The administration of college admissions examinations by SEAs [state education agencies] and LEAs [local education agencies] raises potential legal issues under FERPA [Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974], IDEA [Individuals with Disabilities Education Act], PPRA [Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment], and state privacy laws, and…

School leaders and special educators are expected to be experts on all levels and types of special education law and services, types of disability, and aspects of academic and functional programming. With the increasing demands of the job and the ever-changing legal and educational climate, many administrators and teachers are overwhelmed, and few…

Recent efforts to change the teaching profession and teacher preparation include a number of innovations to use portfolio assessment, value added measures (VAM), accountability metrics and other corporate education reform ideas. These approaches may provoke considerable potential legal consequences. Traditional constitutional and civil rights…

Since the turn of the century, U.S. education policies have focused on accountability and student progress. Two major pieces of federal legislation--No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 (IDEA 2004)--pose several legal issues that educators must contemplate as they strive to be…

The purpose of this document is to provide charter school authorizers with targeted technical assistance related to special education in charter schools. Charter school laws are unique to each state, and they provide a wide range of policies and practices for the hundred of authorizers chartering schools nationally. As a result, providing…

The challenges in improving and sustaining success of children from multicultural backgrounds with disabilities in urban school districts manifest themselves in the contextual dynamics of legal, accountability, demographic, and fiscal terrains. Within each of these areas, educational leaders must solve existing problems of underservicing,…

Most state legislatures have either passed or taken under consideration for passage some minimum competency testing program. However, it is not clear that these legislative efforts will result in implementation programs that fulfill legislative intent. Throughout the United States legal challenges from students adversely affected by testing…

In this article, the author identifies and answers questions related to legal issues of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in comparison with Section 504 or the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the NCLB. The author's answers to several questions concerning legal issues of IDEA are presented.

Addressing often neglected broad issues, rather than the pragmatics of test development and administration, this Conference on Minimum Competency Achievement Testing was organized around six topics: (1) social and philosophical roots, uniqueness among testing movements, and policy issues; (2) legal, curricular, and social-demographic consequences;…

The purpose of this document is to provide operators with implementation and operational technical assistance related to special education in charter schools. Special education is a very complicated component of public education and providing operators with technical assistance regarding special education is particularly challenging. This primer…