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The article presents an interview with education professor James M. Kauffman. The article discusses Kauffman's work with students with emotional and behavioral disorders, the U.S. Public Law (P.L.) 94-142, now known as the U.S. Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), and Kauffman's book "Toward a Science of Education: The Battle Between Rogue and Real Science."

The authors suggest that special education teachers must be politically active in order to maintain educational standards and services for students with disabilities in the socioeconomic conditions of the U.S. in 2012. An overview of special education advocacy is presented, including policy groups such as the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities (CCD), the Association for Retarded Citizens (ARC), and the Autism Society of America (ASA), as well as advice on how educators can evaluate the ideological and practical factors of disability advocacy organizations. Tactics to promote special education such as letters of support to policy makers, active membership in advocacy organizations, and teacher collaboration are discussed.

The article discusses the benefits of teaching teams across the varying stages of the research process in special education in the U.S. It explores the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act and the No Child Left Behind Act that requires teachers of students with disabilities to apply the research-based practices in the least restrictive environment. Details on stages of research which include the planning, implementation, and evaluation are also discussed. A chart depicting the methods and benefits of teacher involvement in research is presented.

In many general education classrooms today, teachers are using "reform" mathematics curricula. These curricula emphasize the application of mathematics in real-life contexts and include such practices as collaborative, group problem solving and student-generated algorithms. Students with learning disabilities in the area of mathematics can experience challenges with these curricula due to lack of content knowledge and requisite skills along with processing and strategy deficits. The purpose of this article is to present information on strategies that can be used to complement math reform curricula to meet the needs of students with math learning disabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two aspects of mathematics with which students with mathematics learning difficulty (MLD) often struggle are word problems and number-combination skills. This article describes a math program in which students receive instruction on using algebraic equations to represent the underlying problem structure for three word-problem types. Students also learn counting strategies for answering number combinations that they cannot retrieve from memory. Results from randomized-control trials indicated that embedding the counting strategies for number combinations produces superior word-problem and number-combination outcomes for students with MLD beyond tutoring programs that focus exclusively on number combinations or word problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The inclusion of students with learning disabilities (LD) in assessment is deemed critical to improve the quality of educational opportunities for these students and to provide meaningful and useful information about student performance. Mandated inclusion and accountability for progress raise many interesting questions regarding how to fairly, effectively, and validly assess students with LD. This article summarizes and discusses current research on the differential boost theory as a measure of validity when accommodations are used on mathematics tests. Specific recommendations for determining appropriate testing accommodations, and the role instructional accommodations play in this process, are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]