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A critical requirement of the Individuals with Disabilities Education is that school personnel and parents collaborate in the development and implementation of students’ special education programs. Collaboration has been a crucial requirement of the IDEA since 1975. Collaboration is necessary in formulating student’s special education services and implementing programs that meet students’ needs. In this article, we examine the critical importance collaboration plays in special education law. To do so we examine (a) the history, evolution, and language of the IDEA; (b) rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court and other courts addressing issues in collaboration; and (c) regulations and policies from the U.S. Department of Education. To meet the mandates of the IDEA, school districts need to employ general education teachers, special education teachers, and building-level and district-level administrators with skills in collaborating to support the education of all students and to meet the requirements of the IDEA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary message of the Supreme Court's ruling in "Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District" (hereinafter "Endrew F.," 2017) was that school districts are obligated to "offer an IEP [individualized education program] that is reasonably calculated to enable the child to make progress appropriate in light of the child's circumstances" ("Endrew F.," 2017, p. 1001). It is through the present levels of academic achievement and functional performance (PLAAFP), annual goals, services, and methods to monitor student progress that special educators can ensure that their students' IEPs are designed to enable them to make academic and functional progress. The purpose of this article is to assist IEP teams to (a) connect students' areas of need as defined in the PLAAFP statements to the rest of the IEP, (b) write legally defensible IEP goals that are ambitious and meaningful, (c) develop special education and related services based on peer-reviewed research (PRR), and (d) monitor a student's progress toward their goals. Each of these components working together is essential to developing IEPs that enable a student to make progress appropriate in light of their circumstances.

This article concludes this special issue by highlighting some of the most important points from the U.S. Supreme Courts decision in "Board of Education v. Rowley" (1982) and "Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District" (2017) but also discussing another crucial point to which school district personnel must adhere to ensure that a free appropriate public education (FAPE) is provided: ensuring a student's individualized education program (IEP) is being implementing as written.

The goal of this article is to assist individualized education program (IEP) team personnel to not make errors in the placement of students. To do so the authors: (1) describe what a placement decision is and who makes the decision; (2) review the placement requirements of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA, 2006); (3) examine guidelines from the seminal cases that have addressed placement issues; (4) describe how IEP teams can avoid the most common placement errors; (5) provide a placement flowchart to help IEP teams make legally sound placement decisions; and (6) offer principles to help IEP teams make legally sound placement decisions.

This article begins with a scenario depicting the difficulties encountered by a young student in the Douglas County School District in Castle Rock, Colorado, named Endrew (called Drew by his parents). This situation, which began at Drew's individualized education program (IEP) meeting at Summit Ridge Elementary School when he was in fourth grade, led to a due-process hearing and two federal court cases and eventually resulted in the seminal ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in "Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District" (or "Endrew F."; 2017). The ruling, which was written by chief justice John Roberts, defined the educational-benefit standard that school districts must meet in developing a free appropriate public education (FAPE) for students with disabilities who receive special education services under the IDEA. Following the high court's ruling, the case went back through the two lower federal courts that first heard the case. A few months after the Supreme Court's ruling, the authors published an article in "TEACHING Exceptional Children" in which they reviewed the decision and provided implications for special educators for implementing programs that meet the FAPE standard of the the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA, 2006) (see EJ1160170). The purpose of this article is to provide an update of that article and to examine the effects of the "Endrew F." ruling 3 years after it was announced. To accomplish this, the authors (1) review the definition of FAPE in the IDEA; (2) reexamine and update the Supreme Court's decision in "Endrew F."; and (3) extrapolate principles for educators from "Endrew F." with respect to development of students' IEPs.

One of the most important elements of an individualized education program (IEP) is the section on present levels of academic achievement and functional performance (PLAAFP). A well-crafted PLAAFP statement should summarize all aspects of a student's present levels of performance in order to identify the strengths and needs of the student as well as the student's baseline level of functioning or progress. To help guide IEP teams in developing a comprehensive PLAAFP statement that summarizes the student's current levels of performance and provides information about how the student's needs or disability impacts educational performance, the present authors have developed a PLAAFP Worksheet. Potential areas of impact are represented on the worksheet, with suggested data sources to be considered when drafting the PLAAFP statement.

This article begins by describing a scenario in which a fourth-grade learning disabled student's individualized education program (IEP) team came together to develop his IEP and in so doing made a number of procedural and substantive errors. The purpose of this article is to examine the procedural and substantive requirements of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA, 2006) with the goal of helping school personnel avoid making procedural and substantive errors when developing students' IEPs.

Traditional public schools no longer have a guaranteed market share of students, or tax dollars, based on geographic location. Families with little to no options in the past about where their child would attend school, now have many. In response to the expanding options available to them--in the form of charter schools and vouchers--families today are no longer simply sending their students to the school assigned to them based on geographic location. Today's public school employees need to understand why, when, where, and how to market their schools to continue to serve their communities in this changing educational climate. If public schools are going to thrive in today's society, they must respond to a new operating environment. Due to the changing competitive landscape in education, it becomes vital to understand how families select schools for their children. To date, there have been a number of published books and articles calling for greater need for schools to market. However, we argue that the emphasis of the literature has not provided administrators with a solid foundation of marketing theory. Instead, too great a focus in placed on communication tips and techniques, which gives educators a mistaken understanding of the marketing process. This paper will address the principles of marketing and how they can be applied in a public school setting. It focuses on the elements of the marketing mix, in a context unique to the competitive climate in which today's educators are operating.