The educational tracking system raises highly controversial issues. This book offers both the viewpoints of researchers who have grappled with the issue of tracking and the personal experiences of school staff who have wrestled with the issue of whether or not to track instruction. It presents summaries of interviews that were conducted with three…

This collection of position statements issued by the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) addresses three issues: (1) inclusive schools and community settings; (2) physical intervention; and (3) discipline. CEC's policy on inclusive schools is to support the concept of inclusion as a meaningful goal but also urge that a continuum of services be…

In spring 1995, William Rainey Harper College in Illinois surveyed graduates from 1994 to determine their current status, the frequency with which they used cognitive skills, the degree to which they were prepared in the skills, and their evaluation of their placement in English courses. Of the 1,437 graduates from 1994, a random sample of 471…

The work of the Placement/Progress Subcommittee for the City University of New York (CUNY) system is important. The Freshman Skills Assessment Program (FSAP) comprises one set of instruments used at two points and for two purposes: at initial placement in reading, writing, and math and later at exit from remedial programs. The CUNY Writing…

This paper addresses the problem of how to place students in a sequence of hierarchically related courses from an (empirical) Bayesian point of view. Based on a minimal set of assumptions, it is shown that optimal mastery rules for the courses are always monotone and a nonincreasing function of the scores on the placement test. On the other hand,…

This discussion of inclusive education programs for students with disabilities is organized around a series of comments by critics of the trend and responses to these comments by inclusion advocates. Responses are provided to the following criticisms of inclusion: (1) inclusion is a "one size fits all" approach; (2) inclusion does not have…

This guide helps parents understand how schools assess their child's English language ability and suggests ways for them to help schools place their children in the most useful language program. All districts must decide which students to test, and then how to test them. Some schools attempt to find out the English skills of all students, and…

This paper discusses strategies that can be used in an inclusive elementary classroom to give gifted children the opportunity to choose, plan, and develop individual projects that will add meaning and purpose to their education. The steps toward providing instruction for gifted students are described, including the beginning of the year assessment…

A series of studies involving 19 elementary students with severe emotional disturbance (SED), who were identified as aggressive, and 19 typical students in different types of educational settings, investigated the relationship between school environments and the aggressive behavior of children with SED. The social interactions of the children who…

This paper describes a new program in the Western provinces of China (Guangxi, Guizhou, Yunnan, Gansu, Ningxia, Qinghai, Xinjiang, Tibet, and Inner Mongolia) that is designed to integrate 20,000 children with low-vision into general education classrooms. The Golden Key Research Center of Education for Visually Impaired has been working with the…

This report describes a project that sought to ascertain the educational expectations and actual levels of participation by Black, low to low-middle income parents of 36 regular and special education students entering three Baltimore (Maryland) public schools. The parents' initial expectations and the development of these expectations over the…

This study examined the efficacy of early intervention with 38 children ages 5 to 10 with Down Syndrome. The study specifically looked at the influence on later school placement of three early intervention treatments during a child's first 5 years: (1) publicly provided programs (22 children); (2) privately provided programs (4 children); and (3)…

This packet of handouts focuses on the role of the family in easing their child with disabilities from one early childhood educational program to another. Typical items include: reasons for involving families in transition; questions parents ask about "appropriate" placement; planned conversations with parents during the transition process; parent…

This paper examines the relationship between special education fiscal policies and the least restrictive environment (LRE) requirements of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). It focuses on the need to develop federal and state fiscal policies that achieve a balance between the sometimes competing needs of the LRE and the…

This paper utilizes the concepts of power and change as a framework for describing and analyzing efforts made by an individual teacher to change instructional-grouping and teacher-assignment practices in one Georgia school system. Data were collected through interviews with the individual teacher, administrators, educators, and federal and state…