Chris resides with his parents and attends school in an unnamed district ("the District"). During the second half of second grade, Chris started to have problems with reading and written expression. The District evaluated Chris and did not find problems significant enough to identify him as having a learning disability. At about the same time his…

The most salient difficulty in assessing English language learner (ELL) students who exhibit academic difficulties is identifying whether the problem is one of English proficiency or of a learning disability. In many cases, the symptoms are shared and difficult to disentangle, but obtaining a comprehensive picture of the child is vital for…

We explored parents' perceptions of their positive and negative experiences in school-based team meetings as a first step toward identifying the characteristics that may promote meaningful parent participation. Parent members of a Midwestern suburban school district's special education advisory group provided open-ended descriptions of their…

When K-12 school districts began implementing the first student information systems (SISs) during the 1990s, special education was largely left out of the process. The two systems evolved as separate entities, technologically speaking, and in the handling of individualized education programs (IEPs), paper remained the dominant storage medium long…

The purpose of this investigation was to examine the beliefs and skills of community early childhood lead teachers and community child care center administrators participating in Florida's Four Year Old Voluntary Pre-kindergarten (VPK) Program in five rural, north Florida counties hold regarding the inclusion of young children with disabilities…

The National Dropout Prevention Center for Students with Disabilities (NDPC-SD) was assigned the task of compiling, analyzing, and summarizing the data for Indicator 1--Graduation--from the FFY 2009 Annual Performance Reports (APRs) and amended State Performance Plans (SPPs), which were submitted by states to the Office of Special Education…

An administrator describes a systematic approach to develop, store, and recall individualized education programs (IEPs) for handicapped students. The approach is designed to reduce time requirements and make classroom supervision and long term student data management more efficient. A thesaurus (presently, over 4,000 entries are stored in the…

The digest extends the concept of Individualized Education Programs (IEP) to gifted and talented children. IEPs are defined as written documents, developed and revised annually with input from parents, teachers, and where appropriate, the students themselves. IEP content includes a realistic assessment of current performance, reasonable…

The dissertation examines the relationship among aspects of the individualized education program (IEP) elements: what the contract states, what the teacher intends, and what the child experiences. An initial chapter focuses on the socio-political context of the IEP, noting the lack of research on how the IEP is implemented in the classroom.…

A study involving 822 questionnaires indicated that at least 20 percent of the parents of seriously emotionally disturbed, learning disabled, mentally retarded, and multiply handicapped students were not provided with some Individual Education Program-related information, and that 60 percent of those parents have many informational needs related…

The address reviews the establishment of rights for mentally retarded persons, cautions about the need to safeguard those rights, discusses the central role of individual program plans, and cites the importance of a continuum of services for mentally retarded persons. (CL)

Moving from middle school to high school can be challenging and exciting, but students with special needs may need to begin preparing for the move earlier than other students. As with other major changes in a child's life, the move to high school will go more smoothly if parents gather information and do some planning. A good time to begin…

Discusses a study of the efficacy of mainstreaming. The goal of the study was to see what actually went on in schools, how people thought about mainstreaming, what they did about it, and how teachers, administrators, and students experienced it. (JOW)

CAMEO is a system that combines computer technology with a resource of objectives to provide a flexible, time-saving solution to the workload created by individualized education programs (IEPs) for handicapped students. Results of a field test demonstrated that CAMEO reduced preparatory and clerical time without compromising the ability to address…

Results of the analysis of the questionnaire responses indicated (1) that most teachers were not systematically involved in developing IEPs for their students and (2) that regular teachers were not routinely included in the IEP meeting, especially for students continuing in special education from previous years. (DB)