2011 National Board for Education Sciences Annual Report
National Center for Special Education Research

The mission of the National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER) is to (a) sponsor research to expand knowledge and understanding of the needs of infants, toddlers, and children with disabilities in order to improve the developmental, educational, and transitional results of such individuals; (b) sponsor research to improve services provided under, and support the implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (20 U.S.C. 1400 et seq.); and (c) evaluate the implementation and effectiveness of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in coordination with the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance.

Program Highlights

New Research and Research Training Grants

In FY 2011 over 350 applications to NCSER competitions were reviewed, resulting in 42 new research and postdoctoral research training awards totaling $89 million. These projects cover a broad range of issues related to improving outcomes for children with or at risk for disabilities, including autism spectrum disorders, developmental speech and/or language impairments, emotional and behavioral disorders, hearing impairments, intellectual disabilities, and learning disabilities. For example:

• Computer-based testing holds promise for increasing accessibility of state assessments for children with disabilities. However, providing appropriate accommodations presents a challenge, particularly for making computer-based test items accessible to students who are Braille readers. Researchers at the Educational Testing Service are developing enhancements to an existing platform that delivers an eighth-grade reading assessment. The enhancements are intended to allow students who are blind or have low vision to have access to the computerized test.
• Few evidence-based vocabulary interventions exist, particularly for students most at risk for language and learning disabilities. University of Connecticut researchers are conducting a randomized, controlled trial of an intensive vocabulary intervention designed to supplement classroom vocabulary instruction for kindergarten students who are at risk for language and learning disabilities.
• Current methods of reading instruction have not been highly effective for children with Down syndrome. A team of researchers at the University of Pittsburgh is developing an intervention for teaching reading to children with Down syndrome that incorporates components of early reading (e.g., decoding and fluency skills) that have been modified to support the challenges with expressive language, memory, and motivation that are often exhibited by children with Down syndrome.
• Longitudinal studies indicate that students who perform poorly at the end of kindergarten are likely to continue to perform poorly in mathematics through the later elementary grades. University of Oregon researchers are developing an iPad-based mathematics intervention for kindergarten students who are at risk for developing learning disabilities in mathematics. The KinderTEK intervention is being designed as an intervention that builds conceptual and procedural fluency with whole number concepts.
• Researchers at the University of Florida are conducting a randomized controlled trial to test the efficacy of BEST in CLASS, an intervention implemented by early childhood teachers to improve social, emotional, and behavioral functioning of preschool children at high risk for developing emotional and behavioral disorders. BEST in CLASS was developed with a previous IES Development and Innovation grant and has pilot data indicating the promise of the intervention for ameliorating problem behaviors in young children.
• There is a lack of empirical evidence on the relationship between physical therapy provided in schools and student outcomes. A research team at the University of Kentucky is conducting a multi-site observational study of 120 physical therapists and their students to examine the relationship between characteristics of school-based physical therapy and changes in student outcomes, including participation in school activities, self-care, posture and mobility, and recreation and fitness.

In addition, NCSER funded a new special education research and development center—the National Research and Development Center on Assessment and Accountability for Special Education. The increased demand for accountability in education and improved student academic performance has led to many questions about the most accurate method for capturing individual student progress, particularly for students with disabilities. Although a substantial amount of research exists about the characteristics of students with disabilities and about assessment of their abilities and skills for purposes of classification and intervention, far less is known about the natural developmental progression of achievement for students with disabilities. Under the auspices of this Center, researchers at the University of Oregon, the University of Arizona, and North Carolina State University have joined together to develop and test various approaches for measuring the reading and mathematics achievement growth of students with and without disabilities. They will examine alternative accountability models using student academic growth to evaluate schools' effectiveness in serving students with disabilities.

Reports

Over the past year, NCSER released four reports from its longitudinal studies and evaluations.

• Comparisons Across Time of the Outcomes of Youth With Disabilities up to 4 Years After High School (September 2010). This report uses data from the two National Longitudinal Transition Study datasets to provide comparison data across time (1990 to 2005) on a wide range of post-high school outcomes for youth with disabilities who had been out of high school up to four years. The outcomes cover several key areas, including: postsecondary education enrollment and educational experiences; employment status and characteristics of the youth's current or most recent job; productive engagement in school, work, or preparation for work; household circumstances, including residential independence, parenting and financial independence; and social and community involvement.
• Facts from NLTS2: The Secondary School Experiences and Academic Performance of Students With Hearing Impairments (February 2011). This report uses data from the National Longitudinal Transition Study-2 to provide a national picture of the secondary school experiences and academic achievement of students with hearing impairments who received special education services. The outcomes cover several key areas, including: students' experiences in general education academic courses and non-vocational special education courses, accommodations, supports, services provided to students, and academic achievement.
• Access to Educational and Community Activities for Young Children with Disabilities (October 2010). This report, based on the Pre-Elementary Education Longitudinal Study (PEELS), describes the kindergarten classroom and community experiences of young children with disabilities and examines how access and participation in these activities may vary by child, family, and school district characteristics.
• A Study of States' Monitoring and Improvement Practices under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) (October 2010). This report completes NCSER's study of states' monitoring practices. It describes the nature and scope of states' Part B and Part C monitoring systems and finds substantial variability in states' Part B and Part C monitoring and improvement practices under IDEA. The report describes contextual factors that may affect states' monitoring systems, states' approaches to monitoring, and how states' monitoring systems and processes map onto a framework developed for the study.

Special Education Research and Development (R&D) Centers

The Center on Response to Intervention in Early Childhood hosted its Second Annual RTI in Early Childhood Summit in Kansas City in October 2010. Practitioners, researchers, policymakers, and higher education faculty gathered to discuss instructional strategies to promote successful readers and the importance of screening and progress monitoring for improving early language and literacy outcomes of children at risk for disabilities.

Researchers from the National R&D Center on Serious Behavior Disorders at the Secondary Level finalized development of an intervention package that includes multiple components designed to improve student behavior and academic performance. They are preparing for an efficacy trial in 54 schools beginning in the fall of 2011 and running through the spring of 2013. The research team has also actively presented its work at local and national conferences, discussing topics such as the Center's intervention development process, academic and behavioral needs of high school students with emotional and behavioral disorders, and results of supplemental studies (e.g., understanding external placement decision-making by school staff for students with emotional and behavioral disorders).

The National Mathematics Advisory Panel in its 2008 report asserted that high priority should be given to improving curricula and instruction for teaching fractions (including decimals and percents). This year a new center—the National Center on Mathematics Instruction for Students with Mathematics Difficulties—was launched. Its purpose is to increase knowledge of how children acquire or fail to acquire an understanding of rational numbers (i.e., fractions) and how children with math difficulties can be taught to understand and operate fluently with rational numbers.

Research Findings

Over the past five years, NCSER's researchers have begun expanding their knowledge and understanding of infants, toddlers, and children with disabilities. Three studies are highlighted below.

The success of intervention models hinges on an accurate determination of which children are at risk for future difficulty. Quick assessments are needed that accurately identify 1) which children are at risk and therefore could benefit from intervention and 2) which children are not at risk and do not need intervention. Historically, education researchers have not been successful at developing screening measures that are accurate predictors of risk for reading difficulties. IES has invested significant resources in the exploration of basic measurement issues surrounding universal screening procedures. In a series of studies, Vanderbilt University researchers developed a two-step screening procedure in which all first-graders are administered a single, brief measure of phonemic decoding, and only children who score within the risk range on this measure complete the longer screening battery. This procedure results in the identification of which children are at risk or not at risk for reading difficulties with 90 percent accuracy.⁶

The prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) has increased over the past decade, with the Centers for Disease Control reporting a current rate of 1 in 110 children. Despite increased research on ASD, few comprehensive interventions for children with ASD have been developed and tested. One exception is Learning Experiences—An Alternative Program for Preschoolers and Parents (LEAP), a comprehensive intervention for preschool children with ASD. A prior evaluation indicated that LEAP improves child outcomes relative to typical practice. With NCSER funding, LEAP developers recently completed a new experimental evaluation comparing full LEAP implementation to a reduced (and less expensive) model that provided the LEAP materials without training and mentoring by LEAP staff. They found that providing preschool teachers with training by LEAP staff resulted in greater fidelity of program implementation. Moreover, children in the full model condition demonstrated greater developmental gains in cognition and language, reduction in autism symptom severity, growth in social skills, and reduction in problem behavior compared to children in the manual-only group. Overall, the experiment demonstrates the efficacy of the LEAP model utilizing the full-scale training and mentoring for preschool staff.⁷

Although a number of general-purpose measures of student social behavior have been used for behavior progress-monitoring, there is a need for widely-accepted, reliable, and validated tools that allow for frequent measurement because they are relatively easy and quick to administer. In 2006, University of Connecticut researchers received IES funding to develop and test the Direct Behavior Rating (DBR) scales as an assessment method that combined the strengths of systematic direct observation with behavior ratings scales. This team received another IES grant to evaluate DBR scales for use in supporting problem-solving models of service delivery for behavior screening as well as for progress monitoring. Researchers at Louisiana State University are also working on this problem and are developing a series of change-sensitive progress-monitoring tools called Brief Behavior Rating Scales (BBRS) that are intended to be efficient, practical, reliable, and valid. BBRS will be appropriate for classroom educators who need efficient and effective behavior progress-monitoring tools to monitor their students on a consistent basis.⁸

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⁶ Compton, D. L., Fuchs, D., Fuchs, L. S., Bouton, B., Gilbert, J. K., Barquero, L. A., Cho, E., & Crouch, R. C. (2010). Selecting at-risk first-grade readers for early intervention: Eliminating false positives and exploring the promise of a two-stage screening process. Journal of Educational Psychology. 10 (2), 327–340; Compton, D. L., Gilbert, J. K., Jenkins, J. R., Fuchs, D., Fuchs, L. S., Cho, E., Barquero, L. A., & Bouton, B. (in press). Accelerating chronically unresponsive children to tier 3 instruction: What level of data is necessary to ensure selection accuracy? Journal of Learning Disabilities.
⁷ Strain, P.S., & Bovey, E. H. (in press). Randomized, Controlled Trial of the LEAP Model. Topics in Early Childhood Special Education.
⁸ Chafouleas, S., Volpe, R., Gresham, F.M., & Cook, C.R. (Eds.). (2010). Behavioral assessment in problem solving models [Special Issue]. School Psychology Review, 39.