Author Cara Shores provides a three-tiered instructional framework that helps educators establish integral baselines of performance for students, offering strategies for assessment, intervention, and remediation to ensure student growth. This book guides educators with step-by-step tools and methods for differentiated instruction and lesson…

There continues to be confusion among some educators and staff in State Education Agencies (SEAs) and Local Education Agencies (LEAs) about what is an accommodation and what is a modification. This confusion about accommodations and modifications happens in how these words are used in both instruction and assessment. The confusion is further…

This article examines a critical question for the special education community: What should be the current meaning of "free appropriate public education" (FAPE) in light of not only the Supreme Court's landmark "Rowley" decision in 1982 but also developments in the 30 years since then? After synthesizing what the…

Federal special education and accountability policies requires that educators individualize instruction for students with disabilities, while simultaneously ensuring that the vast majority of these students meet age-based grade-level standards and assessment targets. In this paper, we examine this dynamic interplay between policies through…

This text was written as an outgrowth of 6 years' work with children aged 3-5 in the Child Development Center at Western Oregon State College, Monmouth, Oregon. The children attending this program included typically developing children as well as children with disabilities. A primary purpose of this book is to share the experiences and learnings…

Benchmarks and standards have become an important part of the teachers' instructional focus since the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. As educators they all recognize the importance of having high expectations of their students. Standards help schools articulate these expectations clearly to students, their parents, and the community. Yet, there…

Examples are given of how teachers of students with hearing impairments can incorporate standards developed by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics into the mathematics curriculum. Possible adaptations for teaching measurement skills to students with hearing impairments in grades K-4 and patterns and functions in grades 5-8 are…

Used naturalistic inquiry and context evaluation to examine work of three experienced teachers during a year's implementation of an inclusive kindergarten program involving children who are deaf or hard of hearing. Found that the two kindergarten teachers met about 50%, and that the special education teacher met about 70%, of recommended standards…

This publication provides Autism Program Quality Indicators (APQI), intended as a self-review and quality improvement guide for schools and programs serving students with autism spectrum disorders. The APQI were developed by the New York Autism Network at the request of the New York State Education Department. The APQI promote the goal that all…

Students with disabilities represent a relatively small but important group of students in U.S. high schools. The education of these students is heavily influenced by federal and state law as well as by longstanding beliefs about the purpose of education and the extreme heterogeneity of the population. Until recently, general educational policies…