Middle School Students with Learning Disabilities and English SOLS: Part II Best Practices
January 1, 2007 |
Middle School Students with Learning Disabilities and English SOLs: Part II Best Practices
by Paul J. Gerber (January 2007)
This paper reports the findings of Phase II of a MERC study on middle school students with learning disabilities (LD) completed during academic year 2005 – 2006. Phase I investigated the success and failure of students with LD on the English SOLs by analyzing three consecutive years of individual education plans (IEPs). (Please see the MERC report titled “Accountability Testing and Students with Learning Disabilities: Factors of Passing and Failing the Virginia SOL Tests” (2004) for finding of the study.)
The goal of Phase II was to obtain best practices used for preparing students with LD on English SOLs in MERC’s school division’s middle schools on English SOLs. Students with LD were specifically targeted because: 1) they are the highest incidence disability group in the public schools (more than 50 percent of students with disabilities); 2) they are typically educated in general education classrooms with non-disabled students; and 3) they have probability of 80-85 percent that they have challenges in reading as part of their LD profile.
