J. Linda Williams was coordinator of school library services for Anne Arundel County Public Schools prior to her retirement. She served as AASL President 2005-2006 and is also a past president of the Maryland Association of School Librarians. Looking back on her 2005-2006 term as AASL President, Williams writes that she feels that particular year…

The Fair Use exemption to copyright infringement is a difficult concept for those within the legal community because of its unique "case-by-case" application. Without any red line rules, providing guidance to typical users is even more challenging. This paper reviews several recent cases regarding the application of Fair Use and how the…

As of 2015, 17 special education voucher programs (SVPs) existed in 13 states and proposals continue to emerge. Eligible parents utilize these vouchers to enroll their children in private schools and thereby relinquish special education services and protections provided under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Using a…

Federal accountability requirements after the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 and the need to report progress for various disaggregated subgroups of students meant that the methods used to set and articulate performance standards across the grades must be revisited. Several solutions that involve either "a priori" deliberations…

In this response to David Stoesz' critique, "The Child Welfare Cartel," the authors agree that child welfare research and training must be improved. The authors disagree, however, with Stoesz' critique of social work education, his assessment of the most-needed forms of child welfare research, and his depiction of the goals and…

The passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in December 2015 is an exciting development for parents, teachers, school leaders, and others who believe U.S. schools should meet the needs of high-ability students. The ESSA revised and reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), previously known as the No Child…

In Australia, a review of the higher education sector is usually triggered by a change in government leadership, followed by the development and implementation of the government's response in the form of a reform package to enact change. The aim of this study was to conduct an independent evaluation of a large-scale national government policy…

For this 10th article in the series reviewing recent court decisions concerning appropriate school psychology practice from both professional and legal perspectives, the focus is eligibility under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). For this purpose, the courts have generally agreed that, based on the definitions in the IDEA's…

The use of seclusion and restraints on students with disabilities has been a major legal issue in recent years. Congress has repeatedly considered bills to limit and prohibit such use in K-12 schools, but the movement against such aversive procedures appears to have shifted to the state legislative level, with several states adding or…

Sexual assault is a major issue on college campuses throughout the United States. Approximately 28% of women report being assaulted at some point during their college careers, while 2-4% of men report being victims. In order to address this ongoing problem, the government issued the Campus SaVe Act, which states that colleges are required to…

The nation's six million students with disabilities have graduation rates nearly 25 percent lower than their general education peers and significantly lower postsecondary enrollment and completion rates. For the last decade and a half, state policy leaders have decried No Child Left Behind's lack of flexibility and one-size-fits-all design for…

This 2016 document is designed to provide state Part C staff with guidance on using fiscal data to analyze and revise their allocation methodology. Allocation methodology is the process -- including practices, strategies, procedures, and policies -- used by Part C state staff to equitably distribute funds to meet the needs of the system, including…

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is an orientation to instructional design that aims to diversify pedagogy for the purpose of responding to inherently diverse neurological processes that comprise learning (Rose & Meyer, 2002). In the Higher Education Opportunity Act, UDL is recommended as means to provide appropriate accommodations toward…

This study posits that the National Defense Education Act of 1958 (NDEA) represented the culmination of nearly a century-long process through which education was linked to national defense in periods of wartime, and later retained a strategic utility for defense purposes in times of peace. That a defense rationale for federal support of public…

Under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015, states and districts are responsible for supporting and improving the quality of low-performing high schools. This brief primer describes how ESSA impacts high school graduation rate goals, low-graduation-rate high schools, funding for high schools, school improvement funding, the High School…