Current prereferral intervention team (PIT) regulations, prevalence, membership, goals, and intervention information from two national telephone surveys are reported. Survey 1 obtained information about state PIT regulations and recommendations from employees of the 51 state education departments (50 states and Washington, DC). Survey 2 obtained information about elementary schools' PIT prevalence, membership, goals, and common intervention recommendations from employees of 200 elementary schools (4 per state). Survey 1 results indicated that although 69% of states mandate prereferral intervention and 86% require or recommend PITs, states provided little direction about how to implement such services (e.g., only 14% specified or recommended team composition). Survey 2 results indicated that 85% of schools had PITs, which were composed predominantly of multidisciplinary specialists (e.g., administrators and school psychologists). Remedial teachers and parents were sometimes PIT members, but community representatives were seldom on the PIT. There was no clear school-based consensus on PIT goals. PITs most commonly recommended additional services, testing, or easy classroom interventions and seldom recommended substantive instructional modifications. Existing PITs seldom approached problems or interventions from an ecological perspective. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

This research examined two samples of students classified as learning disabled (LD) for evidence of the phenomenon known as the Flynn effect (FE;Flynn, 1999). Triennial test data were collected for two samples. Sample 1 included students tested twice with the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Third Edition (WISC-III; n ϭ 59). Sample 2, the primary data set, included students tested first with the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R), and then with the WISC-III ( n ϭ 171). A secondary analysis examined potential differences in the FE by ethnicity and/or gender. Results indicate that the FE does affect Wechsler IQ and component scores of students classified as LD. Further, the effect varies by task. There were no significant differences in the FE by race and/or gender. The study suggests that LD classification may be substantially impacted by the Over the years, several studies have reported a decrease in students' IQ scores between different revisions of popular intelligence tests such as the

Success in collaborative school-based consultation depends on whether teachers implement interventions suggested by consultants. In business literature, Rational Persuasion (RP) has been identified as one potentially effective way to influence consultee perceptions about proposed interventions. RP includes intervention information, why it is important to decide to use the intervention, and potential objections to the intervention with arguments against those objections. The influence of these RP elements on potential school-based consultees has not been studied. This preliminary analog study investigated whether presenting RP importance and objections for behavioral interventions influenced teachers' ratings of acceptability, effectiveness, and commitment-to-implement. Participants included 71 teachers enrolled in graduate education courses. The within-subject design included three video vignettes of each of three conditions for three different behavioral interventions (total of nine possible videos, three presented to each group). Results suggest that the influence of RP on acceptability, perceived effectiveness, and commitment-to-implement ratings was inconsistent. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

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within the discipline of rhetoric and composition, the notion of coherence possesses the status of sine qua non, yet this notion has been treated unevenly or been taken for granted, much as the process of composing itself was taken for granted for the better part of this century. This practice has occurred for the following reasons: coherence is the "unmarked" condition of speech, and by transfer, also the "unmarked" condition of writing; the surface language of a composition has traditionally been the focus for solving any problems of coherence; and, collateral disciplines have not been sufficiently drawn upon in understanding the global nature of those elements which cohere a successful composition.The author posits that virtually all cohering elements fall within three global categories, linguistic, cognitive, or contextually salient, and, moreover, that these cohering elements occur on a continuum that extends from the explicit to the implicit. The linguistic category includes co-reference, repetition, anaphora, cataphora, and ellipsis.The cognitive category includes the given/new relationship, Gestalt, parallel distributed processing, and central cognitive processes. The contextually salient category iii includes warrants, register, central metaphors, sociological models, and epistemological frames.Such an approach redistributes the burden of our understanding coherence from the surface language of a composition to a tripartite focus, including not only surface language, but also elements beneath it and beyond it, thus providing a manageable framework for the analysis of coherence, commonly recognized as the most essential quality of any composition.The study concludes with implications this approach has for the teaching of composition and rhetoric in the college classroom.iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS