Document review and interviews were conducted with college admissions' personnel to gather data regarding alignment of proficiency-based diploma systems and college eligibility and entry requirements. In addition, leaders and representative personnel from and Maine businesses and the U.S. military were interviewed to identify postsecondary career…

Federal and state mandates requiring accountability for the achievement of all students--including those with disabilities--coupled with tight budgetary restraints has led to the steady rise in the employment of paraprofessionals in P-12 educational settings. The emergence of the paraprofessional system has led to several challenges. While several…

Our country has been trying to address the graduation crisis in many ways. We are seeing the impact of the efforts to improve graduation rates over the past twenty years including agreement among states to implement a common cohort-based graduation rate, research-based efforts to improve the transition to 9th grade, increased academic and social…

This document reflects work that began prior to the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act. In 2015 the Arkansas Department of Education began engaging with stakeholders to determine how the Department could better support students, educators, school and district leaders, and communities in their efforts to improve student outcomes. The…

We propose that Disability Studies in Education (DSE) offers a framework that (a) grounds policy and practice in the experiences and perspectives of people with disabilities, (c) challenges practices/ policy that isolate, de-humanize individuals, and (c) leads to new questions to pose. In this session, we describe the pedagogy that we used to…

Six essential teaching competencies and observable characteristics are outlined to help administrators evaluate special education teachers. Administrators are urged to use evaluation as an inservice tool rather than a weapon. The competencies include the following: (1) accurate and effective communication in the content area and professional…

The article suggests that mainstreaming efforts have been largely unsuccessful because of faulty assumptions, focus on academic attainment for handicapped children, and failure to consider the social development of handicapped children. Self-efficacy theory is cited as a way to refocus the process and teach positive social behaviors to…

Resource teachers (N=420) in grades 1-12 identified 32 competencies for effective resource teachers including knowledge and skill in employing a variety of methods for teaching reading, ability to deal effectively with personal/professional frustrations, ability to communicate with parents, and knowledge and skill in behavior management…

The final report describes accomplishments of a project to identify specific competencies perceived by independent living trainers as necessary to effectively teach secondary level handicapped students in an independent living center. A systematic methodology was employed to identify and categorize the competencies drawn from the reports of both…

Implementation of the Americans with Disabilities Act has been complicated by uncertainty about the fundamental nature of various activities, goods, or services and about what constitutes competence or qualification in people who are excluded from them. Discusses how the courts can ascertain the fundamental nature of conventional activities when…

The author presents the argument that serious problems exist with regard to the competence of professionals involved in the assessment of exceptional children. Recommendations for improving the competence and performance of professionals are also given. (Author)

The module applies advocacy skill instruction to the integration of severely handicapped students. The instructor's material is presented for four competencies (understanding the concept of advocacy, factors essential for effective advocating, developing effective advocacy skills, and recognizing elements crucial to implementing an integration…

The authors advocate a performance-based approach to assessing social competence in which multiple staff and parents evaluate the adequacy of the child's behavior in social interactions with peer and adults. An example illustrates the approach in an early childhood special education setting. (CL)

The need to verify the competencies purported to be developed by individuals completing a program designed to prepare supervisors of special education led to surveying 29 Pennsylvania Directors of Special Education who were asked to rate successful first year supervisors of special education on 40 competencies. Results indicated the eight roles…

Examined differences in home environment scores among educable mentally retarded, learning-disabled, emotional/behavior disordered, and nonhandicapped students. Found differences in home environments, independent of socioeconomic status. Home environments for learning-disabled and nonhandicapped students were rated significantly higher than home…