How is your special-education curriculum impacted by the requirements of IDEA and NCLB? How can you improve student learning and retention to positively influence assessment results? What methods are available for determining your students' present level of performance? In this second edition of "Accessing the General Curriculum", Nolet and McLaughlin provide updated frameworks and strategies-with invaluable examples and flowcharts for fitting special education into the frameworks created by national standards and assessments. This invaluable resource provides K-12 educators with the support necessary to produce expected results from every learner. The authors begin with far-reaching legal implications and connect them with individual students to show teachers how to: (1) Use curriculum as a map for guiding students toward achievement; (2) Understand learning research as a bridge to the learning-teaching connection; (3) Relate each student's disability to his or her academic performance; (4) Design alternate assessment tools and curriculum; and (5) Link goals, objectives, and benchmarks to state assessment criteria. Affording special education students accommodations and modifications to their individual curriculum will improve their performance, enhance the ability to help them advance, and, ultimately, improve the evaluation of their progress throughout their academic career. Following an Introduction and Acknowledgments, this book contains six chapters: (1) Access to the General Curriculum: Why it is More Important Than Ever Before; (2) The Nature of Curriculum; (3) The Learning-Teaching Connection; (4) Assessment That Supports Access to the General Curriculum; (5) Access to Curriculum and the Individual Education Program; and (6) A Decision-Making Process for Creating Standards-Based IEPs. Concluded are References and an Index.