A large gap is evident between the reading and related skills performance of Aboriginal students compared with that of their nonindigenous peers and this gap increases over the primary years of schooling. In this study, 34 students attended a tutorial centre in Sydney for older low-progress readers in Years 5 and 6, for two school terms. All students were referred by their schools on the basis of their reading difficulty and low socioeconomic status. The parents of 14 of these students self-identified as being Aboriginal. All students received an intensive, systematic skills-based remedial reading and spelling program (mornings only) and were assessed on a battery of literacy measures both prior to and following the two term intervention. The pre and posttest raw scores on all measures were analysed to determine the efficacy of the program. The group as a whole made large and highly significant gains on all measures of reading accuracy, comprehension, single word reading, nonword reading, spelling and oral reading fluency. There were no significant differences in gain between the two subgroups indicating that the program of instruction was equally beneficial for both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students.

Various models for funding special education services have been described in the literature. This paper aims at moving the debate concerning special education funding reform beyond the descriptive level by reviewing studies that investigated the impact of various models for funding special education. Systematic searches were conducted of ERIC and PsycINFO to identify studies that investigated the impact, implications, or outcome of one or more special education funding models. Ten studies were identified covering five major funding models. The results showed that the funding reforms investigated in these studies each had associated benefits, but also potential detriments. However, these studies mainly involved indirect outcome measures, often failed to fully assess impact on academic achievement or cost-effectiveness. Results highlight the need for additional research on the impact of special education funding reform.

The aim of this article is to provide clinical and practical guidance for the provision of one-on-one intervention for children with spelling difficulties. We briefly discuss the requirements of theoretically guided assessment and suggest some norm-based assessment tools in this light. The main focus of this article is on teaching children with spelling difficulties in a one-on-one context. Previous research has shown that children present with spelling difficulties of different types and that intervention is most effective when targeted at the specific difficulty. Hence, we outline different interventions for different subtypes of developmental spelling difficulties.

Inclusive education has become more common in schools, and children with developmental disabilities have had greater opportunities to interact, and hopefully establish relationships with their typically developing peers. While the quality of friendships between typically developing children has been examined in detail, relatively little comparable data is available on children with developmental disabilities. The current study provided an examination of the characteristics of the closest relationships between children with developmental disabilities and peers in inclusive school settings. Twenty-five children with developmental disabilities aged between approximately 5 and 12 years participated. Using an interview instrument, the relationships of these children with 74 peers were examined across six dimensions. Overall, dyads were found to be high in Validation and Caring as well as Help and Guidance, followed by slightly lower levels of Companionship. Intimate Exchange was reported to be lower. Conflict among dyads was also low, and Conflict Resolution was reported to be high when problems did occur. There was a clear differentiation between the highest- and lowest-ranked dyads for children with a disability. Overall, the features of the relationships between children with disabilities and their highest-ranked peer appeared similar in nature to those previously reported between typically developing peers.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether an interview protocol, based on the Friendship Quality Questionnaire, could be adapted to examine the close relationships of children with developmental disabilities in an inclusive school setting. Twenty-five children with developmental disabilities aged between approximately 5 and 12 years participated and their relationships with 74 peers were examined. Several adaptations to the procedures and interview instrument were evaluated, including gathering interview data from multiple sources and the development of a short form of the interview questionnaire. Overall, the adaptations to procedures used in the current study appeared successful in catering for the wide range of abilities and ages among respondents. This was reflected in the reliability of children's responses, high response rates on the short interview form, and good correspondence between the short and full interview forms. The described adaptations were successful in eliciting information on aspects of children's relationships that might not have been obtained using a traditional interview instrument. This opens the way for further detailed quantitative evaluation of relationships between children with developmental disabilities and peers in inclusive settings.