It is important for educators to collect accurate information on the academic performance of students with the most significant cognitive disabilities who may be assessed with an Alternate Assessment Aligned with Alternate Academic Achievement Standards (AA-AAAS) to inform decisions about resources, programs, instruction, and individualized…

Charter schools are one of the fastest-growing forms of school choice. However, concerns have been raised about the quality of special education provided to students with disabilities. Results of a systematic review of court filings involving charter schools and special education and/or students with disabilities reveal recurring themes pertaining…

For this 22nd article in the series reviewing recent court decisions concerning appropriate school psychology practice from both professional and legal perspectives, the topic is child find and eligibility under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), including as a secondary matter the intersecting requirement for a comprehensive…

This guidance is for program and agency staff who have identified the need to develop a new data system or make major enhancements to an existing system. Key considerations are presented as questions to help guide staff through the initiation and planning process. The system initiation phase requires a broad team with the expertise and knowledge…

Secondary transition planning is a requirement of IDEA and intended to support students with disabilities as they move from K-12 education into post-school activities such as education, employment and activities of daily living. States are held accountable for meeting the requirements of IDEA through an Annual Performance Report in which they must…

Coaching caregivers of young children on the autism spectrum is a critical component of parent-mediated interventions. Little information is available about how providers implement parent coaching for children on the autism spectrum in publicly funded early intervention systems. This study evaluated providers' use of parent coaching in an early…

This article presents a structured blueprint for school psychologists to assess and intervene in cases of automatically maintained self-injurious behavior (SIB) while adhering to the Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) mandate. We outline a six-step process for conducting Functional Behavior Assessments (FBAs) of automatically maintained SIB,…

Sixty-three Woodcock-Johnson IV Tests of Achievement protocols, administered by 26 school psychology trainees, were examined to determine the frequency of examiner errors. Errors were noted on all protocols and ranged from 8 to 150 per administration. Critical (e.g., start, stop, and calculation) errors were noted on roughly 97% of protocols.…

Education for individuals with disabilities is complicated by a lack of access to educational services, partly due to the gaps created by different policies meant to provide equal access to services in high school and college. The purpose of this generic qualitative study is to explore the perceptions of college students with disabilities as they…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) began a new wave of school accountability under which states draw on multiple measures to assess school quality. States have options in terms of how to weight components in their school quality indices and how many years of data to use to determine school ratings. In this study, we simulate school ratings…

Decades of research about students of color with dis/abilities has left but one fact clear: these students are not treated equitably within our school systems. The purpose of this qualitative document analysis was to identify how Disability Critical Race Studies is represented within federal inclusion policies. The research question was "How…

Managing student misbehavior at school is a reality today's school staff must be prepared for. Researchers and practitioners have been implementing a variety of strategies to support students with challenging behavior; however, the opportunity gap for specific students continues to exist. The number of students who are excluded, suspended, or…

Using an implementation science framework, this study examines the impact of a multicomponent professional development (PD) approach implemented by internal peer coaches on early intervention providers' use of Family Guided Routines-Based Intervention. The experimental study used a single-case multiple baseline design across participants,…

Section 504 has recently been gaining more traction among parents, educators, and government officials as more Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) ineligible students become eligible for Section 504. To alleviate Section 504 being a special education responsibility and ramp up the lack of 504 professional development efforts for…

The 2023 Illinois Career and Technical Education Report is submitted in compliance with Illinois School Code 105 ILCS 435/2e, which requires a written career and technical education (CTE) report to be issued to the governor annually. This report describes the establishment of and delivery of CTE in Illinois, the existing condition of Illinois CTE…