Between 1993 and 1998 there were 45 published due process hearings and court cases in which parents of children with autism challenged the appropriateness of a school district's educational program for their child. These hearings and cases involved parental requests for school districts to provide, fund, or reimburse them for the Lovaas treatment program for their young children. The purpose of this article is to examine how these hearings and cases affect the definition of "appropriate" special education programs. First, we review previous legislative and litigative definitions of a free appropriate public education (FAPE). Next, we analyze the Lovaas treatment hearings and cases to identify factors associated with winning and losing decisions. Finally, we discuss the implications of these decisions to provide guidance to schools in adhering to the procedural and substantive requirements of a FAPE.
The Individualized Education Program (IEP) has been the cornerstone of special education since the Education for All Handicapped Children Act became law in 1975. We begin this article by examining the relationship between the IEP and a free, appropriate public education. Then we discuss the IEP process and highlight the procedural changes and new requirements mandated by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Amendments of 1997. Next, we present information from a number of due process hearings and cases that have involved IEPs to illustrate mistakes school districts often make that can result in rulings against a district. Finally, we provide guidelines to assist schools with developing legally correct and educationally appropriate IEPs.
The purposes of this study were to examine the effects of supervisor performance feedback on preservice teachers' rates of positive and negative communication behaviors with students with emotional and behavioral disorders and the effects of the intervention on the preservice teachers' perceptions of classroom management and climate. The authors used a multiple baseline design across preservice teachers with a 1-min interval recording system to measure the frequencies of positive and negative verbal and nonverbal communication behaviors of preservice teachers. They also recorded preservice teachers' statements and gestures to provide specific performance feedback. Preservice teachers' perceptions on the effects of the intervention were monitored using their reflective journal entries. Specific performance feedback increased the ratio of positive-to-negative preservice teacher communication behaviors. In addition, preservice teacher satisfaction was improved. Results suggest that supervisors' use of specific performance feedback may assist preservice teachers to implement a higher ratio of positive-to-negative communications with their students.
The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of e-mailed specific performance feedback that included progress monitoring graphs on induction-level teachers’ ratios of positive-to-negative communication behaviors and their use of behavior-specific praise in classrooms for students with emotional and behavioral disorders, mild intellectual disabilities, and learning disabilities. We also examined the effects of teachers’ communication behavior on students’ academic task engagement. Results indicate that the e-mailed performance-feedback intervention increased teachers’ use of positive communication behaviors and decreased their use of negative communication behaviors. These effects resulted in higher positive-to-negative ratios. Furthermore, the teacher praise became more behavior-specific for academic and social behaviors, and students’ level of task engagement improved and became more stable.
Previous research on visual analysis has reported low levels of interrater agreement. However, many of these studies have methodological limitations (e.g., use of AB designs, undefined judgment task) that may have negatively influenced agreement. Our primary purpose was to evaluate whether agreement would be higher than previously reported if we addressed these weaknesses. Our secondary purposes were to investigate agreement at the tier level (i.e., the AB comparison) and at the functional relation level in multiple baseline designs and to examine the relationship between raters' decisions at each of these levels. We asked experts (N = 52) to make judgments about changes in the dependent variable in individual tiers and about the presence of an overall functional relation in 31 multiple baseline graphs. Our results indicate that interrater agreement was just at or just below minimally adequate levels for both types of decisions and that agreement at the individual tier level often resulted in agreement about the overall functional relation. We report additional findings and discuss implications for practice and future research.
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