Preparation of high quality personnel to provide educational services to students with disabilities living in rural areas is, at best, challenging. Findings from a comprehensive study concerning the status of the implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in rural settings and the issues such implementation presents to teacher education programs in these areas are discussed. Members of the American Council on Rural Special Education (ACRES) participated in the study. Results indicated that strategies for enhancing personnel preparation, recruitment, and retention of individuals to institutions of higher education and K-12 schools in rural settings include distance learning, on-site professional development opportunities, salary incentives/increments, and benefits. Linking evaluation data to the general education curriculum and determining how the student's disabilities affect his/her progress in general education are issues for practitioners implementing IDEA in rural settings. Recommendations are provided for enhancing personnel preparation and service delivery based on the results.

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The Questionnaire on Palliative Care for Advanced Dementia (qPAD) is a 2-part instrument that measures long-term care staff knowledge, and beliefs, perceptions, and attitudes about palliative and end-of-life care for persons with advanced dementia. Factor analyses of the Knowledge Test (coefficient α = .81) produced 3 factors: Anticipating Needs, Preventing Negative Outcomes, and Insight and Intuition (coefficient α = .75, .73, and .58, respectively), explaining 67% of the total variance. Factor analyses of the Attitude Scale (coefficient α = .83) produced 3 factors: Job Satisfaction, Perceptions and Beliefs, and Work Setting Support of Families (coefficient α = .90, .64, and .67, respectively), explaining 68% of the total variance. These initial findings hold promise for an instrument that measures both knowledge and attitudes of long-term care staff in the care of persons with advanced dementia.

States are increasingly using test scores as part of the requirements for high school graduation or certification. In these circumstances, a battery of tests or, with writing, analytic traits are considered that usually cover different aspects of the state's content standards. Because pass or fail decisions are made affecting students' futures, the validity of standard-setting procedures and strategies is a major concern. Policymakers and legislators must decide which of these 2 standard-setting strategies to use for making pass or fail decisions for students seeking certification or for meeting a high school graduation requirement. The compensatory strategy focuses on total performance, summing scores across all tests in the battery. The conjunctive strategy requires passing performance for each test in the battery. This article reviews and evaluates compensatory and conjunctive standard-setting strategies. The rationales for each type are presented and discussed. Results from a study comparing the compensatory and conjunctive strategies for a state high school certification writing test provide insight into the problem of choosing either strategy. This article concludes with a set of recommendations for those who must decide which type of standard-setting strategy to use.Many states,