The purpose of this article is to extend the growing counternarrative in education research concerning the negative consequences of school desegregation and its implications for urban education, educational leadership, and policy reform in the post-Civil Rights Era. Guided by qualitative and historical research methods, this article presents the…

This study examined the impact of student variables (student socioeconomic status, race, attendance, and gender) and the school variable of placement in an inclusion setting on the academic achievement of general education students in grades 6, 7, and 8 in an urban school district. Academic achievement was defined as a general education student's…

Developmental education is a primary tool of access to higher education, particularly at the community college level, for students who are not academically prepared. There is a high need for remediation of community college students, yet a low remedial course completion rate. While there is broad awareness of the problem of remediation and its…

Social promotion is defined as the practice of allowing students who failed to meet performance standards and academic requirements the opportunity to pass on to the next grade with their peers. Although the A+ Educational Reform Act abolished the use of the practice, social promotion continues to occur in numerous school districts across one…

Volumes 22 and 23 of "Advances in Special Education" address the current top perspectives and issues in the field of EBD by providing chapters written by active researchers and scholarly university professors who specialize in this area. Volume 22 first delineates legal issues, themes, and dimensions related to the historical development…

This article, first, identifies the reading characteristics of students enrolled in the foundation provision of the extended degree; then determines the responsiveness of the English curriculum to these characteristics and thinking on literacy development. Using both qualitative and quantitative research methods, and the language ability framework…

Parent-educator partnerships are an important element of effective early childhood, K-12, and special education programs (Dunst, Trivette, & Snyder, 2000; Tabors, 2008). While early childhood and other classrooms in the United States are increasingly diverse, the teachers in those classrooms are unlikely to be of the same linguistic or cultural…

Traditionally, children requiring special educational needs (SEN) are segregated into separate learning environments. While this education practice has been established for years, other educators and analysts have been questioning its efficacy. Most of them suggest that students with SEN should be included into mainstream schools to maximize their…

The Legal Center for Foster Care and Education and the National Center for Homeless Education present this brief to provide a framework for local homeless education liaisons, educators, child welfare caseworkers, and other child welfare advocates for assessing best interest when selecting a school for students in out-of-home care. While the brief…

Determining the ideal academic setting in which students can be successful continues to be one of the primary goals of educators. Is there a best classroom structure in which students can be successful? Although there is research on the academic gains in the block schedule and in traditional departmentalized settings, both of which are common in…

The U.S. Supreme Court's recent decisions in cases involving school districts in Seattle, Washington, and Louisville, Kentucky, seem to indicate that the United States is moving away from diversity in its public schools. In "Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1" (2007) and "Meredith v. Jefferson…

Special education placements for more than 69,000 preschoolers with disabilities were examined within and across five southern states. Data were gathered from the 2007 December 1st Child Count reported to the U.S. Department of Education. All states examined offered state-funded prekindergarten programs. Analyses compared disproportionate…

Historically, neither a positive nor a supportive relationship existed between the population of students designated English language learners (ELLs) and the field of special education. Children's lack of English proficiency was often misinterpreted as a disability and they were referred for special education, whereas others who actually had a…

The "TOEFL Junior"® Standard Test is an assessment that measures the degree to which middle school-aged students learning English as a second language have attained proficiency in the academic and social English skills representative of English-medium instructional environments. The assessment measures skills in three areas: listening…

Today's new teachers, with growing frequency, are assigned to teach linguistically diverse students, often referred to as English Language Learners (ELLs) (de Jong & Harper, 2005; Pappamihiel, 2007). Many novice teachers, however, express feeling ill-prepared to work across languages and cultures, and researchers have found that new teachers…