Educating Individuals with Disabilities IDEIA 2004 and Beyond

Before the passage of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act in 1975, U.S. students with physical and learning disabilities frequently went undiagnosed, received inadequate treatment, or were even barred from attending school. And until recently, traditional measures of learning disability were often too crude to separate the learning-disabled student from students having academic difficulties due to other reasons, such as emotional issues or language problems. Grigorenko's new book discusses how learning-disabled students are identified and assessed today, in light of the 2004 Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act. One of the major changes in IDEIA 2004, for instance, is the "Response to Intervention" (RTI) provision, which allows school districts to better identify students with legitimate learning disabilities and provide them with individualized, evidence-based instruction. Grigorenko's interdisciplinary collection is the first to comprehensively review the IDEIA 2004 Act and distill the changes professionals working with learning-disabled students face. The text takes an overarching perspective, first discussing the IDEIA in its historical, political, and legal context, then covering practical issues professionals address on a daily basis. Educating Individuals with Disabilities is a priceless resource for school psychologists, neuropsychologists, speech-language therapists, administrators, policy makers, and legal professionals who navigate special education and learning disability issues on a daily basis.