This toolkit is designed to assist states as they plan for and carry out their efforts to collect, report, analyze, and use high-quality parent and family involvement data. It defines key concepts; offers guidance on ways to improve the quality of the collection, analysis, and use of parent and family involvement data; and provides resources and…

Being a part of an ethnic minority group and a student with a disability (SWD) often presents as a barrier to college retention and graduation rates among members of this marginalized group. Purpose: To examine educators' awareness of racial and institutional influences that impact African American SWD. Method: Data for this study were gathered…

Social validity is the extent to which procedures, goals, and outcomes are acceptable and important to end users and is not commonly addressed during assessment development. This article pilots a process of triangulating multiple methods to evaluate the social validity of a self-report assessment. These procedures were piloted using the Child…

In recent years, the concept of teachers as researchers in both special and mainstream school settings has become part of our everyday language. Whilst many educational practitioners will see the need for research within their setting, many may not be familiar with the technical elements they believe are required. "Creating Meaningful Inquiry in…

This manual provides guidance and documentation for users of the longitudinal kindergarten-fourth grade (K-4) public-use data file of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-11 (ECLS-K:2011), which includes the first release of the public version of the third-grade data. This manual mainly provides information specific…

A study was conducted to develop a comprehensive program costing model for vocational education. This model produced a comparison between the cost of operating a given vocational program and the average aggregate cost of operating all basic education programs. The model is applicable for both the secondary and postsecondary level programs and can…

This brief report highlights the issues, evidence, and first steps toward including students with disabilities in educational data systems. The report notes that if students with disabilities are excluded from educational data collection systems, policy makers do not have an adequate set of information from which to make policy decisions. The…

Guidelines for the implementation of qualitative methods in special education research are offered, addressing rigor, sample selection, data collection, and data management/analysis. Five possible pitfalls are identified, including the quantitative-qualitative methods debate, premature data collection, the tendency to use a linear procedural…

From a priori and post hoc data collection perspectives, this paper describes the interrelations among (1) power, alpha, effect size, and sample size for hypothesis testing; and (2) precision, confidence, and sample size for interval estimation. Implications for special education researchers working with convenient samples of fixed size are…

The National Longitudinal Transition Study (NLTS) of Special Education Students provides ongoing information regarding the transition of youth with disabilities from secondary school to early adulthood. The sample for the study, which began with a 1987 survey (Wave 1), involved more than 8,000 youth from the national population of secondary…

The National Longitudinal Transition Study (NLTS) of Special Education Students provides ongoing information to the special education community regarding the transition of youth with disabilities from secondary school to early adulthood. The sample for the study, which began with a 1987 survey (Wave 1), involves more than 8,000 youth from the…

The purpose of this brief is to summarize the methodologies and outcome measures used in Post-School Outcomes follow-up and follow-along studies of adolescents with disabilities. As a requisite in the Request for Proposal for funding of the National Post-School Outcomes Center (NPSO), knowledge development activities were to include: "Conducting a…

The National Longitudinal Transition Study (NLTS) of Special Education Students provides ongoing information to the special education community regarding the transition of youth with disabilities from secondary school to early adulthood. The sample for the study began with a 1987 survey (Wave 1) involving more than 8,000 youth from the national…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a survey of national trends in educational achievement, is attempting to expand its inclusion of students with disabilities or limitations that have previously caused them to be excluded from the assessment. The study described was a precursor to the 1996 changes in NAEP inclusion procedures.…

The extent to which students with disabilities are represented in national data collection programs was investigated by reviewing nine such programs that are receiving attention in current educational reform initiatives. Results suggest that 40-50% of students with disabilities are excluded from these prominent data collection programs. (SLD)