This article discusses how reading and written language samples can be analyzed to provide information about curriculum-based language strengths and needs that can be used recursively to establish student goals and benchmarks, provide intervention, evaluate change, and begin the next round of planning. A case example is presented. (Contains…

This article addresses issues of ethics, power, and privilege within the context of educating African American learners with disabilities and gifts and talents, critical issues in education affecting African American learners, and the role of special education teacher educators and special and gifted teacher practitioners as change agents.…

A meta-analysis of 10 studies on Asperger Syndrome (ASP) and autism suggests that children with ASP perform better on intelligence and cognitive measures and on adaptive behavior functioning measures. The results suggest that ASP can be viewed as a distinct diagnostic category and can be separated from children with autism. (Author/CR)

Summarizes recent studies identifying specific linguistic-cognitive markers for reading disabilities and describes efforts to develop measures of these markers in the areas of phonological awareness, rapid automatic naming, and verbal short-term memory. (Author/DB)

Current psychometric and testing practices are inadequate for assessing the intelligence of American Indian students, due to complicating factors of culture and language. These deficient methods are then used to make educational decisions, resulting in improper special education placements. The benefits of alternative methods of testing, including…

This study demonstrates the utility of integrating birth certificate record data with an existing disability-tracking database for the purpose of evaluating early identification efforts. The authors examined referral rates of preschool-age children for several known disability risk factors. Low birthweight, low maternal education, and prematurity…

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA) was reauthorized by the U.S. Congress in 2004, yet ongoing regulatory efforts are required to determine its operationalization and implementation. Of particular concern to school psychologists and others involved in the educational process are the guidelines for identification of…

The developmental speech problems and the speech problems derived from bilingualism could have some similar characteristics but they need different intervention. So, distinguishing between them is essential. The present, multi-method (methodological triangulation), case study aimed to investigate whether it is possible to identify developmental…

The objective of this review is to clarify the role of matching in family genetic studies of autism as a way of defining endophenotypes for linkage analysis. The concept of a confounding variable is reviewed and the importance of considering these in family studies of three endophenotypes in autism are considered: cognitive/language impairments,…

The existing literature demonstrates that children who are referred by their teachers as presenting with emotional and/or behavioural difficulties in schools are least likely of all children with difficulties to be included in their community school. Two common obstacles to their inclusion have been identified and discussed in the literature: a…

On December 3, 2004, President Bush signed into law the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA, 2004). The revised law is different from the previous version in at least one important respect. Whereas practitioners were previously encouraged to use IQ-achievement discrepancy to identify children with learning disabilities…

A major advance in the field of reading over the past 15 years has been the development and validation of screening measures that can detect with reasonable accuracy those kindergartners and first graders likely to experience difficulty in learning to read. Increasingly, these students now receive additional instructional support during the…

This kit presents the Systematic Screening for Behavior Disorders (SSBD) as a tool to identify behavior disorders in elementary-aged students. The SSBD procedure is a three-stage, multiple-gating mass screening system. In the first stage the teacher systematically ranks all students according to either externalizing or internalizing behavioral…

This paper opposes the use of discrepancy formulas to identify students with learning disabilities (LD) and stresses the importance of clinical judgment by members of the multidisciplinary evaluation team (MDT). It presents the LD identification procedures required by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, examines why formulas are not…

This report describes activities and accomplishments of a 3-year federally supported project to improve services to children (ages 0-21) with deaf-blindness in Alabama. The project utilized a service delivery model based on provision of state, regional, local, and individual technical assistance to service providers and families through three…