Secondary level or Tier 2 interventions such as the Check-in Check-out (CICO) intervention effectively reduce problem behaviors of students who are non-responsive to school-wide interventions. However, some students will not be successful with Tier 2 interventions. This study investigated the effects of adding individualized function-based support…

The 2004 reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) approved schools' use of alternative methods for determining student eligibility for special education services. IDEA encourages schools to intervene as soon as there is a valid indication that a student might experience academic difficulties, rather than after…

The purpose of this study was to test the effects of a peer-yoked contingency on the induction of observational performance, observational acquisition, and the Naming capability. In Experiment I, three male kindergarten and first grade students diagnosed with disabilities were selected as target participants because they had the listener component…

The purpose of this study was to understand general education teachers' experiences with a school-wide effort to increase the use of evidence-based teaching practices that were highlighted through a professional development workshop in evidence-based reading instruction. A qualitative case study method was used to describe the experiences of five…

The development of social competence for children is critical to their ability to navigate social decision making processes; however, children with complex disabilities have many difficulties in developing social competence. In an educational environment, the optimal setting for a child to develop social competence is within the inclusive…

Until now, studies have not looked at the importance of managing and reducing academic transition times in inclusion classrooms. In the present study, researchers examine the impact of teacher-approved, environmental modifications in the context of an inclusion class. The methodology used was a single-subject, multiple baseline design across four…

During the past decade, responsiveness to intervention (RTI) has become popular among many practitioners as a means of transforming schooling into a multilevel prevention system. Popularity aside, its successful implementation requires ambitious intent, a comprehensive structure, and coordinated service delivery. An effective RTI also depends on…

This article addresses the effects of 3-tiered comprehensive reading and behavior interventions on K-3 student outcomes in 7 urban elementary schools with a high prevalence of students considered difficult to teach. Specific features of each level of the implementation are described including screening and tier placement procedures, scheduling and…

Patterns of identification for special education services across three cohorts of students in kindergarten through third grade before and after implementation of a schoolwide, three-tier reading prevention model in one large school district are reported. The first cohort of students represents a historical control group that did not participate in…

This article provides a summary of the five years of implementation of the first cohort of schools participating in Utah's Reading First Initiative. Fifteen schools across six districts comprised this cohort. Performance is compared to the performance of a cohort of matched comparison schools as well as the average state performance on the Utah…

This study is examining student eligibility for and participation in alternate assessments, the technical quality of the alternate assessment instruments and implementation procedures, the alignment of assessments with content and achievement standards, and the use and effectiveness of alternate assessments in measuring student outcomes. The…

Early intervention to mitigate special education and reading risk is especially critical for low socioeconomic and minority learners. This study examined the lasting effects of an early reading intervention package of phonemic awareness on the reading skills of 38 second-grade students one and two years after intervention ended. The participants…

The problem investigated in this research study relates to the referral rate for special education evaluations between students of teachers who were exposed to the professional development and resources associated with the federally funded Reading First program and students of teachers who were not exposed to the program. The purpose of this study…

The purpose of this article is to examine whether there were improvements in the percentage of first-, second-, and third-grade students in Reading First (RF) schools in Michigan who performed at or above grade level on a standardized test of reading comprehension. The study reports results for 140 schools that participated in the RF initiative…

Accessing Curriculum through Technology Tools (ACTTT), a model development project, was developed and tested by staff of the Center for Best Practices in Early Childhood (the Center), a research and development unit within the College of Education and Human Services at Western Illinois University. The major goal of ACTTT was to develop,…