Science is a core curricular area of instruction for all students and the federal mandates of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (2004) and No Child Left Behind (2001) require that students with disabilities are educated in the least restrictive environment and have access to general education science content, based upon rigorous…

Inclusion, specifically inclusion of students with disabilities in the educational system, is not just compliance to standards, but also an attitude. Therefore, inclusive education can be implemented in various ways. This article will examine the educational systems of the United States and Japan, using a case study and literature review. The case…

This paper provides an analysis of inclusive education policies across international, and Anglo-American national and provincial/state jurisdictions to reveal how policies discursively construct inclusion under current, increasingly neoliberal conditions. In making this case, the paper draws upon primary UNESCO and Organisation for Economic…

Social policies can be well-intentioned but ineffective in achieving what is intended. They can be undermined or destroyed by their exaggerated or oversimplified caricatures with a single, narrow focus. Caricatures may result in the opposite of the original intent of more carefully crafted variants. Institutionalization and deinstitutionalization…

"The Condition of Education 2017" is a congressionally mandated annual report summarizing the latest data on education in the United States. This report is designed to help policymakers and the public monitor educational progress. This year's report includes 50 indicators on topics ranging from prekindergarten through postsecondary…

Response to intervention (RTI) can be considered an everyday practice in many parts of the United States, whereas, in Finland, only recently has a new framework for support in learning taken shape. Choosing Finland as the comparative partner for this policy paper is justified as its educational system has been widely referenced on the basis of…

The idea that validity should be considered a property of inferences, rather than of assessments, has developed slowly over the past century. In early writings about the validity of educational assessments, validity was defined as a property of an assessment. The most common definition was that an assessment was valid to the extent that it…

The focus of this study was to explore the occupational therapy consultation process used with students on the autistic spectrum attending their regular school. Individual, in-depth interviews with senior occupational therapists were employed to collect the data. Grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Strauss, 1987; Strauss & Corbin,…

This document presents excerpts from position statements and resolutions of 15 U.S. and Canadian national associations on the inclusion of students with disabilities in the regular classroom and funding to support inclusion. Analysis of the position statements indicates the organizations' support for the inclusion of exceptional children in the…

Many schools across the United States and Canada are now implementing response-to-intervention (RTI) as a means to address the needs of students who struggle with reading, writing, or math by using dual discrepancy (i.e., low ability and little to no progress over time with targeted intervention programming) as a means to classify for learning…

The extent to which educational institutions and their teachers in the USA, England, and Australia should bear legal responsibility in damages for ineffective classroom teaching is the subject of this article. At the heart of the controversy regarding educational malpractice is the issue of remedies. Federal and state courts in the USA have…

In both China and the United States, educators are committed to the provision of rigorous academic instruction in inclusive environments to students with disabilities. This paper presents the reflections of the authors from the 2004 U.S.-China Conference on Educating Students with Special Needs held in Beijing, China in June 2004. The authors…

Provisions of special education law under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act are many and complex. During the 2001-2002 school year over 48 million children in the United States, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico were enrolled in pre-kindergarten through Grade 12. Parents are becoming increasingly legally literate; the increased…