This book provides an in-depth, research-based guide for ensuring that your school provides the federally guaranteed "least restrictive environment" for students no matter the severity of the challenges they face. "Leading an Inclusive School: Access and Success for ALL Students" offers administrators, teachers, and other…

This special issue of Research and Practice for Persons with Severe Disabilities (RPSD) is timely and resonates with the theme of the 2009 TASH Conference, "If not Us, Who? If not NOW, When?" The articles grapple with critical issues across a number of dimensions that reflect the complexity of inclusion and exclusion, the importance of…

Rates of agreement among alternative definitions of reading disability and their 1- and 2-year stabilities were examined using a new measure of agreement, the affected-status agreement statistic. Participants were 288,114 first through third grade students. Reading measures were "Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills" Oral…

The Study of Monitoring and Improvement Practices under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) examined how states monitored the implementation of IDEA by local special education and early intervention services programs. State monitoring and improvement practices in 2004-05 and 2006-07 were the focus of the study. Prior to the…

The Rehabilitation Act of 1973, together with the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, set in motion policy changes that have allowed many thousands of children and youth with disabilities in the United States the opportunity to gain the educational and vocational skills needed to transition to living, working, and participating as…

Presented is the transcript of hearings (June 21 and 22, 1977) before the subcommittee on the handicapped of the committee on human resources on the implementation of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 (Public Law 94-142). Included are the texts of P.L. 94-142 and Senate Bill 725, a bill to extend certain programs (centers and…

Three case studies investigated the school day of disadvantaged rural students with severe disabilities. Subjects were severely disabled girls, living in families with no income other than public assistance, and attending elementary or middle school in three poor rural school districts. A constant comparative method of single and cross-site data…

Admission policies and practices for state-operated residential schools for the deaf were studied following the full implementation of Public Law 94-142. Questionnaires were returned by 56 school administrators representing 93 percent of the total number of residential schools for the deaf in the United States. Results include the following: 1)…

Many school systems are moving toward an inclusion model for teaching special learners in which all students are included in general classrooms. The basic premise is that all students should first be placed in the general classroom. Students receive as many necessary supplementary aids and services as possible in the general classroom, and then,…

Students with significant disabilities continue to be among the most segregated in schools. In this article, we argue that the principles of least restrictive environment and involvement and progress in the general curriculum have been interpreted in ways that perpetuate segregation, rather than increasing students' access to meaningful curriculum…

The purpose of this study was to carry out the mandate of the Education of the Handicapped Amendments of 1983 and 1986 which called for an analysis and evaluation of the effectiveness of procedures undertaken by state education agencies, local education agencies, and intermediate educational units to improve programs of instruction for handicapped…

Special education as practiced today remains firmly anchored in the original logic of the Amendments to the Education of the Handicapped Act (PL 94-142). Subsequent reauthorizations of the statute have included language designed to increase access to the general curriculum by special needs students but have not addressed the underlying…

This article presents a critical analysis of the principle of the least restrictive environment (LRE). The article begins with a review of the origins of LRE in professional writings and law and moves next to a discussion of how LRE has been operationalized in terms of a continuum of residential, educational, and vocational services. Building on…