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Top-Read Posts of 2014: IEPs, Common Core, Education Department Moves

By Christina A. Samuels — December 31, 2014 2 min read
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New Year’s Eve is a time for reflecting on the year just ended, including the blog posts that got the most attention from On Special Education readers in 2014. In honor of soon-to-depart television host David Letterman, let’s revisit this year’s most-read posts, Top Ten List-style:

Number 10! Gifted Education, Special Education See Funding Increases in Federal Budget Bill Good news from early in 2014. But what about Part C of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act?

Number 9! Does Co-Teaching Work? This old chestnut, from 2008, has been one of my top-read blog posts since I wrote it. Time to revisit the subject?

Number 8! Education Secretary Lauds Revised Special Education Evaluation System It’s going to be harder to get a good “grade” on special education performance, but U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan says that’s OK.

Number 7! Sparking Literacy Gains for Students with Intellectual Disabilities A study showing these students could make significant progress should mark a change in expectations for them, says a researcher.

Number 6! Special Education Administrators Urge Supreme Court Review of ‘Stay Put’ Ruling The U.S. Supreme Court in October asked the Obama administration to weigh in before making a decision to to hear the case.

Number 5! Researchers Question Autism Prevalence Rates from CDC Are we really seeing more cases of children with autism, or are the measurement tools giving us false positives?

Number 4! New Website Offers Common-Core Lesson Plans for Special Educators The website is not too new anymore, because I wrote this blog post in late 2013.

Number 3! Ed. Dept. Releases Results of New Special Education Evaluation Process In 2013, most states were “meeting requirements.” This year, only 15 were.

Number 2! High Schoolers With ADHD Receiving Few Evidence-Based Supports Older students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder receive help, but not necessarily the help they need.

And the most-read blog post in On Special Education in 2014 is ...

Resources for Writing IEPs Aligned to Common-Core Standards I wrote this blog post in 2013, and it was far and away the most-read blog post this year, garnering more than twice as many clicks as the number 2 entry. Part of that traffic was likely driven by a Twitter chat I conducted on the subject in October (which I compiled into a Storify, embedded below). Clearly, this is a topic that deserves more coverage in 2015. What additional stories would you like to see?


A version of this news article first appeared in the On Special Education blog.