The activities and accomplishments of the Success for All program are described. Success for All is a school-based achievement-oriented program for disadvantaged students in prekindergarten through grade 5. The program is designed to prevent or intervene in the development of learning problems in the child's early years by effectively organizing…

This final report describes the activities of Project Dakota Outreach, an early education program for children with disabilities designed to assist families living in Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Empowerment and Enterprise Zones in Texas, New York, and Minnesota. The major feature of the model is power-balancing, a concept…

This report summarizes the present and past status of students with disabilities in educational assessment and accountability systems, and highlights the critical emerging issues to be addressed. Issues include participation in accountability systems, graduation requirements, data management, accommodations, alternate assessments, reporting, and…

One of the consequences of the North Carolina ABC plan of educational reform has been the unmasking of student performance data. The new ABC model reports student performance data by school building, making it impossible to ignore the gap between students in high-performing schools and those in low-performing schools. Included in the legislation…

This final report describes the Technology Assessment Software Package (TASP) Project, which produced developmentally appropriate technology assessment software for children from 18 months through 8 years of age who have moderate to severe disabilities that interfere with their interaction with people, objects, tasks, and events in their…

This collection of papers presented at a 1996 conference on children's mental health focuses on early intervention approaches. Papers have the following titles and authors: (1) "Child Maltreatment and Prenatal Exposure to Alcohol and Other Drugs: Some Preliminary Findings" (Patrick A. Curtis and Mary Wood Schneider); (2) "Evaluation…

Child-adult dialogues are important in an interactionist approach to acquisition of language behaviors because of the scaffolding provided by adults. Different forms of scaffolding used with children with and without language impairments are reviewed, and research on scaffolding with children aged 4-6 years is reported. Discourse strategies used…

Scaffolding strategies occurring in interactions between speech pathologists and migrant children are discussed. Various contexts and strategies are first defined, and the role of the concept of scaffolding in different types of research is examined. Finally, a corpus of therapist-child interactions is analyzed, focusing on problems of mutual…

This report is intended to serve as a reference for educators and service providers providing early intervention services and family support to children who have been prenatally substance exposed. The first two sections present information on the extent of the problem noting that 1,200,000 American women of reproductive age use cocaine, alcohol,…

This handbook is intended to assist policy boards and Interagency Coordinating Councils in developing and writing clear guidelines for implementing Part H of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act which mandates early intervention services to infants and toddlers with disabilities. Principles are rooted in a "family systems"…

The Assessment and Intervention Model for the Bilingual Exceptional Student (AIM for the BESt) was designed as a comprehensive service delivery system to help school districts address the educational needs of language minority students. The model incorporates prereferral intervention, assessment, and intervention strategies. Implementation of the…

A survey of the states was conducted, focusing on coordination of services and financing for Part H of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. On average, states reported using some 21 different sources to support the service delivery system, with each of the 44 funding sources listed being used by at least one state for at least 1…

This guide to alcohol and other drug abuse prevention for individuals with disabilities begins with a discussion of Congressional intent in enacting the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), the stressful demands experienced by Americans with disabilities, and the ways in which these stresses may predispose people with disabilities to…

Early Prevention of School Failure (EPSF) is a nationally validated program designed to prevent school failure by identifying the developmental levels and learning styles of children 4 to 6 years of age, and providing materials and teaching strategies to address students' needs and develop their strengths. In 1986-87, EPSF was introduced to the…

This literature review focuses on approaches to measuring and improving the self-concept of young children with special needs. Two particular models dominate the debate on the self-concept construct: the perceptual model (in which self-concept is equated with a self-description formed during the preschool years) and an operational model (in which…