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Learning disabilities is what this Journal is about. In the following article, Dr. Barsch sets forth past, present and possibilities for the future of the field...

Numerous research studies (e.g., Anderson, Kutash, & Duchnowski, 2001; Lane, Carter, Pierson, & Glaeser, 2006; Volpe, Dupaul, Jitendra, & Tresco, 2009; Wei, Blackorby, & Schiller, 2011) have shown that students with disabilities generally exhibit lower reading scores than their peers without disabilities. However, questions remain about the possibility of longitudinal differences among high-incidence disability classifications (e.g., speech/language impairments, SLI; emotional disturbances, ED; learning disabilities, LD; and attention deficit disorders, ADD). This study investigated growth patterns in reading achievement among middle school students from 5th to 8th grade with different high incidence disability classifications on one state's high-stakes assessment. After a repeated measures analysis of variance and post hoc testing, results reveal that students identified as LD and SLI evidenced more growth in reading than those classified as either ADD or ED. In light of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 legislation, findings about the various growth patterns are discussed with respect to policy, measurement, and practical implications. © 2016 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Prosody is an important but not fully understood component of reading. In this longitudinal study with a sample of 98. Portuguese elementary school children, a multilevel growth model with four repeated measures over time showed steady progress in participants’ reading prosody from the middle of 2nd to the end of 3rd grade. However, children’s growth in this area varied across time points. Results also showed that individual differences in prosody’s scores at baseline affect the performance of most but not of all students. Simple linear regressions showed that the prosody dimension “phrasing/expression” significantly predicted reading comprehension at all time points. Partial correlation analysis showed that when reading rate was accounted for, the unique contribution of prosody to reading comprehension was marginal, except at the third measurement © UPV/EHU.

This study examined how K-5 general and special educators (N = 102) would choose to allocate time in a 2-h language arts block if they could do so as they wished, and how these choices related to their knowledge base for reading instruction. Preferences for time allocation were assessed through an open grid on which participants listed descriptions of planned instructional activities and amount of time for each activity; teacher knowledge was assessed via a multiple-choice measure involving questions about assessment and instruction in the five components of reading. Results showed that many teachers planned little or no time for areas such as assessment, vocabulary, phonemic awareness, and spelling; also, relatively little time was devoted to basic writing skills and virtually none to writing processes such as planning or revision. There were few significant differences between general and special educators in time allocation on the grid, although there were more differences by grade level (e.g., grids for Grades K-1 vs. Grades 4-5). Teacher knowledge did predict teachers' time allocation plans, particularly for teachers with relatively high knowledge of phonemic awareness and phonics. Overall, however, many teachers chose to allocate time in ways inconsistent with scientific recommendations, in writing as well as in reading. The study highlights the importance of research-based, targeted teacher professional development in literacy, as well as the need for schools to provide comprehensive, research-based core reading and writing curricula to educators, with attention to fidelity of implementation.

Each day, people encounter stimuli they find unpleasant. Some children with autism may require systematic instruction to acquire the communication skills necessary to request the termination of such aversive stimuli. We taught 2 school-aged boys with autism a mand (e.g., signing stop) that could be used to escape a variety of aversive stimuli. First, we employed a systematic assessment to identify aversive stimuli to use during training. We then conducted mand training sequentially across those stimuli until sufficient exemplars were trained for generalization to occur to untrained stimuli. For both participants, cross-stimulus generalization was observed after training with 2 stimuli. Participants manded for escape in the presence of aversive stimuli, but almost never manded in the presence of preferred stimuli or when the programmed stimuli were absent. In addition, we found an inverse relation between acquisition of the mand and engagement in problem behavior and evidence of generalization to nontraining contexts.

The vital role of special education the world over can not be overstated. Special education is a vital tool to enable individuals with disabilities to realize their goals of equal opportunity in life, full participation in community life, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency. The field of special education has grown at different rates in the various countries of the world. However, since its beginnings in the early to late 1900s, Special Education has grown fast in the United States in terms of the number of students served and the types and quality of services provided. Right from its early beginnings to the present, litigation and legislation continue to play a central role in the development of special education in the country.Kenya has also done its part to advance education of its children and youth with disabilities. Using these two countries as case studies, this article examines legislation and litigationthat has contributed to the development of the special education field.

In this study, the relation between primary teachers' actual disciplinary knowledge and teachers' perceived disciplinary knowledge in three distinct areas of reading instruction (phonics, fluency/vocabulary/comprehension, and assessment/intervention), as well as the relation between teachers' experience and teachers' background with these variables is investigated. Participants include Portuguese primary teachers (n = 390) and American primary teachers (n = 390). Results show that the American teachers outperform the Portuguese teachers in almost every item in analysis. Canonical correlation and commonality analysis show that actual disciplinary knowledge and perceived disciplinary knowledge are relatively independent constructs. Regression analyses show that actual knowledge predicts a small but significant amount of the variance in perceived knowledge. Knowledge about phonics instruction is by far the best unique predictor of teachers' perceived knowledge. The hypothesis of miscalibration (the “unskilled-and-unaware effect”) between actual knowledge and perceived knowledge in the less knowledgeable teachers was also explored. However, results do not suggest such an effect in our participants. Results also show that there are significant differences between Portuguese and American teachers, mainly in the area of knowledge about assessment/intervention.

This study examined the knowledge base of 142 elementary-level educators for implementing response-to-intervention (RTI) models in reading. A questionnaire assessed participants' professional background for teaching reading, as well as their familiarity with specific assessments, research-based instructional models, and interventions potentially useful in RTI approaches. A multiple-choice knowledge survey patterned after a teacher licensure exam, including items situated in classroom contexts, assessed participants' knowledge about different components of reading, assessment, and RTI practices. Overall, participants obtained the highest scores on a knowledge survey subscale involving fluency/vocabulary/comprehension and the lowest on a subscale involving assessment/RTI practices, with a subscale involving phonemic awareness/phonics in the middle. Mean percentages correct on the subscales ranged from about 58-65% correct. However, participants who said they had prior code-focused professional development outperformed other participants on all survey subscales. General elementary certified teachers performed comparably to special education certified teachers on two out of three subscales, with both groups outperforming unlicensed participants; on the assessment/RTI subscale, only the special educators outperformed unlicensed participants. Most participants were familiar with basic features of RTI such as the three tiered model but were unfamiliar with the research-based instructional approaches and interventions named in the study questionnaire, although participants who had experienced code-focused PD were significantly more likely to be familiar with certain interventions. The study suggests that professional development will be important to enable many educators to implement RTI effectively in reading.

We assessed the effects of varying the treatment integrity of a prompting procedure on appropriate toy manipulation in two preschool-aged children with autism. Following an assessment to identify toys with high levels of inappropriate toy manipulation, each of three toys was associated with implementation of the prompting procedure at a different integrity level (10%, 50%, or 100%). For one participant, only the 100% integrity condition produced increases in appropriate toy manipulation. For the second participant, both the 50% and 100% integrity conditions produced increases in appropriate toy manipulation. These results suggest that integrity errors negatively impacted the acquisition of appropriate toy manipulation in children with autism, although the necessary level of treatment integrity varied across participants. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Public education in the United States has a history of local control in the development of curriculum and instruction. Although notable court decisions have led to more universal applications of educational policy and practices (Brown v. Board of Education 1954, Oberti v. Clementon 1993), it has been federal law that has resulted in significant changes in instruction. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA; Public Law 108–142), first enacted in Public Law 94–142, guaranteed the right of a free, appropriate public education for all children, regardless of the severity of their disability. The word “appropriate” resulted in the beginning of what we refer to today as differentiated instruction: instructional strategies that allow a child to learn and progress in an educational setting. The federal law, No Child Left Behind (NCLB; Public Law 107-110), enacted in 2001, contributed to this initiative and added a caveat that these differentiated instructional strategies needed to be grounded in scientifically based research. Indeed, the term “scientifically based research” has been noted to appear in NCLB 111 times (Deshler 2002). The federal government, in IDEA 2004, identified 13 eligibility categories. In order to receive special education services, a student must, through a multidisciplinary evaluation, meet the eligibility criteria established for one of the 13 categories. Since 1975, when PL94–142 was enacted, educational interventions for students receiving special education have expanded, particularly in disability categories with a high level of incidence such as speech and language disorders and learning disabilities. Low-incidence disabilities, such as mental retardation, visual impairments, and autism, have received less attention.

Clinicians are particularly challenged by the development of interventions for behavior maintained by automatic reinforcement because reinforcers that maintain the responses often cannot be directly observed or manipulated. Researchers have conducted either preference assessments or competing items assessments when developing effective treatments for behavior maintained by automatic reinforcement. However, interventions based on these assessments have not been directly compared. The current study evaluated procedures to make such a comparison. High-competition items resulted in greater reductions in vocal stereotypy than did highpreference items for a preschool boy with autism.