The National Center for Leadership in Intensive Intervention (NCLII), a consortium funded by the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), prepares special education leaders to become experts in research on intensive intervention for students with disabilities who have persistent and severe academic (e.g., reading and math) and behavioral…

An analysis of the improvement in attainments of 109 students attending specialist-resourced provision for specific learning difficulties (SpLD) attached to mainstream secondary schools was conducted as they progressed through Key Stages 3 and 4. Steady progress was made in terms of reading accuracy, reading comprehension, spelling ability and…

The Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) has numerous programs and strategies to support students who are underachieving. Given the variety of support sources and the different ways in which WCPSS schools keep track of the type of support provided to students, it is often difficult at the district level to discern the full extent to which…

This study examined the relationships between the cognitive processes of rapid naming and phonological processing and various literacy skills. Variables measured and used in this analysis were phonological processing, rapid naming, reading comprehension, isolated and nonsense word reading, and spelling. Data were collected from 65 second-to-fifth…

Results revealed that arithmetic-disabled and spelling/arithmetic-disabled children had significantly lower storage and retrieval scores on a nonverbal task but did not differ on a verbal task; reading/spelling-disabled children differed only on retrieval scores from verbal task; and the reading/spelling/arithmetic-disabled children differed only…

The issues discussed by the contributors to this installment of RRQ's New Directions in Research clearly establish that special education and reading is a particularly timely topic. The field of special education is confronting fundamental changes in how it defines and identifies its constituency; how those changes relate to theory, practice, and…

Using a mixed-methodology, longitudinal design, individual differences and contextual factors related to differential response to general education instruction were examined. We tested a response-to-instruction model reflecting the first three phases of a model proposed by Fuchs and Fuchs (1998). We classified first- and second-grade children…

Special education instruction in the Baltimore City Public School System (BCPSS) for students with learning difficulties is shamefully ineffective. These students, usually classified as having a "Specific Learning Disability" or "Speech and language impairment," comprise more than half of all children receiving special…

Students with disabilities across the nation, including Baltimore City, are failing to achieve their academic potential. Inadequate instruction and other inappropriate or unlawful practices cause and conceal the dysfunction of special education. At long last, the illusion and broken promises of special education have been publicly exposed. Under…