This practicum was designed to decrease turnover of newly hired teachers in a child care center by means of a 12-week orientation and training program for newly hired staff. In 1992, nearly half of the newly hired teachers had left the center within 6 months. Surveys of remaining staff, some of whom had already turned in resignations, indicated…

This report of the Committee on Labor and Human Resources favorably recommends that Senate Bill 1106, Amendments to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, be passed by the Senate. Noted are the legislation's purposes: to help States facing fiscal crises stay in the Infants and Toddlers with Disabilities program (Part H); to reward those…

In fall, 1991, La Frontera Center, the Tucson Council for Alcohol and Drug Dependence, and the Community Organization for Drug Abuse Control were funded to carry out an educational program to reduce alcohol and other drug abuse in the Tucson, Arizona area. The resulting project, Pasos Adelante (Steps Forward), is an early intervention…

Summaries of recent research have found computer-assisted instruction to be a highly motivating method of instruction that fosters independent study and provides for the immediate feedback necessary for the encouragement of individualized learning. A nonexperimental study was conducted with fourth, fifth, and sixth grade students (n=88) in a…

This booklet presents knowledge, attitudes, and educational ideas on how to give deaf children the support they need to develop. It focuses on the fundamental and comprehensive needs of deaf children, using methods and ideas that can be adjusted to countries without great technical resources. The first chapter examines the importance of language…

The Pasadena Unified School District, in northwest Los Angeles County, recognized that an early intervention program for economically disadvantaged children should be part of its comprehensive district revitalizing and restructuring plan. Consequently, staff developed the Kindergarten Program for Four-Year-Olds, which was designed to provide: (1)…

The Mathematics Improvement Component (MIC) was first implemented in the Columbus (Ohio) Public Schools in 1987-88 to assist elementary and middle school pupils who were low achievers in mathematics. Three programs comprised the 1989-90 MIC: the Elementary Computer Assisted Instruction (Elem-CAI) Program, the Elementary Competency Based Education…

School reform efforts today have a personal focus that emphasizes attending to the problems faced by individual at-risk students. After outlining the impact of student dropouts, this document uses information from a review of 150 at-risk student programs described in related professional literature to describe six basic weaknesses in current…

This practicum was designed to establish behavioral and assessment criteria for dealing with seriously emotionally disturbed elementary students enrolled in self-contained emotionally handicapped (EH) units. A primary goal was to provide out-of-field EH teachers with an objective tool for continuously assessing students' individual behavioral and…

This article deals with a service-learning program focused on human sexuality and HIV/AIDS prevention and intervention at the Howard University Department of Health, Human Performance and Leisure Studies. Topics discussed include how this program was created, an overview of peer education, HIV/AIDS peer education training, and services provided to…

This handbook provides an introduction for teacher aides recently hired by the Nassau Board of Cooperative Education Services (BOCES) to work with handicapped students. Topics covered include mental, learning, physical and emotional disabilities, the role of the teacher aide, crisis intervention, building students' self-esteem, managing student…

The practicum report describes a program which established an Early Childhood Special Education Resource Center to serve the parents and teachers of deaf and hearing-impaired preschool children attending an integrated laboratory school associated with the University of Puerto Rico. Program goals included promoting parent-teacher interaction to…

This report of the Preschool Evaluation Project provides developmental profiles of handicapped children who attended preschool special education programs in Montgomery County Public Schools (Maryland), and estimates how effective these programs were in accelerating the development of children with various types of handicaps. The developmental…

Project SOLID START is an integrated reading program involving regular classroom, special education, and reading teachers, and parent volunteers in the Melrose, Massachusetts public schools. SOLID START supports beginning literacy in a developmental, rather than a remedial, mode. The project tests the hypothesis that a carefully structured,…

This review of early intervention for preschool children with learning disabilities examines: (1) definitions of learning disabilities; (2) characteristics of learning-disabled children and children at risk; (3) identification of preschool children at risk; (4) efficacy of early intervention; (4) phases of an early intervention program, including…