Accessing the General Curriculum : Including Students with Disabilities in Standards-Based Reform

Give your students access to the general curriculum and find better ways to assess their progress! How is your special-education curriculum impacted by the requirements of IDEA and NCLB? How can you improve student learning and retention to positively influence assessment results? What methods are available for determining your students? present level of performance? In this second edition of the best-selling Accessing the General Curriculum , Nolet and McLaughlin provide updated frameworks and strategies-with invaluable examples and flowcharts for fitting special education into the frameworks created by national standards and assessments. This invaluable resource provides K-12 educators with the support necessary to produce expected results from every learner. The authors begin with far-reaching legal implications and connect them with individual students to show teachers how to: Use curriculum as a map for guiding students toward achievement Understand learning research as a bridge to the learning-teaching connection Relate each student?s disability to his or her academic performance Design alternate assessment tools and curriculum Link goals, objectives, and benchmarks to state assessment criteria Affording special education students accommodations and modifications to their individual curriculum will improve their performance, enhance your ability to help them advance, and, ultimately, improve the evaluation of their progress throughout their academic career.

Margaret J. McLaughlin is Professor of Special Education and Associate Director, Institute for the Study of Exceptional Children and Youth, at the University of Maryland, College Park.