This book provides readers with a comprehensive description of procedures and practices that can enhance special education collaboration, consultation and cooperation in classroom learning environments and ancillary educational services. Experts in the field of special education provide detailed information on critical topics such as fostering the collaboration between regular education and special education teachers. Detailed discussions also focus on the role of mental health providers in special education, and the innovative use of technology in enhancing partnerships in general and special education. Unique chapters include the psychologist in the special education process, the role of the government as a partner to enhance special education services, and the vital role that principals play as school leaders to insure that special education students garner the necessary services to maximize their learning potential. Lastly, the critical roles that speech and language and physical education specialists play are discussed with regard to optimizing the overall development of students with special needs.

If all humor does indeed come from pain, then American educational policymaking has been a petri dish brimming with hilarity. Even before Betsy DeVos ascended to her perch atop the U.S. Department of Education, her predecessors had offered up an excruciating decade of fodder for satire. Ably assisted by a bevy of billionaires, foundations, and advocacy think tanks, these policymakers unleashed a torrent of rhetorical gibberish and evidence-free "innovations" on the nation's children and their schools. Potential Grizzlies: Making the Nonsense Bearable is one researcher's attempt to laugh instead of cry. The book will bring back memories of policymakers from more innocent times, from Michelle Rhee to Arne Duncan to Chris Christie. Sit back and relax with fond thoughts of your favorite policies, from testing to school choice to "parent trigger." Or maybe just smile and imagine a day when policymakers turn to research evidence and knowledgeable educators to build a sound future for our children.

In a reporting tour de force, award-winning journalist Steven Brill takes an uncompromising look at the adults who are fighting over America's failure to educate its children--and points the way to reversing that failure.
Brill not only takes us inside their roller-coaster battles, he also concludes with a surprising prescription for what it will take from both sides to put the American dream back in America's schools.