This brief is intended to provide State Education Agency (SEA) and Local Education Agency (LEA) educators with a brief overview of key components of GraduateFIRST, a Georgia program targeting issues impacting school completion for students with disabilities. Georgia's GraduateFIRST program has redefined the state's approach to raising graduation…

Scholastic's "System 44" is a foundational reading program intended for older struggling readers who have not mastered basic phonics and decoding skills. Combining researched-based phonics instruction with adaptive technology, "System 44" is designed to improve students' word reading accuracy, fluency, and comprehension. The…

Formerly titled "Empowering Gifted Minds: Educational Advocacy That Works", the author believes this book is the definitive manual on gifted advocacy for gifted students. The author tells parents and teachers how to document a child's abilities to provide reasonable educational options year by year. This book provides imperative information on…

This paper examines the implementation of the Pyramid of Interventions (POI) at a suburban Georgia Middle School through an examination of teacher understanding, assessment of overall effectiveness, and the need for further professional development. The Pyramid of Interventions is the response to intervention (RTI) component of the Individuals…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of training special education teachers in the process of functional behavioral assessment (FBA) and subsequent development of recommendations to promote behavior change. An original evaluation instrument was developed that included measures of special education teachers' knowledge of…

This study evaluated the cost effectiveness of Instructional Support Teams (IST) in Pennsylvania, by comparing IST costs to those of traditional special education programs. An introduction notes pressures for change and the objectives of the prereferral intervention utilized in the IST approach. The study compared costs and program effectiveness…

This publication reviews current literature in community-based employment. It offers rehabilitation facilities and other programs a practical book on how to provide long-term follow-up services in a variety of settings and using a variety of models. Section I is a limited review of current literature on transition employment and supported work in…

The effects of different instructional strategies and selected demographic variables on experienced health occupations teachers' attitudes toward disabled persons were studied. A pretest/posttest experimental design was used with three groups of randomly assigned participants. The treatment consisted of instruction by independent study, lecture,…

The report summarizes pupil behavioral change data from 176 instructional projects involving handicapped children in New York state. Data are presented for reading achievement, mathematics achievement, and a broad category that encompassed language arts, corrective speech, psychomotor, auditory and visual perceptions, personal hygiene, societal…

Five papers comprising the monograph describe a nonoral communication program which evolved from the clinical experiences of speech pathologists and physical therapists with severely dysarthric, physically handicapped children in a hospital school. Explicated are such aspects of nonoral communication as oral speech dysfunction systems of nonoral…

Forty-nine adolescents were studied to investigate the initial and long-term efficacy of job-related social skills instruction for students with mild to moderate handicaps. The study determined that students could acquire the skills during classroom instruction and use the skills effectively in simulated situations that reflected actual work…

This report contains selected preliminary findings from the Longitudinal Study of the Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) Service Program. The study, initiated in fall 1992, will produce a series of interim reports that address key policy questions. This third interim report presents data collected from VR consumers and their VR case files in 37 local…

As one strategy to improve the campus climate for students with disabilities, the Project Opportunity and Access online training program was evaluated for its ability to change the attitudes of faculty and student affairs staff. The Attitudes Towards Disabled Persons Scale was used to measure attitudes towards individuals with disabilities.…

Project DEBT (Developmental Education Birth through Two), an early identification and intervention program for handicapped and at risk children and their parents, is described. The Koontz Child Developmental Program, the core curriculum for instructional planning and intervention in DEBT, is reviewed, and new data are presented. It is explained…

The report is one of the three documents designed to provide baseline data on the delivery of vocational and special education services for secondary level mildly handicapped learners in 13 school districts in Washington State. Specifically, the report examines the programming patterns in the enrollment of secondary special education students in a…