducted in a U.S. school district and informed by the ethnography of…

School reform efforts are reflected in the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and increasingly impact potential for differentiation of instruction, which is critical in effectively educating students with varying achievement and learning needs. Although CCSS were developed to establish a ubiquitous foundation of educational expectations by grade…

This model policy creates a comprehensive early literacy reading policy to ensure all students receive the support and interventions necessary to enter fourth grade as proficient readers.

When schools in Pennsylvania and across the nation were suddenly shuttered in March due to COVID-19, teachers were faced with an enormous challenge: how to effectively teach and engage their students remotely when the vast majority had never done so before. In order to meet this challenge, teachers turned to an array of digital tools-such as Zoom,…

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires that schools assist students with disabilities to develop independent living skills and abilities essential to succeed in most of their life's endeavors. According to the law, each student with a disability must have an individualized education program (IEP), and the IEP must address…

Federal and state education laws have not changed since the COVID-19 outbreak. Because they were not meant to be implemented during a pandemic, schools and parents are facing barriers in implementing IEPs and 504 plans with remote learning at home. More than ever students will need strong advocates to express concerns and collaborate with school…