Teleconference Transcript
Transcript of NCSET teleconference call held on November
11, 2004
Access to the General Education Curriculum: Findings from the
National Longitudinal Transition Study-2
Presenters:
Lynn Newman, Ed.D.
Senior Education Researcher
SRI International
Download the PowerPoint
presentation referenced in this teleconference
call (in PDF format: 52 slides, 10.09 MB). (Also available as an
accessible Word document.)
Small numbers in the text below (i.e., 35)
refer to the slide being discussed.
DR. JOHNSON: Welcome to the November conference
call. 1 Today’s topic is “Access
to the General Education Curriculum: Findings from the National
Longitudinal Transition Study-2” and I welcome Dr. Lynn Newman
to lead us through this presentation and some discussion which follows.
Dr. Newman is Senior Education Researcher at SRI International,
Center on Education and Human Services. Dr. Newman has more than
25 years of experience in education and social science research
in the disability policy and human services field. She is currently
co-director of the National Longitudinal Transition Study-2, known
to us as NLTS2, funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s
Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP). She also serves as
an analyst for the Special Education Elementary Longitudinal Study,
known as SEELS. Dr. Newman has had leadership roles on multiple
large-scale studies and evaluations including the original National
Longitudinal Transition Study, the study of school link services
for children with disabilities and their families, and the California
statewide Healthy Start Comprehensive Integrated School Linked Services
initiative evaluation.
Dr. Newman’s research interests focus on various aspects
of outcomes for students and youth with disabilities, including
their secondary education experiences, as well as family involvement
in children’s education and the influence of their involvement
on educational outcomes.
DR. NEWMAN: As David indicated, I am going to
be focusing today on what we have been learning from NLTS2 about
secondary-school age students with disabilities’ access to
the general education experience.
2 I was thinking about how inclusion
and access has changed tremendously over time. I remember, when
we were designing the original NLTS back in the early 80’s,
our focus was simply on where the students received their education.
We collected the data on the extent to which students with disabilities
had access to general education classes, types of classes students
took, the number of classes, and the amount of time they spent in
a regular ed class, but we collected almost no information about
what was actually going on in those classes. 3
By the time we began designing NLTS2 in 1999-2000, we had moved
beyond the focus of where students are educated to an emphasis
on how they are educated. Our focus had expanded from the
issue of classroom access to the issue of curriculum
access. We wanted to know how the experiences of students with disabilities
compared to those of their peers in a general education class. Those
experiences are the focus of what I am going to be describing today.
4 I’d like to give you a very
quick background on NLTS2. As David said, it’s part of OSEP’s
national assessment of special education and it’s an expansion
of the original NLTS, a study many of you are aware of. NLTS2 is
designed to show how special ed and student life and achievements
have changed in the years since NLTS, and I like to describe NLTS2
as NLTS on steroids. We are collecting much more information on
every aspect of the student’s life than we did in the original
NLTS.
We are focusing on the lives of students with disabilities when
they are in secondary school and also after leaving high school
as they are entering young adulthood. We are looking at a wide range
of experiences during their secondary school years: what’s
happening to them within their classes, their services, and what’s
happening to them outside of the school day, from their friendships
to their employment. And we follow their lives into the first few
years after leaving high school, focusing on their experiences and
achievements in areas such as postsecondary education, employment,
social interaction, and independence, focusing particularly on what
contributes to better outcomes.
Students were between 13 and 16 and receiving special education
services when they were sampled back in the 2000-01 school year.
One aspect of the study that makes it fairly unique is that we are
following the experiences of students with all types of disabilities
in each of the 12 federally-defined disability categories. We are
following these students for nine years, so the eldest will be about
25 when the study is finished.
5 We have more than 11,000 students
from across the country in the study and 6
it allows us to generalize to all of the students who are receiving
special ed, who are between these ages as a group as well as generalize
to each of the 12 disability categories. 7
The stars that you see on the data collection timeline are each
type of data collection activity that we are doing. We are collecting
information from a wide range of perspectives—from parents,
teachers, and the youth themselves—and right now, we are in
the process of completing year four. We are just finishing collecting
the second wave of school data.
8 The findings that I am going to be
presenting today come from the first wave of NLTS2 school data collection,
two surveys: one that focused on the students’ overall school
program and the other that focused on students’ experiences
in their general education academic classes. These were completed
in the 2000-01 school year. When we have comparisons from NLTS,
that data was abstracted from students’ school records by
school personnel in the 1985-87 school years. When we are looking
at change over time between NLTS and NLTS2, we are talking about
a 15-year period. 9 Today I am going
to begin by focusing on the broader context of courses that the
students are taking and the settings they are taking them in and
then I am going to look at their general education academic classes—describing
those classes, looking at their experiences in those classes. Finally,
I will be sharing what we have been learning about the relationships
between greater participation in general education courses and student
outcomes.
10 First, let’s look at the student’s
overall school program. 11 We see that
there is a heavy emphasis on academic courses—virtually all
the students take at least one academic class and a large majority
take a language arts class and a math class and many are also taking
social studies and science. One out of five takes a foreign language
class and on average academic course-taking accounts for about 60%
of these students’ courses. 12
How does this compare with the course-taking of their peers in the
general population? The blue top bars are the courses that students
with disabilities are taking during one semester and the red bars
underneath that is the course-taking by their peers in the general
population. We see that academic course-taking mirrors the experience
of their peers, where 99-100% of the students take at least one
academic course and they have high levels in math, science, and
social studies. The only big difference that we see is in foreign
language, where students in the general population are about twice
as likely as to be taking this type of class as students with disabilities.
13 How has course-taking for students
with disabilities changed in the 15 years between NLTS and NLTS2?
Since the vast majority of students in both NLTS and NLTS2 took
at least one academic course and most took a language arts course,
there really wasn’t much room for change and we see that there
isn’t much of a change in those areas, but we do see dramatic
increases in the percentage of students taking other types of academic
courses. The largest increases are in science with a 21 percentage
point increase and foreign language with a gain of 15 percentage
points. This increase that you are seeing in academic courses corresponds
to a 7 percentage point decline in vocational education course-taking
over those 15 years.
14 In what settings do these students
take these courses? The first group of bars are for the courses
that are taken in a general education setting; the next group of
bars are for those taking courses in special education settings.
Most students take courses in both general education and special
education settings. Although 27% of the students experienced full
inclusion in a general education setting, this is a large change
from 15 years ago when only 9% of the students took only general
education courses. 88% take at least one general education class
and since most students 15 years ago also took at least one general
education class, there is not a significant difference over those
years. Looking at the special education courses, 70% now take at
least one special education course. This is a marked decline from
the 90% that took at least one special education course 15 years
ago. 69% currently take at least one academic general education
class. Some types of academic courses are more likely to be taken
in a general education setting than others. For example, students
are about equally likely to take English or math in a special education
setting, but they are much more likely to take science or social
studies or foreign language courses in a general education than
in a special education setting. On average, general education courses
account for 60% of students’ course load.
Slide 15 looks at differences by disability
category and, as with most aspects of the study, there are wide
differences by disability category. The percentage of courses taken
in a general education setting varies widely by disability category:
about three-quarters of the courses that are taken by students with
speech impairments are general education classes compared with only
about a third of the classes taken by students with mental retardation
or autism. General classes account for only about a quarter of the
classes of those with multiple disabilities or deafblindness.
16 Looking at changes over time between
NLTS and NLTS2, students are more likely now to be taking their
academic classes in general education settings and they are less
likely to be taking them in special education settings. There is
a 9 percentage point increase over time in taking at least one general
education course and a corresponding 11 percentage point decrease
in taking one special education academic course. The converse is
true for non-academic courses such as vocational education and life
skills. Students are less likely to be taking non-academic classes
in a general education setting now, and they are more likely to
be taking them in a special education setting.
17 Now let’s switch our focus
from where students are taking these classes to begin looking
at what’s happening in those classes. We are going
to look at some of the descriptive information about those general
education academic classes, their performance level, how many students
and teachers were in the class, and characteristics of their teachers
and the types of support that both students and teachers receive.
18 First, let’s look at the overall
performance level of these classes. The yellow part of these bars
are the AP/honors courses, the purple are the courses at grade level,
and the green are the below-grade-level courses. We see that for
the most part, students with disabilities are not being tracked
into the lower performing classes but they are in classes very much
like the ones that everyone else is taking. Classes that are at
grade level, if students are going to be in a below-grade-level
class, then it’s most likely going to be from that, with one
quarter of those taking general education math courses and below-grade-level
courses.
Looking at disability differences, slide 19
is a little misleading. Students in all disability categories are
most likely to be in a grade level course. The range for all students
is 70-80% for all disability categories—in that middle purple
part of the bar—but when you are looking at the yellow part
of the bar, the AP and honors courses, the students with visual
impairments are more likely to be in that part of the bar than other
groups of students. If you are looking at the green part of the
bar, students with traumatic brain injury, mental retardation, and
multiple disabilities are more likely than students in other categories
to be in below-grade-level courses.
20 Class size can be an important influence
on the effectiveness of instruction and learning. The 24 students
in the blue bar are students in general education academic classes
and the orange bar with the stripes are special education classes.
We see there are 24 students in a general education class on average
and 20 students in a special education class on average. Of those
24 students in a general education class, you see at the bottom
bar, five of those students are also receiving special education
services. 21 There are adults in those
classes as well and again the blue bars are general education academic
classes. We see that, not surprisingly, almost all of the classes
have a general education teacher, but in addition to that teacher,
22% of the general education classes also have a special education
teacher present. Special education classes are much more likely
to be staffed with other adults as well—for example, more
than half have classroom aide(s). So 52% of students in special
education classes have classroom aides compared with only 12% of
those in general education classes. Although we saw earlier that
the overall class size of 24 and 20 students was not that different,
the student-to-adult ratio is dramatically different. General education
classes have 21 students per adult; special education classes have
only 6 students per adult. So adults in general education classes
need to focus on about three times as many students as do adults
in special education classes.
22 Looking at those general education
teachers, what are their characteristics? We see that they are much
less ethnically diverse than their students—90% are white—and
96% have credentials in the subject that they are teaching. Actually
this is higher than the average that we had for the schools that
these students attend. On average, 88% of the teachers in these
schools are credentialed. This suggests that students with disabilities
may be placed in classes with more qualified teachers who have more
substantial teaching experience. On average, they have taught for
14 years and for 10 of those years they had experienced teaching
students with disabilities. More than two-thirds of the students
have teachers who feel that they are adequately trained to teach
students with disabilities.
23 In addition to the years of experience
that these teachers bring, almost all of the teachers receive some
type of support for teaching students with disabilities. The most
frequent type of support is information about students’ needs
and abilities and consultation services, but fewer than 15% of students
have teachers whose support included lower class size, aide assistance,
or in-service training. We asked teachers if they thought this support
was adequate and almost 90% of them thought that it was somewhat
or very adequate. Teachers of classes where there is a student with
mental retardation or traumatic brain injury are among those who
are least likely to think that the supports were adequate.
24 Not only do the teachers have supports,
but students also receive a wide range of supports and accommodations
to help them succeed in their general education classes, with 93%
receiving some form of support. Extended time is the most frequently
cited accommodation—more time to take tests, more time to
do assignments. Less common are slower-paced instruction, assignments
that are shorter or different from those in the rest of the class,
having tests modified or read, or physical adaptations to the classroom.
25 In addition to the accommodations,
they also receive other types of supports. Supports tend to cluster
into supports from other adults and program types of supports. Three
out of five have their progress monitored by a special education
teacher and more than a third receive more frequent feedback on
their work, while fewer than 20% receive other types of individual
help such as teacher’s aides, computers, videos, or interpreters.
In addition, almost a quarter of the students receive additional
assistance and instruction focusing on learning strategies and study
skills.
We have most of the students with disabilities in general education
academic classes that are mostly at grade level. These students
have received a wide range of accommodations and supports to help
them benefit from instruction. They have fairly experienced teachers
who receive some amount of support because these students are in
their class.
26 What are these students’ experiences
in these classes and how do their experiences compare with those
of the classes as a whole? Let’s begin by looking at the teacher-directed
or the teacher-controlled aspects of the class. 27
Teachers were asked to indicate the extent of modifications that
they made to the general education curriculum for students with
disabilities in their classes. The green section of this pie chart
are those who received an unmodified curriculum. We see about a
third of these students have full access to the general education
curriculum, where they are receiving the general education grade-level
curriculum. Looking at the light blue section, we see that more
than half of teachers report making some modifications,
11% of students have substantial modifications made to
the general education curriculum, and 2% receive the special ed
curriculum.
28 Students are most likely to receive
an unmodified curriculum in their general education math class or
science class and again the colors are what we had in the pie charts;
the dark blue being the substantial modification and the green indicates
the curriculum without modification. Looking at students by disability,
again the green stripes are the curriculum without modification.
29 The extent of curriculum modification
varies by the student’s disability category. Those with speech
impairments are the most likely to access an unmodified general
education curriculum, followed by those with sensory impairments
or orthopedic impairments. Those with mental retardation, traumatic
brain injury, and multiple disabilities are among the least likely.
30 Teachers' disciplinary practice
is another teacher-directed aspect of the class. Teachers were asked
if students with disabilities in the class need to be disciplined
and to what extent this discipline is similar to what’s done
with other students. Are discipline practices largely the same for
the students with disabilities and for other students? 84% of the
students receive the same discipline as the other students in their
classroom—this tends to be true for students in most disability
categories; three quarters or more students in most disability categories
receive the same type of discipline as others in their class. Those
with autism or multiple disabilities are the least likely to receive
the same type of discipline followed by those with mental retardation
or emotional disabilities.
Now let’s look at some aspects of classroom instruction.
31 Teachers were asked to report the
frequency with which they used various instructional activities.
There are two bars for each activity: the top bar is always the
frequency with which the student uses this activity—the student
with disabilities about whom they are reporting in their class.
The second bar is the frequency with which they use the activity
with the class as a whole. The yellow part of the bar is indicating
that the activity rarely or never took place, the purple represents
sometimes, and the green part is often. So we are looking at the
instructional groupings that the teachers employ: class instruction,
small group instruction, and individual instruction.
As we saw earlier, the general education classes have a much higher
student-teacher ratio than the special education classes. The one
way to lower that ratio for some aspects is to employ small group
or individualized instruction. Clearly, in general education academic
classes at the secondary level, the most frequently used is whole-class
instruction. For the most part, the experiences of students with
disabilities related to instructional groupings are really similar
to that of other students in the class: they are as likely to have
whole-group instruction. They have the same rates of small-group
instruction and they are as likely to get individual instruction
from their teacher. In the amount of individual instruction from
an adult other than teachers, the students with disabilities differ
from their peers in that students with disabilities are more likely
to receive this type of instruction than their peers.
Slide 32 looks at the materials that
the teachers use with these students. Students with disabilities
and students in the class as a whole are very similar in their frequency
of using each type of instructional material: textbooks, material
workbooks, supplemental material, lab equipment, worksheets, and
workbooks. Slide 33 looks at computer
use and again there is no difference in the frequency of using computers
for drills, for word processing, for spreadsheets, or for the Internet
between students with disabilities and the class as a whole. We
have learned from a different survey we had done that more than
half of these students attend schools that have a computer in every
academic class yet computers are really not used very frequently
for any purpose in these classes.
34 Looking at instructional activities
outside of the classroom, there is no difference in the frequency
of instructional activities outside the classroom—such as
trips to the library or computer lab, field trips, or community-based
experiences—between students with disabilities and their classes
as a whole. Clearly, at the secondary level, these rarely occur
for all students with or without disabilities in general education
classes.
We saw that there are some modifications to the curriculum, but
overall, the teacher-directed aspects of the class are largely the
same for students with disabilities and students in the general
education academic class as a whole, and this is true for students
in all disability categories. Students shouldn’t be considered
passive recipients of education, but instead are active participants
in the learning process. 35 How does
their participation compare with that of their peers in their classrooms?
36 Looking at their participation, students
with disabilities’ participation differs markedly from the
level of participation of other students in their class. They consistently
do not participate at the same rate as their peers. Their classroom
peers are almost twice as likely as they are to respond orally to
questions often; 36% are responding often to questions compared
with 67% of their peers responding that frequently. Looking at the
other end of the spectrum, 20% of students with disabilities rarely
or never respond to questions compared with only 1% of their peers.
Half of the students with disabilities rarely or never present to
the class compared with about a third of their peers. They are less
likely to work independently or with a peer. This is true for students
in all disability categories. They are significantly less likely
to participate in class than their peers, although the gap between
their participation in the class is the largest for students with
mental retardation.
Slide 37 looks at this participation
in a slightly different way. Instead of comparing their behavior
to that of their peers, it looks at students with disabilities’
participation in group discussions across class settings, including
general education academic classes, vocational education classes,
and special education classes. The top three bars are all students
with disabilities. We see that students with disabilities in general
education academic classes are much less likely to participate in
group discussions then those in vocational education classes and
special education classes: 45% participate infrequently compared
with about 60% in the other two types of classes; 22% rarely or
never participate in group discussions compared to 9% and 8% of
special education students in vocational education or special education
classes.
These findings have raised questions for us about whether the differences
in behavior that we were seeing in special education students across
class settings are related to differences in the students who take
the class or to the influences of the class settings on their behavior.
To explore this issue, I included in the analysis a subset of students
and that’s what the bottom three bars are. These are the students
who have at least one of each of these types of classes. Here we
are looking at the same students’ behavior in each of these
different types of classes and we see that their findings are very
similar to what we found for all these students with disabilities.
They are much less likely to participate in their general education
academic classes then they are in their vocational education class
or in their special education class. The difference in behavior
cannot be attributed to differences in students. Instead, it appears
to be related to some aspect of the class settings, the class size,
the comfort with the teacher and other students in the class, or
the teacher’s expectations for behavior.
38 Looking at teacher’s perceptions,
how did their general education teachers feel about their placing
the students in their class? 39 Looking
at their perception, despite the fact that students with disabilities
are less likely to participate, most students have teachers who
consider their placement to be appropriate, where about two-thirds
of the students have teachers who consider their placement very
appropriate and only 8% are not considered appropriately placed
in that class.
40 Looking at difference by disability,
this did differ somewhat by disability category with students with
mental retardation, multiple disabilities, and emotional disturbances
being those whose placements are most frequently considered not
appropriate. 41 When we asked teachers
about their expectations, almost all the students with disabilities
are expected to keep up with other students in the class—97%
are expected to keep up. Almost three-quarters, 71%, do keep up,
but it is worrisome that more than a quarter of the students with
disabilities in general education classes are not meeting the performance
expectations of their teachers.
Slide 42 looks at differences by disability
category with the top bar being those expected to keep up with other
students and the yellow bar being those who the teacher rates as
actually keeping up. Students in most disability categories have
teachers who expect them to keep up with other students. There is
a wide range by disability category in students rated as keeping
up with their classes: students with mental retardation, emotional
disturbances, and other health impairments have the largest gaps
between being expected to keep up and actually keeping up with other
students in their class.
Moving beyond focusing on students’ experiences within the
general education classroom, 43 let’s
look at how spending more time in these types of classes relates
to student outcomes. We examined students’ performance in
several domains including engagement in school, which is things
like the number of days absent; academic performance such as grade
performance on standardized tests; and areas of social adjustment
such as frequency of seeing friends and belonging to groups. 44
When we examined students’ performance, because so many of
the factors are interrelated, we used a multivariate analysis approach.
For example, we know that enrollment in general education academic
classes is compounded by many other factors such as students’
disability and functioning. We saw earlier that students in some
disability categories such as mental retardation or autism are much
less likely to be taking these types of classes. Students’
outcomes also are related to differences in students’ disability
and functioning. To try to disentangle these relationships, so we
could identify their independent relationship to spending more time
in a general education academic class with outcomes, we used a multivariate
approach to hold constant the differences between students. We statistically
held constant all of the factors that are in this table including
aspects of the students’ disability and functioning, aspects
of individual and household characteristics, parent involvement,
parent expectations, and other aspects of their school program and
performance.
45 Looking at the relationship of spending
more time in general education classes with these outcomes, results
are mixed. We found that independent of other factors included in
the model, the degree to which students with disabilities take classes
in a general education classroom is both positively and negatively
related to their performance. On the negative side, students with
disabilities who take more of these classes also tend to receive
lower grades. These lower grades are not surprising in light of
the fact that more than a quarter of these students—as we
saw earlier—are not meeting their teacher’s expectations.
This link with lower grades is concerning. In the original NLTS,
students who received lower grades, particularly failing grades,
were not accumulating sufficient credits to graduate, which led
to many eventually dropping out. However, taking more courses in
general education classrooms is also associated with positive outcomes.
The other part of the chart, having reading and math abilities closer
to grade level, lower likelihood of being subject to disciplinary
actions at school, and higher likelihood of participation in school
and community groups.
We do see many benefits associated with taking more general education
academic classes and many of these benefits have been associated
in the original NLTS with a lower likelihood of dropping out of
the school. The bottom line is that it is too early to tell the
true impact on these students’ lives of taking more general
education academic courses—you are going to need to stay tuned
to follow these students’ lives into young adulthood and look
at their actual school-leaving status and other secondary achievements.
52 I would like to just go to the very
last slide. This is the NLTS2 Web site, www.nlts2.org,
and this Web site has a wealth of information—it includes
all of our reports, much fuller information about the types of topics
I have been sharing today. In addition, we have the data from each
of those stars on that chart that I shared initially. Each of the
different instruments that we collect we actually have the data
that you can search by topic up on the Web site. If you remember
nothing else from this presentation, the important thing to remember
is this Web site address. I think we are now ready for questions.
DR. JOHNSON: Do we have questions for Lynn?
MS. SWEENEY: I am Sweeney from the Massachusetts
of Department of Education. My question has to do with the teachers
that you survey, the general education teachers. How many of them
did you survey and how did you select them and what type of vehicle
did you use to survey them?
DR. NEWMAN: This is a study that focuses on students,
not on teachers. So what we did is we selected our students randomly
from districts who gave us their rosters and they represented all
of the students in the country. Then for each of those students,
we got the names of the schools they attended from interviews with
their parents or from their districts. We went to those schools
and we asked the schools to identify teachers to complete two surveys.
One was the school program survey—we said, please ask somebody
who is knowledgeable about the students’ school program overall,
and that was usually a special education teacher or staff member,
to complete that one—and in the general education academic
class we asked, does the student take this type of class. If they
do, please give the survey questionnaire to the teacher who teaches
their general education class that they have on Monday morning,
the first general education class that they take on Monday morning
because we wanted it to be random. And we had, I think, a high 60%
response rate in those. I don’t remember the exact number
of how many teachers we had, but it was these students’ teachers,
not a sample of teachers.
MS. JORGENSEN: I am from Kansas University, Jean
Jorgensen. I want to know, when you were identifying students based
on their labels or their type of disability, did you run into many
different definitions of a disability? For example, was the child
with attention deficit disorder labeled Other Health Impairments
or were they labeled with LD?
DR. NEWMAN: We used the definitions that the schools
provided and if it was not very clear, we would go back to the district,
not the schools, and we asked them to use the categories that they
had used when they responded to any request from the Federal government.
We had a lot of up and back with the different districts and ADD
is generally in the Other Health Impairments category, although
when we asked parents about what’s wrong and what other issues
do your children face, we know that many students have ADD in many
of the other categories as well. In addition, we have students who
are categorized by the label that the district gave us, but we then
asked schools and asked the parents other information about these
students’ functioning and ability. We have a wealth of other
information beyond the label, but when we describe in our reports
and describe in our presentations, we use the labels that the districts
gave us originally.
MS. JORGENSEN: I have another question, why was
the gifted student not included in that?
DR. JOHNSON: That’s a political question.
DR. NEWMAN: You would need to ask OSEP that one.
MS. STREMAL: This is Kath Stremal from Intack
at the Kansas office. Although deafblindness is a category included
in the first in the ten disability groups, when the data was analyzed
on slides 29, 30,
and 42, it was left off. Was it incorporated
into other categories?
DR. NEWMAN: No, we have defined this as a category
on its own, but if there are fewer than 35 respondents we do not
report the numbers and so that must be the case for these students.
That would be information from a general education academic course
and we probably didn’t have enough to be able to report those
numbers, but they are a stand-alone category and they have their
own category in most of our reports.
DR. JOHNSON: Well, I wish to thank you, Lynn.
You know, SRI International and NCSET have really a partnership
here too, where you will find that our Web site under Publications
is a series that we have jointly put out. We have been trying to
work with this study to get information out in terms of using what
are called NLTS2
Data Briefs. We have six briefs that are on the NCSET Web site
that you can download and use them to any end you wish, and you
will see more of these develop as this study progresses.
I also wanted to acknowledge that the next NCSET national teleconference
will be December 1, 2004 at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time. The topic
will be Interagency Transition Team Development and Bob Stodden
at the University of Hawaii, one of our NCSET partners, will lead
that discussion for us. So look forward to some very quick information
on that, it will be out to you.
I also draw your attention to the National Leadership Summit which
will be June 14-15 in Washington, DC. We are trying to finalize
some of the aspects of this to get the registration materials out
as soon as humanly possible, so you can start to think about from
the states’ perspective, the team that you may choose to bring
in to Washington, DC for that event. So any other questions for
Dr. Newman, otherwise we will close this.
MS. BRYANT: I am Cynthia Bryant from Arizona
Department of Education, Exceptional Student Services. I have a
question. It begins on slide 11, about
course-taking of students with disabilities. I was rather impressed
with the percentages of students taking regular courses.
DR. NEWMAN: These are students taking these academic
courses, these are not necessarily in general education setting,
these are in any setting.
MS. BRYANT: Now since we don’t know whether
they were in special education settings or in regular education
settings, I guess my question won’t apply. Okay.
DR. JOHNSON: Okay, are there more questions?
All right, Lynn, thank you very much.
DR. NEWMAN: Thank you all.
END OF TELECONFERENCE


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