The authors describe the issues that assessment specialists confront when a student referred for special education testing does not qualify for services. This article reviews some of the causes for students not meeting the eligibility requirements and concludes with recommendations to prevent as well as respond appropriately when a designation of…

The change in allowing school districts to use the more prevalent discrepancy model or the new addition of response to intervention to determine whether a disability is present has sparked discussion among educators. As districts decide which method to use, it is important to base decisions on factual and researched information. The authors hope…

Geometry is a course that is increasingly required for students to graduate from high school. However, geometric concepts can pose a great challenge to high school youth with math difficulties. Although research on teaching geometry to students with mathematics difficulties is limited, teachers are challenged daily with providing support for youth…

General outcome measurement, a specific type of formative evaluation, can be used to assess progress toward long-term academic goals. Curriculum-based measurement is a widely used type of general outcome measurement. When used to develop local norms, curriculum-based measurement data are helpful in making individual student and systems-level…

Story mapping is an effective visual strategy to enhance comprehension of narrative text in students, with or without disabilities. This article demonstrates how instruction can be designed using principles of universal design for learning with the evidence-based story-mapping strategy to improve reading comprehension for elementary students with…

This study was designed to obtain (a) a national picture of the characteristics of special educators who provide reading or English instruction in juvenile corrections facilities and (b) characteristics of the schools in which they work and the students who they serve. In addition, the study was designed to gather information on teacher use of…

Teacher feedback is an important aspect of any classroom. However, because of the increasing demands on teachers' time, the delivery of feedback to students has been reduced. The author investigated the types and necessity of teacher feedback for students with learning challenges. The method for analysis was in the form of written teacher…

Some students enter the world of mathematics with a disadvantage. The authors explored the causes for this from a language-processing perspective. They were particularly concerned with students with potential learning disabilities or specific language impairments. They also explored the role of language-mediated instruction in creating an…

Response to intervention (RTI) is a new method of identifying students with learning disabilities. RTI's increasing implementation affects all teachers and students, in both general and special education. The authors provide educators with a practical understanding of what RTI may look like in the classroom and how co-teaching as an instructional…

Oral reading fluency, which includes the effortless and smooth oral production of text, is an essential part of deriving meaning from text. Fluency is a particularly important skill in upper elementary school grades when students are exposed to higher level reading materials. The authors evaluated the effects of a repeated readings intervention…

This action research case study measured the effectiveness of a writing strategy designed to enhance imagery in stories that 3 students with severe writing difficulties (2 were identified as learning disabled, 1 was undergoing assessment) produced during their resource room sessions. The authors combined the use of the self-regulated strategy…

In today's inclusive classrooms, general and even many special education teachers often do not feel confident that they know or are using methods and strategies that researchers have shown to be effective in the general education setting for students who struggle with grade-level reading regardless of whether educators have identified them as…

The author investigated the effects of the concrete-representational-abstract (CRA) instructional sequence on the computation performance of students with specific learning disabilities and students identified as at risk for failure in mathematics. Researchers have showed the CRA sequence to be effective for teaching basic mathematics facts,…

In this article, the authors describe the use of curriculum-based measurement as a research-validated practice for monitoring student academic achievement and ultimately for improving students' educational outcomes. The authors describe oral-reading fluency and maze fluency as assessment tools for monitoring student progress, evaluating…

Teachers and parents are often perplexed when an intelligent student performs poorly in mathematics. Research tells us that this is often due to math disability, otherwise known as "dyscalculia". The authors define dyscalculia and describe its major subtypes. Also, the authors describe characteristics of dyscalculia and explain why dyscalculia is…