The process of including students with learning disabilities (LD) into general education classes has afforded these children the opportunity to learn alongside their same-age peers. Often, LD students require accommodations and/or modifications in order to succeed in the general education setting. General education teachers must provide these students with the accommodations/modifications that are recommended on each child's individualized education plan. The current study examined rural teachers' attitudes toward accommodations/modifications in their classrooms. Three questions were asked: 1) How effective are the recommended/implemented accommodations/modifications?, 2) How fair are the recommended/implemented accommodations/modifications to use in the general education classroom?, and 3) How efficient are the recommended/implemented accommodations/modifications to use in the general class setting? The results of this study revealed that rural general education teachers favored accommodations/modifications that are less intrusive to their day-to-day teaching procedures, take the least amount of time to implement, and separate less the learning disabled from non-disabled students.
Using a comparative analysis of two rural school districts with similar demographic profiles in Mississippi, the impact on special education programming of disparate school district wealth was studied. The study revealed that the wealthy school district had far greater local revenues supporting special education that was not offset by either state or federal dollars. This revenue difference was most obvious in differences in the quality of special education personnel, with the wealthier district employing teachers with higher academic degrees and with more teaching experience. Implications for resource equalization are also discussed.
This manuscript presents a case for the use of problem-based learning (PBL) in the preservice training of rural special educators. The PBL process is defined and its implementation procedures are outlined. A PBL case scenario is presented from a course on secondary special education methods from a rural university. Additionally, preservice teachers' PBL analyses of the case are displayed and discussed. Implications for the use of PBL are offered, in particular with rural preservice teachers in mind.
The authors of this article present a perspective of developing rural school-community partnerships based upon a synergistic foundation that exists in most rural areas. Indicators of this synergism are identified and specific examples are provided of rural school-community partnerships directed at delivering post-secondary transition training for students with disabilities.
The assessment of students is a key, if not essential, component to delivering an appropriate special education. As Masters and Mori (1986, p. 77) have stated, &dquo;Appropriate instruction in special education is always preceded by appropriate assessment.&dquo; The functions of assessment usually focus on two tasks: (1) placing students in special programs and (2) deciding how these students will be educated (Helton, 1984). It would be extremely difficult for individualized education to be designed without proper assessment as a prerequisite.Whereas traditional assessment models are geared toward immediate placement and educational needs, an appropriate assessment model for adolescents with mild handicaps should encompass postsecondary needs as well. The plight of these youths after they leave school has been well documented. Biklen and Bogdan (1978) found that 85% of adults with handicaps had annual incomes of less than $7,000, and 52% earned less than $2,000 per year. Bowe (1978) discovered that two-thirds of the population of adults with handicaps was at, or near, the poverty level.
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