Abstract
As the world continues to face significant challenges due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we must be even more committed to advocating for and providing effective services to individuals with disabilities and their families. In Issue 1 of Volume 87 of Exceptional Children, we present six articles, geared toward effectively serving individuals with disabilities from infancy to adulthood. We hope these articles will support you in your advocacy and intervention efforts.
Using a national-level data set, Woods explored longitudinal patterns of special education receipt for children in kindergarten through eighth grade. Overall, she classified students into four trajectories of special education service receipt—never, persistent, delayed, and discontinued. She then explored a variety of variables to ascertain similarities and differences in students assigned to different trajectories. She reported many intriguing findings. For example, she found that students who exited special education performed similarly in mathematic to students who never received special education services.
Early childhood education is essential for all children with disabilities but especially for those from low-income families (i.e., doubly vulnerable). Via secondary data analyses, Schochet and colleagues examined center-based early childhood programming to other instructional models. They found that center-based early childhood education was more beneficial for doubly vulnerable children than parental care for language and literacy development and resulted in better prosocial outcomes compared to children who receive home-based services.
Young women with disabilities face challenges transitioning from school to adulthood. Lindstrom and colleagues conducted a cluster randomized control trial of the Path 2 the Future (P2F) career development curriculum that is geared to the needs of young women with disabilities. Overall, the students who received the P2F curriculum outperformed students in the control condition on career development skills.
Buzhardt and colleagues conducted a randomized control trial of Making Online Decisions (MOD). MOD is a web application to help educators make data-driven decisions as they serve families with infants and toddlers with or at risk for a language delay in early start home-visiting programs. Children served by educators who used MOD had significantly more language growth compared to children whose home-visitors did not utilize MOD.
Gesel and Lemons conducted a replication study of the accuracy and timeliness of various schedules of curriculum based measurement (CBM) progress monitoring in reading for elementary students with special needs. Similar to the original study, Gesel and Lemons reported that intermittent progress monitoring schedules had greater accuracy and better timeliness of instructional decision making than weekly progress monitoring schedules. This article is the first one in EC to earn a preregistration badge. We encourage future EC authors to follow their example and preregister their studies.
Yuan and Chen conducted a multiple baseline design with randomization of intervention order and predetermined start points to ascertain if an interdependent group contingency improved reciprocal conversation of children with ASD working in dyads. Overall, the study’s results showed that implementation of the interdependent group contingency increased independent reciprocal conversational responses and sustained conversational exchanges.
We hope these articles provide you with valuable insights into how to serve individuals with disabilities and their families.