A primary purpose of early childhood education and interventions is to promote children's acquisition of knowledge and skills linked to later social competence and academic success. In this report, special attention is given to summarizing what has been learned about early childhood classrooms as contexts for development and learning, the kinds of…

This paper is directed to researchers who conduct and report education intervention studies. Its purpose is to stimulate and guide them to go a step beyond reporting the statistics that emerge from their analysis of the differences between experimental groups on the respective outcome variables. With what is often very minimal additional effort,…

A gap exists between the academic achievement of youth with hearing impairments and their peers in the general population in reading, mathematics, science, and social studies, according to a new release by The National Center for Special Education Research. This report uses data from the National Longitudinal Transition Study 2 dataset to provide…

Since 1982, the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has periodically surveyed the status of curricula being implemented in America's high schools and the course-taking patterns of high school students, as identified from their transcripts. Data from the High School Transcript Study (HSTS), conducted in…

The report is organized to provide information on the school-level implementation of alternate assessments for students with significant cognitive disabilities. Following the Introduction in Chapter 1, Chapter 2 describes the study design and methods, including the development of the teacher survey and data collection procedures and analyses.…

The purpose of this fact sheet is to explore the secondary school experiences of students with mental retardation. Topics include the instructional practices in general, vocational, and nonvocational special education classrooms; the participation of students in various classroom settings; accommodations and support services provided to students;…

This study is examining student eligibility for and participation in alternate assessments, the technical quality of the alternate assessment instruments and implementation procedures, the alignment of assessments with content and achievement standards, and the use and effectiveness of alternate assessments in measuring student outcomes. The…

The National Study on Alternate Assessments (NSAA) was mandated by the Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 (IDEA). Specifically, the law called for a "Study on Ensuring Accountability for Students Who Are Held to Alternative Achievement Standards" to examine: (1) the criteria that states use to determine eligibility for…

The Pre-Elementary Education Longitudinal Study (PEELS), funded by the U.S. Department of Education, is examining the characteristics of children receiving preschool special education, the services they receive, their transitions across educational levels, and their performance over time on assessments of academic and adaptive skills. PEELS…

This report is an executive summary of two previously-released reports presenting findings from Wave 2: The Academic Achievement and Functional Performance of Youth with Disabilities and After High School: A First Look at the Postschool Experiences of Youth with Disabilities. Some key findings presented in the Overview include the following: (1) A…

This is the second in a series of NLTS2 fact sheets focusing on the experiences and outcomes of youth in a specific disability category. Students with learning disabilities comprise almost two-thirds of those receiving special education services in secondary schools. The majority of these students spend at least part of their day in a general…