News: Students with Disabilities

When High School Students Have Significant Academic Gaps: More Concerns and Common Sense Solutions (Letters to the Editor)

New Blog revisits the instructional dilemma of having to choose between (a) providing critical intervention opportunities to high school students with significant prerequisite skills gaps in literacy,...

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How the “System” Forces Schools into Decisions that Harm Struggling Students: The “Groundhog Day” Impact of Fear on Staff Mental Health and Job Retention

The movie Groundhog Day is metaphorically used to describe recurring experiences with MTSS Teams across the country who continue to use “mystifying” procedures, practices, and strategies—typically wit...

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Judy Heumann, Special Education’s History of Litigation, and the Continuing Fight: Complacency and Defensiveness Still Stand in the Way of Students with Disabilities’ Rights

The passing of Judy Heumann, a special education advocate and legend, prompts this Blog’s review of the history of special education. The author reflects on his interactions with the advocates and lit...

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Was a First Grade Virginia Teacher Shot Because Her Student was Denied Special Education Services?

Blog describes how some districts do not have access to a continuum of special education services for students with behavioral challenges—including self-contained special education, day treatment, or...

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Reviewing the Educational Challenges of 2022: The Need for Improvement in the Midst of Academic Gaps, Discipline and SEL Problems, School Shootings, and Continued Disproportionality

Blog summarizes and provides links to Blogs published during 2022. Twenty-two Blogs are organized in four themes: School Improvement and Staff Effectiveness; Social Skills Instruction and Social-Emoti...

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Teaching Students Needed Academic and Social-Emotional Skills: We Need to Sweat the Small Stuff

Blog describes five vignettes that reinforce the importance that educators and related services professionals “sweat the small stuff.” We demonstrate that, to make big and meaningful academic and soci...

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