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Professionals, families, and individuals with disabilities must work together to advocate for policy and legislation that will improve the lives of those with disabilities. Rural areas have unique issues that make targeted advocacy efforts necessary. While families and parents have a personal interest in advocacy, professionals have ethical principles related to advocacy they must uphold as a member of their field. This article outlines steps to use when working with state and national legislators including (a) knowing the issues, (b) identifying allies, (c) working with others, and (d) sustaining advocacy efforts. Specific tips are provided for individuals making face-to-face visits with legislators to increase chances of positive outcomes.

Positive and constructive feedback is a form of positive reinforcement essential to effective instruction and classroom management. This article provides practitioners with a range of realistic positive and constructive feedback strategies and descriptions of how such feedback can be implemented in schools and classrooms, with a special focus on the reinforcement of students with emotional and behavioral disorders.

Fluency is one of the critical factors necessary for proficient reading due to its connection with reading comprehension yet many students with reading difficulties struggle to become efficient readers of connected text. The purpose of the current study was to examine the effects of a digital reading fluency program that incorporates evidence-based practices such as repeated reading, immediate error correction, modeling, and graphing of performance to improve the oral reading fluency of four elementary students with significant reading difficulties. Using a single-case, multiple probe across participants design, results indicated the Great Leaps Digital Reading Program was an effective intervention for increasing the oral reading fluency of both within-program and grade-level reading passages. Implications of results and future research are discussed.