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The Pre-Elementary Education Longitudinal Study (PEELS), which is funded by the U.S. Department of Education, is examining the characteristics of children receiving preschool special education, the services they receive, their transitions across educational levels, and their performance over time on assessments of academic and adaptive skills. PEELS includes a nationally representative sample of 3,104 children with disabilities who were ages 3 through 5 when the study began in 2003-04. PEELS data were collected through several different instruments and activities, including direct one-on-one assessments of the children at five points in time. While several comprehensive reports have been prepared using the PEELS data, this one is designed to address two specific research questions: (1) How do children who received preschool special education services perform over time on assessments of receptive vocabulary and math skills?; and (2) How does their receptive vocabulary and math performance vary over time by primary disability category? Findings on receptive vocabulary performance include: (1) At age 3, children in PEELS had a mean score of 61,1 and at age 10, children had a mean score of 113; (2) Children's growth on the Psychometrically Adapted and Shortened Version of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test III (PPVTIII adapted version) decelerated, or slowed down, as the children got older, with scores for children at age 3 growing 12.9 points and scores for children at age 10 growing 1.4 points; (3) At age 3, children with a speech or language impairment had a significantly higher mean on the PPVT-III (adapted version) than children with a developmental delay. There were no statistically significant differences in growth at age 3 between disability groups, and the gap persisted at age 10 between children with a speech or language impairment and children with a developmental delay. Findings on math performance include: (1) At age 3, children in PEELS had a mean score on Woodcock-Johnson III: Applied Problems of 362, and at age ten, children had a mean score of 488; (2) Growth was decelerating, or slowing down, as the children got older, with scores for children at age 3 growing 32.1 points and scores for children at age 10 growing 4.3 points; and (3) Children with a speech or language impairment had significantly higher mean scores at age 3 than children with autism or a developmental delay. There were no statistically significant differences in growth at age 3 between disability groups. The gap between scores for children with speech or language impairments and children with a developmental delay persisted at age 10. Children with autism caught up to children with a speech or language impairment by age 10. Appended are: (1) Diagram of Selection of LEA Sample; (2) Weighting Procedures; (3) Results from PEELS Nonresponse Bias Study; (4) Number of Children Who Had Test Accommodations; (5) Final Augmented LEA Sample Size; (6) Likelihood Ratio Tests for Prediction Models; (7) Details of the Likelihood Ratio Tests for the Fit of the Merged-Cohort Models; and (8) Hierarchical Linear Models Used in the Analysis. (Contains 71 tables, 5 figures and 35 footnotes.)

This report uses data from the Pre-Elementary Education Longitudinal Study (PEELS) to describe access for young children with disabilities in two specific domains: community activities, including extracurricular activities and family recreation, and kindergarten classroom experiences. While PEELS is a broad, descriptive study, the analyses presented in this report are designed to address four questions related to children's access to community and educational activities: (1) In what types of community activities are children with disabilities ages 5 through 7 engaged?; (2) How do specific attributes, such as gender, disability, and household income, and potential barriers, such as access to adequate transportation and safety of neighborhoods, relate to involvement in those activities?; (3) What are the kindergarten experiences of young children with disabilities in terms of access to the general curriculum, enrollment in classes with peers without disabilities, instructional strategies, and full-day/part-day programs?; and (4) How do these kindergarten experiences vary by district size, district wealth, and metropolitan status? In PEELS, 69 percent of parents reported that their child attended a full-day program, and 31 percent of parents reported that their child attended a half-day program, regardless of whether the children were still receiving special education services in kindergarten. For those PEELS children still receiving special education services, 73 percent of teachers indicated that the regular education classroom was the child's main education setting and, on average, children who received special education services in regular education kindergarten had classes in which 82 percent of the children did not have disabilities. As a group, young children who received preschool special education services had different experiences based on the types of districts in which they were enrolled. In terms of district size, a larger proportion of children in very large districts had a regular education classroom as their main setting compared to children in smaller districts, and children in larger districts spent more hours per week in regular education classrooms than children in smaller districts. District wealth was also associated with children's kindergarten experiences. Children in low or very low-wealth districts spent a smaller percentage of time than children in high-wealth districts receiving instructional or therapy services outside their classroom. This report is organized in the following manner. The authors describe in chapter 2 the PEELS study design and methods used in this report. Chapter 3 presents information on access to community activities of young children with disabilities. Chapter 4 focuses on kindergarteners with disabilities and their access to classroom experiences. Appendices include: (1) Diagram of Selection of LEA Sample; (2) Weighting Procedures; (3) Results from PEELS Nonresponse Bias Study; (4) Standard Error Tables; (5) Standard Error Tables for Figures; (6) Analysis Variables Used Throughout Report; and (7) Final Augmented LEA Sample Size. (Contains 75 tables, 5 figures and 22 footnotes.)

The Pre-Elementary Education Longitudinal Study (PEELS), funded by the U.S. Department of Education, is examining the characteristics of children receiving preschool special education, the services they receive, their transitions across educational levels, and their performance over time on assessments of academic and adaptive skills. PEELS includes a nationally representative sample of 3,104 children with disabilities who were 3 through 5 years of age when the study began in 2003-04. The children will be followed through 2009. This report provides selected findings from the first three waves of data collection: school year 2003-04, school year 2004-05, and school year 2005-06. Any reported differences have been tested for statistical significance at the p less than .05 level. These data were collected through several different instruments and activities, including a direct one-on-one assessment of the children, a telephone interview with the children's parents/guardians, and mail questionnaires to the teacher or service provider of each child. Young children with disabilities undergo many transitions during their early school years. These changes include moving from one program to another, from one grade to another, and in some cases, changing both at the same time. Despite these transitions, the number of services children receive is relatively stable as they move from one program to another. Ease of transition varied by child characteristics, such as severity of impairment, academic ability, and social skills. Additionally, parent report of perceived ease of transition also varied by race/ethnicity and family income. Parent and teacher report of ease of transition varied depending on whether the school initiated actions to facilitate the transition process and how much support was provided to teachers. Data on transitions to kindergarten indicate that teachers of children with disabilities used a variety of strategies to facilitate this transition; the number of strategies differed depending on whether the teacher was a regular or special education teacher. Social skills and behaviors of young children identified as having disabilities are a concern of both teachers and parents, and is similar to that found in other studies. Young children who received special education services for three years had more problem behaviors than children who received services for only 1 or 2 years; however, this difference was statistically significant for males only. Both males and females who received services all 3 years had significantly lower social skills than children who stopped receiving special education services between 2003-04 and 2004-05 or between 2004-05 and 2005-06. Eight appendices include: (1) Diagram of Selection of LEA Sample; (2) Weighting Procedures; (3) Nonresponse Bias and Related Analyses; (4) Standard Error Tables; (5) Standard Error Tables for Figures; (6) Number of Children Who Had Test Accommodations; (7) Analysis Variables Used Throughout Report; and (8) Final Augmented LEA Sample Size. (Contains 27 footnotes, 3 figures and 85 tables.)

The Pre-Elementary Education Longitudinal Study, commonly referred to as the PEELS study, is funded by the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER). It will follow a nationally representative sample of children with disabilities ages 3-5 for a period of six years. This study is designed to describe the characteristics of children receiving preschool special education, their educational programs and services, and their transitions from preschool programs to elementary schools. The study will examine the achievement of students with disabilities in preschool, kindergarten, and elementary school and determine the factors associated with this achievement. In its first year of data collection (2003-2004), information on 2,906 children with disabilities and their families was gathered through parent/guardian interviews, child assessments, and teacher and service provider questionnaires. In addition, information was collected through mail questionnaires from each child's preschool program director or school principal, local educational agency (LEA), and state educational agency (SEA). PEELS data collection will continue through 2009. PEELS data are weighted to generate national estimates; therefore, the results can be generalized to the entire U.S. population of children with disabilities ages 3-5. This overview report combines Wave 1 data from all of the PEELS instruments. It includes data on the following: (1) Characteristics of children and their families; (2) Characteristics of educational services and providers; (3) Transitions from early intervention to preschool, and preschool to elementary school; and (4) School-related readiness and behavior. Five broad descriptive research questions guide the data collection, analysis, and reporting for this multi-year study: (1) What are the characteristics of children receiving preschool special education? (2) What preschool programs and services do they receive? (3) What are their transitions like--between early intervention and preschool, and between preschool and elementary school? (4) How do these children function and perform in preschool, kindergarten, and early elementary school? and (5) Which child, service, and program characteristics are associated with children's performance over time on assessments of academic and adaptive skills? Appended are: (1) Standard Error Tables; (2) Individual Growth and Development Indicators (IGDI) Tables; (3) Standard Error Tables for Figures; (4) Additional Tables; (5) Weighting Procedures; and (6) Number of Children Who Had Test Accommodations. (Contains 196 tables and 6 figures.) [This report was published by the Institute of Education Sciences' National Center for Special Education Research.]

Background: Linkage studies in autism have identified susceptibility loci on chromosomes 2q and 7q, regions containing the DLX1/2 and DLX5/6 bigene clusters. The DLX genes encode homeodomain transcription factors that control craniofacial patterning and differentiation and survival of forebrain inhibitory neurons. We investigated the role that sequence variants in DLX genes play in autism by in-depth resequencing of these genes in 161 autism probands from the AGRE collection. Results: Sequencing of exons, exon/ intron boundaries and known enhancers of DLX1, 2, 5 and 6 identified several nonsynonymous variants in DLX2 and DLX5 and a variant in a DLX5/6intragenic enhancer. The nonsynonymous variants were detected in 4 of 95 families from which samples were sequenced. Two of these four SNPs were not observed in 378 undiagnosed samples from North American populations, while the remaining 2 were seen in one sample each. Conclusion: Segregation of these variants in pedigrees did not generally support a contribution to autism susceptibility by these genes, although functional analyses may provide insight into the biological understanding of these important proteins.

SCOPUS: le.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Copper/zinc-superoxide dismutase (CuZn-SOD) transgenic mice overexpress the gene for human CuZn-SOD. To assess the effects of the overexpression of CuZn-SOD on the brain scavenging systems, we have measured the activities of manganese-SOD (Mn-SOD), catalase, and glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) in various regions of the mouse brain. In nontransgenic mice, cytosolic CuZn-SOD activity was highest in the caudate-putamen complex; this was followed by the brainstem and the hippocampus. The lowest activity was observed in the cerebellum. In transgenic mice, there were significant increases of cytosolic CuZn-SOD activity in all of these regions, with ratios varying from a twofold increase in the brainstem to 3.42-fold in the cerebellum in comparison with nontransgenic mice. Particulate Mn-SOD was similarly distributed in all brain regions, and its levels also were significantly increased in superoxide dismutase (SOD)-transgenic mice. In the brains of nontransgenic mice, cytosolic catalase activity was similar in all brain regions except the cortex, which showed <50% of the activity observed in the other regions. In transgenic mice, cytosolic catalase activity was significantly increased, with the cortex showing the greatest changes (133%) in comparison with nontransgenic mice. The smallest increases were observed in the hippocampus (34%). In contrast to what was observed for SOD and catalase, there were no significant changes in cytosolic GSH-Px activity in any of the brain regions examined. The present results indicate that, in addition to displaying marked increases in the levels of brain CuZn-SOD activity, SOD-transgenic mice also exhibit increases in other enzymes that scavenge oxygen-based radicals. We also found that aminotriazole caused significantly greater inhibition of brain catalase activity in SOD-transgenic mice (67.6%) than in nontransgenic littermates (43.6%). The latter finding provides evidence for a higher production of H2O2 in the brains of SOD-transgenic, SCOPUS: ar.j, FLWNA, info:eu-repo/semantics/published