David Scanlon

Academic and Participation Profiles of School-Age Dropouts with and without Disabilities

Young adults with learning disabilities (LD) or emotional or behavioral disorders (EBD) tend to achieve below their nondisabled peers in secondary school. They typically lack proficiency in academic skills and are less prepared for the world of work. A disproportionate percentage of these students drop out of school. Some of the dropouts find their way to adult education to pursue a General Educational Development (GED) diploma. Two hundred seventy-seven young adults with and without LD/EBD were interviewed regarding their school and post-dropout experiences. Findings indicate that factors such as disability status, when individuals drop out, and self-perspectives influence education participation.

Procedural Facilitators and Cognitive Strategies: Tools for Unraveling the Mysteries of Comprehension and the Writing Process, and for Providing Meaningful Access to the General Curriculum

A solid, emerging research base exists to inform how we provide meaningful access to the general education curriculum for students with learning disabilities (LD). For example, the presentation of challenging content to academically diverse learners can be demystified using content enhancement techniques. Additionally, a range of strategies can be taught to enhance reading comprehension and expressive writing abilities. Examples from several lines of research in comprehension and writing are used to highlight the underlying features of these empirically based approaches and to introduce the reader to the history of this expanding body of research.

How to Publish in Scholarly Journals

This article is based on an invited talk entitled “Getting Published While in Grad School,” which was presented for the Graduate Student Council of the American Educational Research Association at the association’s 2005 annual meeting. The authors discuss issues to consider when one is planning and writing a scholarly manuscript, and they offer several suggestions about substance, organization, and style. They also describe the journal submission and peer review process, including what to do if a journal editor’s decision is “revise and resubmit,” “accept pending revisions,” or “reject.”

Specific Learning Disability and Its Newest Definition Which Is Comprehensive? and Which Is Insufficient?

The American Psychiatric Association’s proposed definition of specific learning disability (“specific learning disorder”) for the DSM-5 reflects current thinking and best practice in learning disabilities. It continues the core conceptualization of learning disability (LD) as well as proposes identification criteria to supplant the discredited aptitude–achievement discrepancy formula. Improvements can be found along with long-standing and new controversies about the nature of LD. The proposed definition both provides a model of a currently acceptable definition and reflects critical issues in the operationalization of LD that the field continues to neglect.

An Accommodations Model for the Secondary Inclusive Classroom

Despite expectations for accommodations in inclusive classrooms, little guidance for effective practice is available. Most accommodations policies and evidence-based practices address assessments. High school regular and special educators collaborated in focus groups to articulate a model based on their practices and perceptions of best practice. The model addresses classroom accommodations identification, provision, and evaluation. The model is particularly appropriate for cotaught classrooms with high enrollments of students with high incidence disabilities.

LD Summit: Important Issues for the Field of Learning Disabilities

This article summarizes nine White Papers that were commissioned by the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) and presented at the Learning Disabilities Summit — Building a Foundation for the Future, August 2001. The purpose of the article is to inform the membership of the Council for Learning Disabilities (CLD) of the issues identified by authors of the White Papers that promise to influence research, policy, and practice.

Procedural Facilitation of Propositional Knowledge in the Content Areas

Both inclusion and challenging content area curricula require student proficiency in skills of learning. Strategy instruction that is supported with graphic procedural facilitators can help to meet that requirement, particularly for more complex, or higher order, tasks. Ninety-eight 8th graders with and without learning disabilities learned a higher order strategy for identifying, defending, and expressing factual and opinion knowledge. The strategy was taught across the curriculum using a graphic procedural facilitator. Student ability to generalize the skills was tested. Findings indicate both groups of students benefited to approximately equal levels. Those with weakest skill performance at pretest benefited the most.

Student Perspectives on Academic Accommodations

Abstract The active involvement of secondary school students with high-incidence disabilities (HI) in instructional accommodations is essential to both enacting the accommodations and to the accommodations effectiveness. Very little is known about students with HI’s knowledge about instructional accommodations, experiences with them, or opinions on effective practices. A focus group study was conducted with 10 high school students with HI. A content analysis (Fraenkel & Wallen, 2009) revealed they are unaware of how their accommodations are identified, and that they typically are not directly taught to use them. The students explained how accommodations are usually provided in the classroom, including the ways they signal need, and offered their suggestions for more effective practices, which included responding to fairness and potential embarrassment. Their comments also revealed their beliefs and practices for self-advocating for accommodations.

The Effectiveness of Alternative IEP Dispute Resolution Practices

Alternative Individualized Education Program (IEP) dispute resolution models should respond to limitations of current options. An experimental IEP dispute resolution program provides parents and schools with an evidence-supported neutral perspective on what is needed for free and appropriate education (FAPE) and least restrictive environment (LRE). Then, instead of being facilitated or directed via a hearing, for example, the parties attempt to resolve their own dispute. Ninety percent of consultations led to a signed IEP. Effectiveness, however, also concerns satisfaction and working relationships between the parties. Follow-up surveys with 36% of parent parties (parent, advocate, attorney), and 33% of school parties (administrator, educator, attorney) were analyzed using concurrent triangulation mixed methods design, including a content coding analysis. Results reveal beliefs by a majority that the process was effective, and working relationships were maintained or strengthened. Lessons for future interactions were learned.

Introduction to the Issue: Tools That Support Literacy Education

Students need to be able to understand and use technologies as part of learning (ISTE Technology Foundation Standards for All Students, n.d.). Conversations about technology in education often focus more on access, operating the technology, or its potential than on student learning. One consequence is a usage divide separating ‘‘technophiles’’ from ‘‘technophobes.’’ Tremendous advances in technology have yielded software, equipment, personal use devices, and standards that have revolutionized educators’ practices (Rose & Meyer, 2002). Many of those technological advances are wonderful for education, and while we are still imagining their potentials newer technological innovations are emerging. Even the youngest educators are confronted by the ‘‘digital divide’’ that separates their technology skills and inclinations from those of their students who have grown up in newer generations of technology. Technology advances are so prominent that the term technology has become virtually synonymous with electronic apparatuses. However, not all technology requires a power source. Technology exists in high-tech forms such as WordQ (www. wordq.com) and Co:Writer (www.donjohnston.com), which perform various functions including predicting word choices and spelling, and ‘‘reading’’ student text aloud; low-tech forms such as hand-held spell-checkers (which were once high tech) and typoscopes; and no-tech forms such as mnemonically cued strategies and curriculum-based measurement graphs and charts. What makes something a ‘‘technology’’ is that it facilitates some form of productivity. What makes a technology useful in education is that it efficiently and effectively promotes student learning (Blackhurst, 2005). What makes education technologies effective is their role in procedural facilitation. That is, they are tools that enable students and=or their educators to perform meaningful cognitive and academic tasks. Procedural facilitation