Date of Award

10-1-1999

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Specialist in Education (Ed.S.)

Department

Educational Leadership

First Advisor

Dr. Lisa Kelly-Vance

Abstract

Prereferral assistance teams have been implemented in many schools to provide a formal process of monitoring interventions in regular education before referring students to testing for special education. The main purpose of the current study is to determine if using the problem-solving process during prereferral assistance team meetings is more effective than not using problem-solving during team meetings. The results from the study indicated that prereferral assistance teams that use problem solving are more successful in reducing the number of referrals to psychoeducational testing and in increasing the number of specific and appropriate accommodations developed during prereferral assistance team meetings. The use of problem-solving during prereferral assistance team meetings, however, did not increase the number of students who were referred for psychoeducational testing and qualified for special education services compared to the results from prereferral assistance teams that did not use problem-solving. The current study supports the need to include the steps involved in problem-solving during prereferral assistance team meetings to reduce the number of referrals to psychoeducational testing and to remediate behavioral and academic problems in regular classrooms.

Comments

An EdS Field Project Presented to the Department of Psychology and the Faculty of the Graduate College University of Nebraska In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Specialist in Education University of Nebraska at Omaha. Copyright 1999 Leanne Lowell Josoff

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