The position of public school superintendency in the U.S. is the most powerful position in schools. Yet research has shown that women who hold the position have difficulty talking about power (Brunner, 2000). A survey designed to measure perceptions of power was sent to 210 women school superintendents in four Midwestern states during the…

This handbook describes parent educational rights mandated under federal rules and regulations of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, including the amendments of 1997 (IDEA), and the Bureau of Indian Affairs/Office of Indian Education Programs special education eligibility document. Each main topic is preceded by a box that contains a…

This paper proposes an approach to diagnosing learning disabilities that measures the intrinsic processing or capacity weaknesses that are presumed to underlie academic performance problems. This approach is contrasted with the "diagnosis by exclusion" method currently used. The paper discusses: (1) a definition of intrinsic processes with…

Asserting the need for social scientists and policymakers to acknowledge that there is no single, standard image of the family, this report describes the mandate of the Vanier Institute of the Family and examines family relationships, focusing on families in Canada. The report identifies several reasons for the emergence of the dual wage-earning…

This exploratory study examined the perceptions of learning held by 259 children in a primary school in Singapore. Their perceptions were compared with those of a sample of 26 teachers and parents. Based on data collected using a rating scale and a metaphor task, various perceptions of learning were identified. Findings indicated that over 70…

This fact sheet, written in both English and Spanish, provides a definition, information on incidence, typical characteristics, and educational implications of emotional disturbance. The definition is from the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and incidence in 1999-2000 is reported as about 470,000 children and youth. Educational…

This paper presents recommendations of the Division for Early Childhood (DEC) of the Council for Exception Children concerning the use of the developmental delay eligibility category as defined by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and DEC. The recommendations are: (1) that a developmental delay category of eligibility should…

This paper discusses how the 50 states and 7 jurisdictions that participate in the Part H program under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) for infants and toddlers define "developmental delay." A table summarizes all the states' and jurisdictions' definitions and their approaches to serving children at risk of having…

This guide from Iowa is intended to: clarify changes in the state's new rules on special education; make the state's definition of mental disability operational; provide practical guidelines on preferred practices for determination of mental disability and the need for special education services; and highlight prescriptive assessment practices…

This handbook was undertaken in response to the needs expressed by the higher education community for a common language--common data categories and definitions--to describe the human resources of postsecondary education institutions, and is intended as a basic guide to help institutions develop analytically useful databases of faculty and staff to…

This paper examines statistics that appear to show a 20 percent decline in the number of students identified as mildly mentally retarded. Evidence is provided which suggests that the primary reason for these declining figures is that these children are being classified as learning disabled. Relatively loose criteria for the learning disabilities…

This briefing paper is intended to provide basic information about the diagnosis, educational programming, and special needs of children and youth with Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDD), a group of neurological disorders usually evident by age 3 and characterized by impairments in social interaction, imaginative activity, and verbal and…

This report, the third in a series, contains the results of an evaluation of the definitions and internal consistency of the finance variables used in the Federal State Cooperative System Public Library Statistics (FSCS/PLS) program, and a comparison of the statistics collected for these variables to selected statistics from independent sources.…

This technical report presents issues related to defining and applying accountability systems for young children, including those with disabilities. It notes that reaching shared perspectives on definitions of accountability systems and their constituents remains complicated by the number of levels to which such systems can apply (e.g., child-,…

This symposium on knowledge management and human capital consists of three presentations. "Analyzing and Solving Difficulties Experienced in Knowledge Management: The Case of a Knowledge Intensive Organization" (Simone J. van Zolingen, Jan N. Streumer, Maaike Stooker) distinguishes five phases of the knowledge management process and…