In 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed. It prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities. Institutions of higher education are included under Title III of the ADA,and as such are required to provide the same access to services and education to qualified individuals with disabilities as individuals without. A…

Background: Progress monitoring is a vital strategy for evaluating skill development of young children receiving disability related services. Few effective progress monitoring tools exist for infants and toddlers, and research is needed to examine feasibility as they become available. Objective: The current study examined the implementation of an…

When parents of students with disabilities reach impasse with school districts, after exhausting informal interactions and alternative dispute resolution mechanisms, such as facilitated IEP meetings and mediation, what is the next step if they seek a binding third-party decision under the IDEA? The typical answer, especially if the underlying…

Background/Context: In the spring of 2015, about 135,000 New Jersey students--almost 20% of the test-eligible children--did not take the state's test. Opposition of this magnitude directly contradicted a central stipulation of the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), which required states to test 95% of their eligible students to…

The COVID-19 pandemic heightened tensions around standardized testing policy and prompted the United States Department of Education to allow states to request waivers from federal standardized testing requirements. Paul Bruno and Dan Goldhaber describe the waivers that states requested and received, what they suggest about how state test results…

Relationships between the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), arts education, and Social Emotional Learning (SEL) have gone largely unexplored. The purpose of this article is to investigate how P-12 arts educators might use ESSA in support of new and existing SEL efforts and to examine how SEL might assist P-12 arts educators in meeting the…

The McKinney-Vento Act Homeless Assistance Act, including revisions made during the reauthorization in Title IX, Part A, of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA, 2015) and its implications are not as widely known as they should be among educators and administrators. The McKinney-Vento Act defines homelessness as any student without "a fixed,…

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act grants dissatisfied parents of students with disabilities the right to pursue legal remedies. In 2007, Rose and Zirkel found that parents of students with reading disabilities seeking Orton-Gillingham (OG) instruction under the IDEA's central obligation for a free appropriate public education (FAPE)…

Social policies can be well-intentioned but ineffective in achieving what is intended. They can be undermined or destroyed by their exaggerated or oversimplified caricatures with a single, narrow focus. Caricatures may result in the opposite of the original intent of more carefully crafted variants. Institutionalization and deinstitutionalization…

Qualified teachers with disabilities are protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). To maintain legal compliance, principals must have an understanding of employment law, but often lack the training to prevent legal liability. This study reviewed litigation on discrimination claims under the ADA and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation…

This study uses a secondary analysis of the Schools and Staffing Surveys (SASS) and Teacher Follow-up Survey (TFS) from the National Center for Education Statistics to examine relationship between teachers' perception of de-professionalization and demoralization and turnover in the accountability policy era from the mid-1990 s through mid-2000 s.…

A growing body of research recognizes the critical role of the school principal, demonstrating that school principals' effects on student outcomes are second only to those of teachers. Yet policy makers have often paid little attention to principals, choosing instead to focus policy reform on teachers. In the last decade, this pattern has shifted…

School psychologists often play a significant role in implementation of the requirements under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) specific to independent educational evaluations (IEEs). The school psychology and special education literature addresses professional norms for IEEs (e.g., Schrank et al., 2006), but its coverage of…

Most school districts and charter schools are receiving significant, one-time revenues through the American Rescue Plan (ARP) Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER III) grant program. The ESSER III Investment Decision Guide and its companion User and Resource Companion document (ED617068) are designed to guide decision makers…

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires states to monitor and enforce IDEA Part C and Part B requirements, with a primary focus on those requirements that are most closely related to improving results and functional outcomes for infants, toddlers, and children with disabilities. This guide describes the IDEA requirements…