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 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…

Numerous studies show that employment, community participation, and postsecondary training rates of students with severe disabilities after leaving high school are the lowest of all disability categories and compare unfavorably to those of their peers without disabilities. In addition, outcomes generally do not improve as these students age. Certo…

This article introduces a special issue on accessing the general curriculum for students with significant cognitive disabilities. The authors intent with the series was to highlight four Directed Research (CFDA 84.324D) projects funded by the Office of Special Education Programs in 2002. The directed research priority targeted the need to extend…

For students to have full access to the general curriculum, they need the opportunity to learn academic content that links closely to the standards for their grade level. In this article, we synthesize what we have learned through our research on aligning instruction for students with significant cognitive disabilities with state's academic…