Rural Special Education Quarterly

Children with diagnosed disabilities, teachers and classroom staff, and families living in rural areas have difficulty accessing any and all behavioral services, including parent training, due to a lack of providers, distance to clinics, cost of transportation, low income and/or inadequate health insurance, and confidentiality concerns from living in small communities. In this study, Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) was used to train early childhood professionals on how to implement Prevent–Teach–Reinforce for Young Children, which is a step-by-step manualized approach to the assessment and treatment of challenging behavior that reflects a commitment to evidence-based practice. Results of the pilot study, study limitations, and future directions are discussed.

Parent advocacy is an essential component to help children with disabilities receive appropriate school services. However, there are limited studies about parent advocacy for children with disabilities living in rural areas. To address this issue, semistructured interviews were conducted with 12 parents of children with disabilities. The purpose of the study was to identify and define unique barriers to and facilitators of advocacy among families of children with disabilities living in rural areas. Constant comparative analysis was used to analyze the interview data. The findings suggest that families living in rural areas lack the necessary resources to advocate successfully for their children with disabilities. Notably, participants expressed that advocating and maintaining relationships with school personnel took an emotional toll. Participants also reported that relationships with school personnel outside of school affected their experiences with advocacy. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

In this article, we describe the self-directed change made by a rural elementary school in response to a data-based examination of its service-delivery model that revealed its lowest performing students were spending most of their time with the school’s least qualified staff. This mixed-method case study describes (a) why and how the school shifted personnel deployment and utilization, (b) factors that facilitated the shifts in service delivery, and (c) perceived effects of the changes. Findings demonstrate how implementing data-based decision-making through strong collaborative leadership led to recognizing, exploring, and modifying the school’s overreliance on paraprofessionals by increasing the availability of more highly skilled personnel to facilitate more inclusive instruction and collaboration. Participants also described challenges and perceived negative aspects related to change. We conclude with implications for practice, including how this study could inform similar change efforts in small rural schools, and suggestions for future research.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the most dramatic and far-reaching events to impact education in recent years. At the onset of this global crisis, schools were required to pivot, with little warning or planning, to educate the more than 50 million school-age children in the United States through some form of nontraditional instruction (NTI), which often involved technology-based distance education. While shifts to NTI for short time periods may be feasible for many students, the potential impact of long-term NTI on students with extensive support needs (ESNs) and their families, especially in rural areas, may be particularly acute. In this article, we discuss specific strategies that address and incorporate what we know about extended NTI in rural school districts, including both lessons learned and areas of concern, with particular attention to the role and importance of caregivers. We outline ways that caregivers can be supported and how natural environment teaching provides one useful framework for efforts to reduce skill regression and to increase the overall potential for skill generalization when traditional schooling is interrupted.

For rural locations, the use of remote learning may provide schools the opportunity to meet student needs without requiring students to travel long distances to access services. It is critical that teachers of students with disabilities understand how to support learning and know how to use the accommodations, modifications, and assistive technologies listed in student Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) in online classrooms. Students with language disabilities sometimes require augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems to effectively communicate. This article provides teachers with practical tips of teaching students to use AAC online and supporting its continued use in the virtual classroom.