This study examined elementary school principals' beliefs and practices regarding the types of resources that facilitate collaboration between general and special education staff working on prereferral intervention/Response to Intervention (RtI) teams and serving students with Individualized Education Programs (IEPs). In June 2009, elementary…

The purpose of this case study was to examine the schools in Indiana with students identified with disabilities who are performing successfully on the state achievement assessment, ISTEP+. The intent was not to focus on how to help this population of students pass the state assessment, rather it was to see what was happening to make this type of…

The purpose of this study was to explore students' perceptions of their experiences with non-face-to-face counseling at a California community college. The use of a mixed methods design provided quantitative and qualitative data surrounding students' perceptions of their experiences in a non-face-to-face counseling program in comparison to those…

Under federal guidelines, parents of school-aged children with hearing loss are required to attend an individualized education program (IEP) meeting on behalf of their child. However, it remains unclear how prepared hearing parents are to oversee development of IEPs that guarantee their children the best educational outcomes, as well as how much…

The gap in academic achievement between regular and special education students is well documented. Math was once the stronger area for students with IEPs; however, the scores in Illinois in 2013 suggest that for the subgroup of IEP students, reading and math performance has reached an all-time ten-year low, even when correcting for the change in…

Educating students with disabilities has been an evolving process. This evolution has come from students with disabilities not being educated within the public school system to students with disabilities being mainstreamed within general education to the maximum extent possible. Even though special education has come a long way, there is a lot of…

The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine the perceptions of 9th through 12th grade administrators toward inclusion of students with disabilities in Alabama public schools. Further, the study attempted to determine the effect of personal demographic information, work experience and training of secondary principals as they relate to…

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…

Beginning in 2002, with the election of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York City's Department of Education undertook an unprecedented overhaul of the largest school district in the United States. Over the next 10 years the Department of Education closed more than 25 large, underperforming high schools, and created almost 200 new, small high schools,…

The goal of this study was to examine the professional development experiences of two contrastive participants while they were creating standards-based individualized education plan (IEP) goals using a virtual world called TeacherSim. Two specific focuses of the study were on how special educators engaged with the task of creating standards-based…

Children with complex communication needs (CCN) face many challenges in their daily life. They can struggle academically and socially if their communicative needs are not supported consistently by those who provide care for them. They frequently use Augmentative or Alternative Communication (AAC) systems or devices to communicate. The purposes of…

Students identified as learners with specific Learning Disabilities (SLD) represent almost half of the total special education population. With the high numbers of students identified as SLD, there has also been the concern of over-identification of immigrant students called English language learners (ELLs), which leads to disproportionality in…

A leadership program was created for students to gain skills and/or change their behavior using Appreciative Inquiry and Video Self Modeling, VSM. In 2011a youth that experiences a disability had been unable to achieve a skill utilizing traditional methods of skill acquisition. He employed the Appreciative Inquiry and VSM leadership program and…

This study was performed as the result of gaps in the literature in the area of transition to independent living (IL) using secondary data from the National Longitudinal Transition Study 2 (NLTS-2). Its findings identify individual, skills, family, and school factors that predict postsecondary living status and moderators of the relationships…

The purpose of the qualitative descriptive case study was to describe the efficacy of parent-teacher collaborative educational planning methods for elementary students with autism from the perspective of the parents. The specific problem was an unknown in the efficacy of the collaborative relationship between parents and teachers of students with…