Teacher shortages, especially in special education, have been an issue for several decades causing districts to examine leadership practices that support long-term special education teacher retention. Another concern is the disproportionate reading scores of students with disabilities compared to their general education peers. This has created a…

This mixed methods study addresses special education teachers' (SETs) knowledge and beliefs about specially designed instruction for reading, individualized education program (IEP) development, and aspects of future professional development opportunities that are supportive on these topics. Special education teachers are the primary authors of the…

The purpose of this study was to dive into one school district's different learning modality options during the pandemic and analyze their reading growth using the Northwest Evaluation Assessment Measures of Academic Progress (NWEA MAP) as a metric for comparison. The researcher looked at one school district's response to their community's needs…

Some students with emotional and behavioral disabilities (EBD), specifically conduct disorder (CD) and oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), characteristically display oppositional behaviors that adversely affect their academic performance and cause gaps in their learning. The problem studied was negative behaviors exhibited by students with EBD,…

Changes in policy and practice that originated with the 2004 Reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act ([IDEA], US Department of Education) created systems that exposed students to earlier and more consistent research-based intervention (Fuchs & Vaughn, 2012) thereby reducing the rate and increasing the mean age of…

Co-teaching classrooms consist of general and special education teachers working together to benefit students with disabilities (SWDs). Many parents and teachers believe the content knowledge provided by general educators in the regular education setting, combined with the instructional service delivery model (SDM) expertise of special educators,…

Since the middle of the last century, student education in the U.S. public school systems has been deemed inadequate. Critics developed measures in the form of standardized testing to measure student progress in an attempt to help facilitate reforms. In the last thirty years, the federal government has played an increasing role in school reform…