Service coordinators under Part C of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA, 2004) help families navigate the early intervention (EI) system and ensure regular communication among team members so services are aligned with family priorities and recommended EI practices. To meet the demands of service coordination, personnel entering…

Title I accountability requirements under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) represent the present-day instantiation of Lau, which requires schools to provide a program for English learners (ELs) that supports their meaningful engagement and to provide transparent information about EL program quality. This study uses critical policy analysis to…

The central obligation under the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act is to provide each eligible student with a free appropriate public education (FAPE). In "Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District RE-1" (2017), the U.S. Supreme Court revised the prior substantive standard for determining FAPE that the court had developed in…

Educators and researchers often think of program design and program evaluation as separate endeavors, even intentionally creating a firewall between them. But what if designers and evaluators worked together, combining their insights to strengthen both the program and the study of it? In the work of evaluating a statewide professional learning…

This article documents the San Diego National Origin Desegregation Assistance Center (NODAC), one of the nine national centers established by the U.S. Office of Education to provide technical assistance to school districts cited under Section 601 of Title VI, from the Office for Civil Rights, to meet the Lau compliance requirement based on the Lau…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) offers states increased flexibility in how they identify, rank, label, and support underperforming schools. Initial reviews of state ESSA plans, however, suggest that identification and labeling policies have remained relatively unchanged. In this study, we analyze all state ESSA plans to systematically…

Background: Progress monitoring is a vital strategy for evaluating skill development of young children receiving disability related services. Few effective progress monitoring tools exist for infants and toddlers, and research is needed to examine feasibility as they become available. Objective: The current study examined the implementation of an…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand how I--and many other students--became first-generation college students (FGCSs) by exploring the rise and retraction of TRIO. Originally, TRIO was a set of three college access and retention programs created in the 1960s to address the needs of a population designated as academically and…

As U.S. school leaders anticipate the end of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds and contemplate possible budget shortfalls, they will have to make hard choices about how best to leverage limited resources to improve student outcomes. With the stakes high, lawmakers and experts urge school system leaders to rely on research and…

We used two judgment-based scales to evaluate quality features of 623 individualized family service plans (IFSP) contributed by 73 service coordinators in one state. We also explored the alignment between the skills specified in child-focused IFSP outcomes, the three Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) early childhood outcome…

In contrast to prior federally mandated school reforms, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) allows states more discretion in reforming their lowest performing schools, removes requirements to disrupt the status quo, and does not allocate substantial additional funds. Using a regression discontinuity design, we evaluate a state turnaround…

The purpose of this article was to historically review the field of school psychology for the 75th Anniversary of the founding of the Division of School Psychology (DSP) of the APA. Past and present proactive school psychology was evaluated and recommendations for the future were offered in light of historic APA DSP goals. Since its inception, the…

Despite not having specific special education laws, Norway's "Lov om grunnskolen og den vidaregåande opplaeringa" (Act Relating to Primary and Secondary Education and Training) law provides individualized instruction to students who qualify for special education services after an extensive evaluation process. Improvements are recommended…

This article describes our experience of conducting a 5-year, culturally responsive evaluation of a federal program with Indigenous communities. It describes how we adapted tenets from "participatory evaluation models" to ensure cultural relevance and empowerment. We provide recommendations for evaluators engaged in similar efforts. The…

The Early Childhood Technical Assistance Center used a rigorous 2-year collaborative process to develop, test, and revise a conceptual framework for high-quality state early intervention (EI) and early childhood special education (ECSE) systems. The framework identifies six critical components of a state system and what constitutes quality in each…