The Council of Chief State School Officers' "Accommodations Manual: How to Select, Administer, and Evaluate the Use of Accommodations for Instruction and Assessment of Students with Disabilities" was first developed to establish guidelines for states to use for the selection, administration, and evaluation of accommodations for…

Two-way immersion (TWI) programs teach English Learners (ELs) and native English speakers in the same classroom using both languages in an immersion approach. Studies suggest that TWI programs result in greater student integration, thus providing a promising alternative for Spanish speaking ELs, who are frequently concentrated in high poverty,…

Austin Independent School District used $16 million in federal funds to support 25 ARRA IDEA projects to reduce the student academic achievement gap, reduce disproportionality, reduce dropout, improve district processes, improve teacher quality, and evaluate programs.

This study focused on approaches to curriculum, as well as school, principal, and student characteristics in secondary day treatment and residential psychiatric schools. A national random sample of 148 principals responded to a survey. No statistically significant differences existed between respondent and nonrespondent schools with regard to…

"Learning disability" is a general term that describes specific kinds of learning problems. A learning disability can cause a person to have trouble learning and using certain skills. The skills most often affected are: reading, writing, listening, speaking, reasoning, and doing math. Following a brief story about a child with a learning…

In this essay, Benjamin Endres examines how teaching is caught between the ideals of formal, systemic institutions, on the one hand, and the ideals of more intimate or personal relations, on the other. Endres uses Anthony Giddens's account of "abstract systems" and "pure" relations to suggest that the tension that teachers face is not only the…

The new amendments to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act became effective in July 2005 and contained a number of important changes to the current law. Some of the major changes regarding highly qualified teachers, alignment with the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, eligibility, the Individualized Education Program process, and…

This chapter on curriculum adaptation and development is taken from a guide to designing, implementing, and evaluating instruction and services for students with disabilities. It provides an overview of major curriculum options and systematic processes for selection, adaptation, and design of a curriculum for students with disabilities. Two major…

The authors criticize the regulations of P.L. 94-142, The Education For All Handicapped Children Act, regarding individualized education programs (IEPs). It is suggested that although the underlying concepts of IEPs are sound philosophically and educationally, the IEP in practice is inefficient in terms of time and actually detrimental to…

The Austin Independent School District presents the 1982-83 final technical report of Project PASS, which employs the notion of cultural congruence in instruction or culture-specific instruction to explain the poor performance of black students in school. It encouraged teachers to change their perspective about black students who are not…

Two years of pilot projects are described that attempt to measure special education pupils' progress without being overly global or overly restrictive. It is explained that to be helpful to students, parents, teachers, and other staff, an evaluation system should provide connections between individualized education programs (IEPs), instructional…

The article focuses on a practical prioritization process as a method to bridge the gap between assessment and planning of individualized education programs for severely handicapped students. This prioritization process is based upon a set of criteria agreed to by planning teams which include educators, related service personnel, and families.…

This guide is designed to assist regular classroom teachers in helping the hearing impaired child to master the English language. It is noted that the hearing impaired population is not homogenous. Different factors involved in the decision to place a hearing impaired child in a regular classroom are considered. The types of language problems…

The paper describes a framework for assessing students with suspected learning or behavior problems. The process is outlined in sequences which are designed to guide staff from the point of identification to the point where an alternative program may be recommended. Each sequence is described in terms of a step title, a description of procedures…

The study was designed to analyze the types and frequencies of individualized education program (IEP) goals selected for 102 elementary learning disabled students in resource rooms (LDR) and 94 learning disabled students in self-contained classrooms (LDSC) and to compare the learning disabilities teachers' assessments of progress made on the goals…