This essay reviews and comments on "Evidence-Based Reading Practices for Response to Intervention," edited by Diane Haager, Janette Klingner, and Sharon Vaughn, one of the earliest books published on an initiative in the United States to provide instructional support for students who experience difficulties with literacy and learning…

Response to Intervention (RtI) came into the national forefront in the late 1990s as an alternate approach for identifying students with specific learning disabilities. In brief, RtI assumes that a broad system of early intervention and support is in place, one possible component of which is evaluating a student for suspected learning…

Argues that the goal of enhancing fairness and equity in the evaluation of students with learning difficulties will not be realized by merely introducing performance assessments. Suggests need for development of an empirical base to guide implementation and to reevaluate prevailing beliefs about student failure and the role of assessment in…

Discusses factors that contribute to students with learning disabilities having difficulty acquiring and retaining math skills. Factors include national reform movements that have influenced math instruction, inclusion, characteristics of students with learning disabilities, and poor mathematics curricula and instruction. Recommendations for…

The essays in this collection are the products of work by more than 100 teachers in the Hudson Valley Portfolio Assessment Project. Teachers spent 3 years learning about, experimenting with, and reflecting on their uses of assessment and its relations to student achievement. In the opening three essays, Giselle Martin-Kniep discusses what she…

The IDEIA 2004 presents opportunities for change in our methods for improving the process of Specific Learning Disabilities (SLD) identification. While common approaches to improvement often focus on the assessment tools alone, consideration of stakeholder values and resource constraints are equally important to develop effective solutions that…

This issue of "Multiple Voices" contains the following articles: (1) "A Self-Study of Diversity: Preservice Teachers' Beliefs Revealed through Classroom Practices" (Donna M. Sobel and others), which presents the results of seven preservice teachers' self-study that reveals ways in which the teachers' beliefs regarding diversity issues were…