Recommendations from "Placing Children in Special Education" are reviewed, focusing on: (1) inaccurate interpretation of overrepresentation of minority mildly mentally retarded students, (2) use of prereferral interventions, (3) cross-categorical programing, (4) application of an outcomes criterion, and (5) expansion of regular education options…

Problems with "Placing Children in Special Education" include: its approach to aptitude-treatment interaction research, neglect of school psychologists' efforts to provide consultation services beyond assessments, and failure to recognize lack of support for deficit-centered remediation models. A remediation model which builds on individualization…

Forty learning-disabled fourth graders learned to use a spelling study strategy, studied words under varying conditions, and predicted their scores on a subsequent test. Results indicated that, even without inclusion of specific metacognitive training components, strategy training produced important metacognitive improvement and that metacognitive…

Achievement data of elementary learning-disabled students in both an Integrated Classroom Model (ICM) and resource rooms were compared. The ICM was shown to be more cost effective than resource room programs while achieving similar results on reading, math, and language tests for learning-disabled students and on general achievement tests for…

The reciprocal teaching procedure, which involves interactive dialogue and teacher modeling, was used to teach prereading skills (finger spelling, book reading, story retelling, and word recognition) to 23 prelingually deaf kindergarten and first-grade students. Pre-post test analyses showed that gains were made in letter, word, and story…

Seventeen active attention-problem elementary children were given copying tasks to determine whether they were more attracted to color stimulation than normal controls. Among other findings, results suggested that experimental children responded to tasks differently when color was used and that their performance was better with relevant color than…

This comment on "Transition Issues for the 1990s" (Knowlton and Clark, 1987) argues that transition program professionals should focus on providing services rather than the labeling of handicapped persons and that transition program objectives should focus on employment, rather than such outcomes as independent living and social networking. (JDD)

In response to a comment on the authors' earlier work, this article makes two points: (1) current transition literature is too narrowly focused to appeal to diverse audiences that have histories of categorical specialization, and (2) transition outcome goals should encompass the community and home as well as employment settings. (JDD)

A survey of 269 parents/guardians of mentally retarded young adults in Virginia examined parent attitudes toward employment opportunities and adult vocational services for their children. Results indicated a need for increased parent/professional communication to improve parental expectations for the vocational potential of their mentally retarded…

Based on three areas of research (memory, selective attention, and metacognition), three strategy training interventions with learning disabled children are described: Lloyd's academic strategy training, Torgeson's strategy training, and Deshler's learning strategies model. Individual approaches may be appropriate only for selected subgroups of…

The study examined teacher accuracy and bias in referring 570 students (grades 2-6) for special education placement. Students perceived as handicapped were accurately characterized by low reading achievement, but disproportionate numbers of Blacks and a greater percentage of males than females were referred from a population of low readers. (JW)

Regular educators (N=128) and special educators (N=133) in 21 Ohio school districts responded to a questionnaire regarding handicap integration. Willingness of regular educators to teach handicapped students depended more heavily on demographic variables (e.g., total number of years in teaching); willingness of special educators depended more on…

A rationale for the establishment of human rights review procedures within local education agencies is presented, focusing on students who have severe behavior problems with or without mental retardation, for whom intrusive behavioral treatments are considered. Topics discussed include informed consent, committee review, due process, and least…

Elementary learning disabled students (N=32) were assigned to a control group or to an experimental group trained to use a comprehension monitoring strategy wherein important paragraph ideas were restated as they read. Restatement training improved comprehension not only under conditions matching the training task, but also those demanding…

The article examines reasons for discrepant findings in two studies of attention differences in learning disabled students, focusing on four interacting factors in experimental research: task, materials, context, and subject characteristics. It is suggested that attentional deficits are not necessarily the underlying problem for all students with…