Scholars have posed several explanations for the limited progress in improving reading comprehension outcomes for students with reading difficulties (RD), including inadequate measurement, the complex nature of reading comprehension, underdeveloped vocabulary and background knowledge, and the lack of theory-informed instruction. We provide another possible explanation: the lack of aligned reading practices across settings. This article describes an approach to aligning reading comprehension practices (e.g., building background knowledge, explicit vocabulary instruction, generating main idea statements) across tiers (i.e., core and intervention), which includes using the same strategies, instructional language, and pacing. This alignment supports students with RD to engage in intentional practice opportunities across reading experiences, thereby supporting generalization, skill transfer, and successful learning from text. We describe prior research on aligning reading comprehension instruction and provide a detailed example of this alignment from Project ALIGN. We conclude by providing considerations for future research and implications for educators.
In this systematic literature review we examined evidence for Second Step , a social-emotional learning curriculum implemented as a Tier 1 practice with elementary students. We applied Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) Standards for Evidence-Based Practices in Special Education to evaluate if Second Step elementary could be considered an evidence-based practice. We found 37 studies meeting inclusion criteria, of which 13 met our weighted CEC quality indicator coding criterion (80%) to be considered methodologically sound. Following CEC guidelines, we classified three of 13 studies as having positive effects , while eight had neutral/mixed effects , and two were missing data preventing effect size calculation needed for classification. With three non-randomized group studies demonstrating positive effects and eight studies with neutral/mixed effects , the ratio of positive to neutral/mixed did not meet the minimum criterion of 3:1 or greater, so we placed Second Step elementary into CEC’s mixed evidence category of evidence-based classifications. We then discuss educational implications of these findings and future research directions.
Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience differences in peer proximity and need educator support to develop strong peer relationships. Sensor technologies have emerged to inform interventions that can support interactional proximity. An exploratory study was conducted to test a sensor technology in an inclusive classroom with a child with ASD and nine peers. Data were collected and analyzed to understand the interactional proximity of the child with ASD with peers and teachers including initiations, and terminations with peers. Results show differences in peer proximity, initiations, terminations, and preferences for specific peers. Teacher proximity for the head and assistant teacher is also reported. Findings show initial support for sensor technology to measure the interactional proximity of children with ASD and their peers including initiations, and terminations, as well as provide insights about teacher proximity.
Successful implementation of coordinated supports for students with intensive learning and behavior needs, including students with disabilities, is complex and challenging for a variety of reasons. A multi-tiered system of support framework has the potential to help educators organize this support, but implementation barriers persist. In this article, we discuss how alignment may help address common challenges. We discuss why alignment is important, gaps that often interfere with it, and we offer four recommendations for aligning implementation: (a) leverage the implementation cascade, (b) build local capacity with effective professional development, (c) plan for alignment and integration together to promote positive school experiences, and (d) use data for continuous improvement.
In April 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling in A.J.T v. Osseo Area Schools , Independent School District No. 279 . The case involved a lawsuit centering on Ava, a teenage girl with a rare form of epilepsy. Her parents alleged the district discriminated against Ava when it refused to appropriately accommodate her unique needs. Because Ava attended school in Minnesota, which is in the jurisdiction of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, her parents had to satisfy the eighth circuit court’s standard requiring that school district personnel had to act on bad faith or use gross misjudgment, before they could prevail in an educational discrimination case. In ruling in favor of the parents, the Supreme Court emphatically held that children with disabilities seeking relief for education-related discrimination do not need to satisfy a more stringent legal test than in other contexts in which plaintiffs sue for discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. We discuss the principles of this case and its significant implications regarding the rights of students with disabilities and their parents.
Families of children with disabilities possess wisdom to inform and empower one another in the navigation of processes and systems across their child’s lifespan. As members of a culturally and linguistically diverse collaborative transition coalition network, researchers used survey ( n = 27) and interview ( n = 6) data from parents of children with disabilities in one state, analyzed through a mixed methods design to compile authentic information for families of children and adults with disabilities. The aim was to design a parent guidance timeline that is useful and inclusive of culturally and linguistically diverse parents. Though most parents responding and interviewed were white and middle class (45,000–150,000) or affluent (150,000 and up), there were some differences in ease of navigation across the lifespan for people of color as compared to white parents, evident in qualitative survey responses and in the interview. Quantitative data revealed that different supports are more important at different points in the lifespan. Frameworks for the analysis included funds of knowledge and causal agency with an emphasis on empowerment. Qualitative data yielded four themes: shared power , hope and resilience , compliance versus care , and relational capital/assets. The four themes converged to center navigation as an overarching construct connecting parental advice to their experiences. Implications for research and practice to empower families of children with disabilities to navigate systems are discussed, as well as a call to include advice from a more diverse sample.
Peer relationships and social interactions in the classroom can facilitate learning, and peer-mediated interventions (PMIs) are frequently used to support the development and quality of social interactions between students with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DDs) and their peers. This meta-analysis examined extant literature on PMI for secondary students with I/DD. We identified 37 studies and dissertations for inclusion in this review. Effect size (ES) estimates demonstrate significant positive effects in both group design (ES = 1.38) and single-case design (ES = 1.96). Across intervention types, peer networks (ES = 2.20) and peer support arrangements (ES = 2.25) produced larger effects than peer initiation/response interventions (ES = 1.53). Overall findings suggest that PMIs are efficacious in supporting social interactions between secondary students with I/DD and their peers and can be feasibly and successfully implemented by educators in school settings.
This study extends prior inquiry examining educators' well-being in the context of Comprehensive, Integrated, Three-Tiered (Ci3T) models, one type of integrated tiered system. We investigated educators' well-being (self-efficacy, burnout) and implementation (treatment integrity, social validity) during the post-pandemic era among educators in schools with >= 3 years of Ci3T implementation. Findings indicated consistently high levels of treatment integrity and social validity (>80%) across 2 years. In terms of well-being, educators in this post-pandemic sample were comparable to a pre-pandemic sample of educators implementing Ci3T. Relative to a pre-pandemic comparison sample, educators reported higher and increasing efficacy for instructional strategies and classroom management, as well as lower depersonalization and higher personal accomplishment. Yet educators also reported elevated levels of emotional exhaustion. Results identified individual- and school-level predictors of implementation and efficacy. As with studies of educator well-being in integrated tiered systems prior to the pandemic, fall treatment integrity consistently predicted educators' spring self-efficacy across domains. Results also showed educators' fall efficacy for student engagement predicted higher spring treatment integrity, suggesting a reciprocal relationship between constructs.
Elevating student voice is a critical need in the design, implementation, and dissemination of special education research. Centering student voice in special education research would increase opportunities for students with dis/abilities to act as causal agents in their own lives, yet students with dis/abilities are largely excluded from the student voice movement. In this paper, we operationalize a student voice orientation for pre-kindergarten through 12th-grade (PK-12) special education research, describe five methodological strategies for adopting a student voice orientation in PK-12 special education research, and discuss barriers to doing so. Each methodological strategy includes examples from selected prior studies drawing on a range of methods and methodologies. Our goal is that all PK-12 special education researchers consider and begin to adopt a student voice orientation in their work.
In this introduction to the special issue, we anchor the special issue in a shared definition of student voice research. Following this, we explore the need for student voice research in special education and discuss how research that centers the voices of students with disabilities aligns with the historical foundations of special education. We then introduce the articles that will be included in the special issue and consider how this scholarship could enhance our understanding of students' K-12 schooling experiences and outcomes related to educational progress, equal opportunity, independent living, full participation, and economic self-sufficiency.
Special education teachers’ working conditions are associated with instructional practices, burnout, and retention. As such, working conditions represent a malleable factor which can support a robust special education teacher workforce. To our knowledge, however, there exist no comprehensive interventions designed to both identify challenges for special educators’ working conditions and generate feasible solutions. We provide an overview of the process by which we adapted an existing working conditions intervention for employees in other fields to be relevant for special educators of students with emotional and behavioral disorders, who often report unmanageable workloads. With the goal of informing researchers’ intervention development efforts, we detail our implementation of a design-based research process to guide our rapid iterative development cycles. Through interviews and surveys with constituents, we generated initial answers to our design-based research questions. We provide these findings as well as key takeaways from the iterative design-based research process for intervention development.
In April 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling in A.J.T v. Osseo Area Schools, Independent School District No. 279. The case involved a lawsuit centering on Ava, a teenage girl with a rare form of epilepsy. Her parents alleged the district discriminated against Ava when it refused to appropriately accommodate her unique needs. Because Ava attended school in Minnesota, which is in the jurisdiction of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, her parents had to satisfy the eighth circuit court's standard requiring that school district personnel had to act on bad faith or use gross misjudgment, before they could prevail in an educational discrimination case. In ruling in favor of the parents, the Supreme Court emphatically held that children with disabilities seeking relief for education-related discrimination do not need to satisfy a more stringent legal test than in other contexts in which plaintiffs sue for discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. We discuss the principles of this case and its significant implications regarding the rights of students with disabilities and their parents.
Student voice research in special and inclusive education is more than an academic pursuit; it is a call to action for reimagining education where students are active agents in shaping their schooling experiences. This commentary builds on the contributions of the papers in this special issue, which collectively highlight the importance of student voice in disrupting adultism, informing teacher practice, and challenging systemic inequities, particularly for multiply marginalized disabled students. We examine the methodological tensions and opportunities in student voice research, emphasizing the need for theoretically grounded conceptualizations of disabled student voice, contextualized and creative methodologies, and purpose-driven and relational research. Ultimately, we argue that student voice research is not just about listening to youth: it is about shifting historical power, a relational dynamic, and future-making work that turns to students as knowledgeable contributors to improving our educational system.
This study invokes the theory of self and identity to investigate how multiply marginalized students, namely, Black boys with disabilities, are subjected to and make sense of exclusionary discipline, as well as the ways in which it impacts their identity fashioning processes. Drawing on Intersectionality, an instrumental case study design was employed to understand the experiences of five Black boys who formed their practiced identities in and through their day-to-day engagement in and interactions with disciplinary moments within the U.S. Connor School District (CSD; pseudonym). Amid a figured world of exclusion, the boys grappled with the social discourse and practices to accept, resist, or negotiate school-imposed identities. Data sources included interviews, observations, and educational documents. Disciplinary moments and experiences were found to both mediate and constrain the boys' self-making. Recommendations for research, practice, and policy are presented.
Folding-in, similar to incremental rehearsal, is a flashcard procedure that, when paired with repeated reading and self-graphing, has shown promise for improving oral reading fluency. This study used a multiple-probe design across participants to examine the use of folding-in and repeated reading to teach unknown words from nonfiction reading passages for three fifth-grade students with disabilities. In addition, self-graphing was added to a second phase of intervention to examine additional effects. Results indicated that reading fluency improved for all three participants compared with baseline, but the addition of self-graphing did not clearly provide an additional benefit for the participants. Participants generalized skills to novel passages throughout the intervention and maintained increases in reading fluency after the intervention. The folding-in intervention combined with repeated reading is effective for improving reading fluency; however, the addition of self-graphing may not provide an additional benefit for students.
Students with disabilities who experience significant early literacy challenges need structured reading instruction. This study documents the initial efficacy of Friends on the Block (www.friendsontheblock.com), a comprehensive and flexible program designed for students with intensive early literacy needs. Elementary-age students with disabilities and intensive early literacy needs, including those with intellectual and developmental disabilities, were randomly assigned to either the Friends on the Block intervention group (n = 31) or the standard business-as-usual instruction group (n = 31). The analysis revealed statistically and educationally significant differences favoring Friends on the Block on two out of five measures of phonological awareness and all measures of decoding, word reading fluency, and comprehension. Except for one measure of listening comprehension, no differences were found on measures of language or vocabulary. Findings support increased literacy expectations for students with disabilities who require intensive literacy support, including those with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Background: Students with disabilities face unique challenges when transitioning to higher education, emphasizing the need for tailored support during the college application process. Advances in AI, particularly in personalized assistance, offer promising opportunities to improve accessibility in education. This study explored the role of AI in supporting students with disabilities by focusing on ADVi, an AI chatbot that provided college admissions guidance via text messaging. Methods: We employed a multilevel-negative-binomial model to determine whether students with disabilities demonstrated a distinct need for AI-based support in their transition to college. Results: The findings revealed that students with disabilities used ADVi significantly more than their typically developing peers, with the highest utilization observed among students with autism and emotional disabilities. Conclusions: These results highlight the growing use of ADVi among students with disabilities, emphasizing the critical role of AI-driven tools in enhancing accessibility during their transition to postsecondary education.
This study explores how the Family Envisioning Meeting (FEM), a person-centered planning (PCP) process for transition-aged students in Singapore, can be adapted to better meet the needs of stakeholders. Using the Cultural Adaptation Checklist, qualitative data from 17 individuals (i.e., four parents, eight school personnel, and five transition planning coordinators) across four special education schools were analyzed across six domains: language, persons, content, goals, methods, and context. While participants valued FEM for promoting collaboration and amplifying student and family voices, both cultural and practical barriers were identified. Culturally, these included unfamiliar terminology, discomfort with abstract goal setting, and norms around parental authority. Practically, challenges included limited staffing, unclear roles, and facilitation skills. Findings underscore the need for culturally responsive and contextually feasible adaptations of FEM and highlight the importance of systemic investment in training, infrastructure, and sustainable models of delivery.
Scholars in special education and related fields have developed and applied standards for classifying evidence-based practices (EBPs). Although many EBPs in special education have been identified by researchers applying one or more sets of EBP standards in systematic reviews published in peer-reviewed journal articles, this literature has yet to be synthesized. The purpose of this paper is to examine the classification of instructional practices in targeted EBP reviews published in peer-reviewed journals. A systematic review of literature identified 117 targeted EBP reviews published between 2005 and 2021, in which we identified 32 practices that were solely classified as EBPs. The findings of this review underscore the importance of conducting and reporting methodologically sound research to expand and clarify the evidence base for practices in special education. Implications for practitioners include the need to prioritize practices using the best available evidence while remaining critical consumers of emerging research.
Cognitive and language abilities influence literacy outcomes in individuals with intellectual disability (ID). The aim of this study was to investigate abilities associated with decoding and reading comprehension in individuals with ID with a systematic review and a correlational meta-analysis. A total of 26 studies with 27 samples and 1,137 participants were included in the meta-analysis. The results showed that reading comprehension was significantly related to decoding ( r = .63), vocabulary ( r = .51), listening comprehension ( r = .43), and IQ ( r = .32). Decoding was significantly related to phonological awareness ( r = .52), phonological short-term memory ( r = .46), rapid automatized naming ( r = −.44), vocabulary ( r = .34), chronological age ( r = .26), IQ ( r = .30), visual short-term memory ( r = .24), and executive-loaded working memory ( r = .32). Limitations connected to unexplained heterogeneity and study quality were found and discussed. This meta-analysis showed that variables identified in studies of typically developing children are relevant for individuals with ID indicating that theories about literacy could reasonably be applied to this population.
