Special Education

The purpose of the Literacy Accessibility for Biology (LAB) Project is to develop and test an intervention that seeks to improve the performance of grade 9 and grade 10 students with learning disabilities who struggle in biology classrooms because of their reading and writing difficulties. The intervention combines literacy strategies with the use of an innovative reading and writing software tool, SOLO. EDC is carrying out the work in a Boston High School with a range of diverse learners.

Although standards-based reform has increased the rigor and quality of mathematics education, those reforms have not been fully available to students with physical, developmental, sensory, and learning disabilities. One of the reasons for this deficiency is that teachers are not well prepared to implement the reforms with groups of students who have different needs, capabilities, and learning styles.

The Enhanced Assessment project is a federally funded 18-month project that supports New England states in their development of large-scale assessments that address the needs of students with disabilities and English-language learners.

Celebrated annually during the first full week of December, National Inclusive Schools Week highlights and celebrates the progress of the nation’s schools in providing a supportive and quality education to an increasingly diverse student population, particularly those with disabilities.

EDC is developing and testing a middle-grades literacy curriculum that focuses on helping middle school students to develop and apply skills needed for research project. These skills focus on understanding, extracting, and synthesizing information—all key skills needed for carrying out a research project in middle school. The curriculum includes specific teacher-led activities that explicitly teach students these skills and meaningfully takes advantage of key features of the software program, SOLO.

At a time when young adolescents need to read complex texts in all content areas, many students continue to have difficulty with the reading process. Yet, although good models of elementary reading instruction are available, middle schools have few models or resources to meet the needs of their growing numbers of struggling readers.

This project addresses gaps in the current state assessment system and explores the following questions: Where are the gaps in the assessment system? Who are the students affected by these gaps? What are the appropriate assessment systems for students in the gaps? After answering these questions, the project will develop and pilot an assessment prototype to address the problem and meet student needs.

TinC (Technology in Class) tests the effectiveness of a software tool, Draft:Builder (previously developed at EDC), when it is integrated into an innovative curriculum. The curriculum, The American History Idol, builds basic skills in finding the main idea, locating supporting details, organizing information, and writing a persuasive essay. It draws on biographies of historical figures, thus linking social studies and English language arts. The software tool helps students create outlines and draft text.

This grant allows FSC to develop and disseminate an information pamphlet to help parents of children with bipolar disorder and related mental health problems. The four-page pamphlet will become part of a user-friendly toolkit that will help families understand the symptoms of bipolar disorder in children, its impact on children’s performance at home and in school, how to talk with their child’s school, and where to seek medical and other resources and services in the community.

The National Center Supported e-Text in Electronic Environments, in collaboration with research teams across the country, is conducting a systematic program of research over five years to investigate the following four research questions: (1) What characteristics of supported electronic text (e-text) facilitate or impede access to and learning of academic content for students with a range of disabilities? (2) Does supported e-text improve learning of academic content in actual educational settings with typical resources and levels of teacher support?