Special Education Law Annual Review 2021

This second installment of Special Education Law Annual Review provides a comprehensive look at the most recent policies and procedure updates, guidelines, and changes in special education law, including cases heard by the US Court of Appeals and policy letters issued by the US Department of Education in 2021. In addition to online resources, this book includes relevant case studies based on the most recent special education rulings.

The Essentials of Special Education Advocacy is a valuable tool for preservice and inservice special education professionals who seek to advocate for their students and their profession. Although significant progress has been made regarding the education of students with disabilities, much work remains. This book provides a framework and a step-by-step guide to systematically understand challenges and organize advocacy efforts for special education professionals to continue the historical progress and propel the next generation of change agents.

Related Services in Special Education: Working Together as a Team is a resource for anyone who works with school-age children with disabilities to showcase the professional expertise and value-add related services providers bring to the IEP team and school community. With a theme of intentional collaboration and communication, this book is written and organized for educators and administrators and designed as a go-to resource—a conversation starter for professional development and ongoing learning about how to increase the effectiveness of the school-based teams who support students with disabilities. The core chapters define related services, review the legal requirements and considerations, offer examples of related services and their providers, and provide strategies to effectively leverage the professional knowledge of all team members. This book is rich in resources, including end-of-chapter thinking and reflection questions, information on the law and Supreme Court cases that guide understanding of related services, an entire chapter of recommended resources to extend learning, and case-study examples to support connection of concepts to practice.

This one-of-a-kind, comprehensive resource provides information about the dispute resolution system, including: how to resolve conflicts through collaboration to avoid the dispute resolution process; how to prepare for state complaint investigations, mediations, and due process hearings; what is involved and what is expected in each; and what happens at the conclusion of the complaint investigation, mediation, or due process hearing, including how school staff can continue to work productively with parents. Using this book, readers will understand how to effectively use dispute resolution practices and procedures to facilitate collaborative and positive partnerships between parents and school personnel in order to better serve students with disabilities.

Advocating for the Common Good: People, Politics, Process, and Policy on Capitol Hill offers a rich and accessible guide to policy making in the nation’s capital, beckoning us to get to the table, make our voices heard, and reinvigorate our policy making institutions. Jane E. West parts the curtains and brings us behind the scenes with a simple framework that enables both the novice and the experienced to deftly navigate the Washington maze. The four Ps—people, politics, process, and policy—are each examined with an eye toward what a successful advocate needs to know. Informed by her forty years of experience as part of the policy making apparatus in education and disability, expert interviews with those in the room where it happens, a deep dive into congressional procedures, and the scholarship on public policy, Dr. West delivers a powerful call to action. This jargon-free guide provides students, professionals, and the public with practical tools and a proven step-by-step process to both analyze existing policies and plan advocacy strategies to change policies moving forward.

Disability, Intersectionality, and Belonging in Special Education focuses on preparing educators who use socioculturally sustaining practices, curricula, and instruction through an intersectional lens. This book empowers preservice students and special education practitioners and administrators to meet the needs of disabled individuals. Understanding the full range of requirements relating to socioculturally sustaining practices is imperative to working with individuals with disabilities as well as with their families and caregivers. Being able to understand and explain this complex issue to others is important and often necessary. Social injustices in special education are historical and systemic. Special education practitioners are typically unaware of the importance of intersectional differences because they have been prepared to address cultural perspectives only during awareness days or through specific units in curricula. At other times they discuss the topic diagnostically—for example, as part of an educational plan or when teaching English as a second language. Other issues stem from the value system of the special education practitioners themselves; some are not willing to engage in these concepts, while others prioritize treating all students the same by using the terms “fairness,” “equity,” and “colorblindness” to justify this treatment. Even when special educator practitioners attempt to address injustices on behalf of their students, they tend to center on only the student’s disability, which means they are ignoring or erasing other aspects of their students’ identities. These concerns highlight the importance of building the sociocultural competence of our teaching force. This book will help practitioners build this competence in their own spheres of influence.

This book provides a primer on the (a) dispute resolution system of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), (b) the U.S. Department of Education, IDEA and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, and (c) online resources to locate special education law. The book also provides a presentation of all policy letters on special education issued by the U.S. Department of Education in 2020 and a synopsis of all special education cases heard by the U.S. Court of Appeals in 2020 brought under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and Section 504.

Despite being the most common learning disability, dyslexia is widely misunderstood. Shrouded by myths and misperceptions, a lack of direct, practical information on dyslexia leaves many teachers and families frustrated. Well-intentioned teachers tell parents that all kids learn differently and at a different pace, but as the months turn into years, the gap between skilled readers and those who struggle widens. The antidote to wait-and-see and more-of-the-same is information. In this book, Sayeski translates research from neuroscience, cognitive psychology, linguistics, and education into accessible information to help teachers and parents unravel the complexities of skilled reading. Unraveling dyslexia requires an understanding of what it means to read—both the accurate recognition of words and the capacity to bring meaning to those words—and identifying where and how difficulty can occur with these processes. To do this, Sayeski situates the challenges some students experience in learning to read within the context of the development of English orthography (i.e., written language) and the history of reading instruction in the schools. Sayeski, then, presents what reading science has revealed about individual differences in reading. Within the book's final chapters, readers will find practical information on how to provide the type of structured literacy instruction required to put students with dyslexia on the path to reading. This book is designed for teachers, administrators, and parents seeking information that can be immediately applied to improve the outcomes of students with dyslexia or who struggle learning to read. It is never too soon to address signs of difficulty with reading. The aim of this book is to provide readers with the knowledge they need to act now to provide students with the gift of literacy.