Elizabeth R. Drame

Co-Instructing at the Secondary Level Strategies for Success

ly spend instructional time in general education classrooms, more and more special educators are working there as well. Through interviews and classroom observations, we found that effective special education co-teachers share certain characteristics: professionalism, the ability to articulate and model instruction to meet student needs, the ability to accurately assess student progress, the ability to analyze teaching/teaching styles, the ability to work with a wide range of students, and a vested interest in course content.

Examining Sociocultural Factors in Response to Intervention Models

A s a prelude to the reauthorization of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 2004, President Bush charged a Commission on Excellence in Special Education with evaluating the current status of special education on the national, state, and local levels (President’s Commission on Excellence in Special Education, 2002). One of the Commission’s recommendations concerned the need to implement and support early intervention and identification systems so as to decrease the number of students who were found to have a specific learning disability, the largest disability category represented in the population of students with special needs (Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, 2005). The 2004 reauthorization of IDEA incorporated recommendations in the Commission’s report regarding the implementation of a response to intervention or instruction (RTI) model for the identification of a specific learning disability (SLD). This action was a response to decades of debate regarding identification approaches emphasizing the requirement for a discrepancy between a child’s IQ and his/her academic performance to diagnose a specific learning disability (Lyon et al., 2001). Since Dr. Samuel Kirk coined the term ”learning disability” in 1962, children diagnosed with this condition were determined to be those experiencing significant and unexpected underachievement in one or more academic areas, given their potential to achieve, as assessed by an intelligence assessment (Hallahan & Mock, 2003). Thus, a learning disability could be identified in any one of the following academic areas: oral expression, listening comprehension, written expression, basic reading skill, reading comprehension, and mathematics calculation or reasoning. The etiology or factors contributing to this unexpected underachievement were considered intrinsic, or residing within the child. Education and psychology professionals came to believe that specific, individual neurological or information processing deficits, related to cognitive processes underlying knowledge acquisition and expression, were responsible for the academic underachievement experienced by students diagnosed with a specific learning disability (SLD). One concern with this formula for identifying an SLD is the need to wait until a sufficiently large enough gap in IQ and achievement emerges, necessitating potentially years of academic failure before identification. The discrepancy approach also contributes to disproportionate representation If students who

A Charter School's Journey toward Serving All Learners: A Case Study.

Public charter schools across the country are struggling to better serve a range of students with disabilities. Using the approach of a participatory evaluation, a K-8 college preparatory school community of teachers, administrators, parents, and students were better able to define those practices that impeded or supported a high-quality proactive integrated comprehensive service delivery model for all learners. In so doing, they were empowered to take their research findings and move to action through adapting their mission statement aligned with policy and procedures that would better enable the creation and implementation of a collaborative comprehensive integrated service delivery model.

Measuring Academic Growth in Students With Disabilities in Charter Schools

In the current climate of high-stakes accountability created under the No Child Left Behind legislation, public schools, including charter schools, are under tremendous pressure to show consistent improvement in student achievement for all students. Students with disabilities present unique challenges to schools attempting to meet Adequate Yearly Progress. An accountability system that relies exclusively on students’ ability to meet a fixed proficiency level is now under great scrutiny. Indeed, efforts to pilot an assessment system that measures individual students’ growth are underway in a number of states.What can be learned from analyzing the achievement of students with disabilities using a growth model? This question became the focus of a study conducted in 4 urban charter schools where growth in reading and math achievement were examined for students with and without disabilities. The challenges with measuring growth in charter environments and implications for policies around accountability are examined.

‘We make the road by walking’: a collaborative inquiry into the experiences of women in academia

This paper documents collaborative inquiry research by six academic women to answer research questions, including: what institutional factors and personal socialization experiences influence diverse junior faculty women’s success during the tenure process? Data were collected through storytelling, dialogue and reflection over four years following a four-phase format. Implications for the long-term success and retention of diverse women faculty in academia were discussed.

Engaged Scholarship in the Academy: Reflections from the Margins

This paper represents a series of reflections on collective and individual efforts of diverse women scholars to reconcile alternative views of scholarship within the academy. We document our collective experience with embedding the concept of the “scholarship of engagement” in our practice of research, teaching, and service through a process of collaborative inquiry. In addition, we discuss individual efforts to challenge university colleagues and students (many of whom are teachers in training) to interrogate issues of social justice, diversity, and marginalization in their academic environments. Our experiences provide a critical examination of the supports needed for diverse women faculty who engage in critical dialogues that challenge traditional institutional structures while on the tenure path.

Participatory Research in Support of Quality Public Education in New Orleans.

In 2007, two years after Hurricane Katrina, several education and child advocacy groups began discussing the depleted conditions of the New Orleans public school district. These groups came together to discuss how to create a sustainable education reform movement post Katrina. New Orleans-based community groups and outside university researchers joined together to implement a multi-year participatory action research project to engage historically marginalized, black communities in a dialog about quality public education. We found that, in order to create a collective vision for what quality public education looks like for black children, the New Orleans community needs to resolve perceived challenges with inequitable access to quality public schools, with who has a say in governing these schools, with inconsistent quality of teachers, with inequitable distribution of resources, and with strategies for serving challenging students. The results of this pilot participatory action research project led to a sustained community engagement campaign addressing these issues.

Inclusive and Special Educator Preparation and the edTPA

Introduction to the special issue of Teacher Education and Special Education (TESE) on issues related to the educational Teacher Performance Assessment (edTPA) in the preparation of inclusive and special educators.

Introduction. Black Bridges, Troubled Waters, and the Search for Solid Ground: The People, the Problems, and Educational Justice

Blacklack professional researchers often serve as cultural brokers or ”bridges“ between White-dominated institutions and marginalized Black communities that are in dire need of educational justice. Identifying as Black and as part of Black communities is important for many people of the African Diaspora, including academically trained researchers, especially since community itself serves as an important unit of identity.’ Black researcher racial self-identification and alignment with Black communities reflects a commitment to self-definition, determination, and liberation. One of the sites of struggle where these identities are leveraged to produce change is in the field of urban education.