Policy Briefs (LD News: May 2007)

NCLB Commission Report on the Impact of N Size in California (PDF, 4 pages)
The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Commission analysis of California schools reveals that at least 38,165 students with disabilities are invisible to the accountability system. The Commission recommends a lower minimum subgroup size (N-size) for calculating Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) in order to provide more reliable statistics and to count more students. To read more about the NCLB Commission recommendations to Congress, visit the NCLB website here.

Kansas Names New Education Commissioner
The Kansas Board of Education chose a familiar face to serve as the state's education chief. Alexa Posny, a seven-year veteran of the department who left last year to be director of the Office for Special Education Programs for the U.S. Department of Education, will return to Kansas as the state's education commissioner on July 1.

Communities of Practice: A New Approach to Solving Complex Educational Problems (PDF, 54 pages)
The IDEA Partnership at the National Association of State Directors of Special Education (NASDSE) has published a new guide promoting the development of Communities of Practice.

New Resources from OSEP
Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) has added new briefs for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) 2004 Regulations -- Secondary Transition, Disproportionality And Overidentification, and Alignment with the No Child Left Behind Act. OSEP has also published several Question and Answer documents to their site.