The article discusses recent Higher Education (HE) initiatives to introduce the Sunflower Scheme, which enables students with hidden disabilities to 'discreetly' indicate the existence of a disability to access support. A significant problem related to persons with hidden disabilities lies in their frequent reluctance to disclose their…

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (2004) allows alternate pathways for school districts to identify and classify students with a specific learning disability (SLD). Response to Intervention (RtI) is one of the frameworks schools can use when eliminating the use of the discrepancy model. The premise of RtI posits that…

Black, Latinx and other minoritized students have long been overrepresented in the high-incidence disability classifications including Learning Disability, Emotional Disturbance, Intellectual Impairment, and Speech and Language Impairment. Inappropriate special education placement denies students access to the general education curriculum and…

Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CLD) students with Specific Learning Disabilities (SLD) are overrepresented in the school population but often receive inconsistent and culturally irrelevant instruction. This paper reports on the results of a latent content analysis of extant literature to provide four main themes that can be used to better…

This study investigated the determination eligibility practices for Specific Learning Disabilities (SLD) within Mississippi school districts, framed by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act 2004 (IDEA) and Mississippi Department of Education (MDE) guidelines. A survey of 139 educational professionals in Mississippi offered insights into…

Purpose: Developmental language disorder (DLD) is a lifelong condition that when impacting educational performance is identified and serviced through U.S. schools as outlined in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. A few examples of educational categories that refer to DLD are (a) speech or language impairment (S/LI) and (b) specific…

School psychologists are well served to stay up to date on trends in special education law, particularly with respect to determinations when school teams' decisions are challenged. This allows them to focus on proactive best practices that foster accurate specific learning disability (SLD) identification and active collaboration with parents. This…

Approximately one-quarter of the adult population self-reports having one or more disabilities. Expanding adult and continuing education access for individuals with disabilities is an important dimension of striving to make our programs more inclusive. Thus, it is crucial that adult and continuing educators have a basic understanding of the types…

We use critical qualitative methods to demonstrate how ambiguities present in definitions of learning disability (LD) and processes for determining LD eligibility under IDEA result in inequitable outcomes for minoritized students. To investigate this issue, we first outline how the LD label is situated within medical and psychological…

Response to intervention (RTI) is a method for providing academic support to students and for identifying specific learning disabilities (SLDs). Using interrupted time series and hazard models, we examined if statewide RTI adoption in the U.S. state of Tennessee was associated with changes in rates of SLD and first-time SLD identification in…

In 2025, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) will have been the primary law driving the field of special education for 50 years. A contentious area of disagreement has been the relationship between two primary mandates of the law: the obligation of schools to provide a free, appropriate public education (FAPE) to eligible…

"Using Technology to Enhance Special Education," Volume 37 of Advances in Special Education, is a logically, thoughtfully organized, and well-sequenced text. It focuses on how general and special educators can use technology to work with children and youth with disabilities. This cutting-edge book involves researchers, scholars,…

"Twice-exceptional" (2e) is a term used to signify students who have the exceptionalities of both giftedness and a disability (Foley-Nicpon et al., 2013). It is estimated that between 2% and 7% of the special education population is 2e (Trail, 2021). This article will focus on the transition needs of racially minoritized secondary…

The purpose of this study was to investigate Access Arrangements (AA) which allow students with specific learning difficulties (SpLDs), disabilities or medical needs to access assessments by making "reasonable" adjustments, as established by the Equality Act 2010. A review of the literature revealed some problematic issues relating to…

Identifying a special education teacher's primary role has been complicated by competing legislative demands emphasizing every student's academic achievement in the general education curriculum versus some students' needs for individualized instruction that addresses their noteworthy academic achievement deficits. One result is that school…