The purpose of this study was to determine the peer popularity of children classified as learning disabled. The method employed was to administer a sociometric technique to 62 third, fourth, and fifth grade classrooms in which there was at least one learning disabled child. An analysis of variance was computed for votes received on scales of social attraction and social rejection by learning disabled and comparison children matched on variables of sex, race, and classroom. The results indicate that learning disabled children, particularly white and female, were significantly less attractive and more rejected than comparison children.

For over 30 years, researchers have studied the social-emotional side of learning disabilities (LD). This article highlights the science-based research on three domains of social skills of children with LD: characteristics, interventions, and the impact of policy. The article concludes with concerns regarding the translation of research on social-emotional factors into practice and the likelihood that social-emotional problems are being adequately addressed in public schools. TANIS BRYAN, Ph.D., is president, Southwest Institute for Families and Children with Special Needs. KAREN BURSTEIN, Ph.D., is vice president, Southwest Institute for Families and Children with Special Needs. CEVRIYE ERGUL, doctoral candidate, is a research assistant, Arizona State University. In God we trust, from all else we expect data. (anon) SCIENCE-BASED DECISION MAKING Special education has long been an empirically based field. Special education policy and practice have been supported by scientific studies since the original IDEA (Public Law 94 142, 1975) included a provision for federal financing of special education research. Typically, special education research has focused on three basic goals: (a) to identify the characteristics that discriminate individuals within a particular disability category from typical individuals or individuals within another disability category; (b) to determine the effectiveness of intervention strategies; and (c) to assess the impact of public policy on constituents. Today, requirements in IDEA and No Child Left Behind (NCLB) mandate the use of scientifically based assessments, curricula, and interventions. Thus, the results of research have become the criteria for selecting assessment measures and curricula, individualizing instruction, making instructional decisions, charting progress, and planning behavioral interventions at individual and schoolwide levels. The topic of social-emotional factors in learning disabilities (LD) has benefited from special education's emphasis on science. Over the past 30 years, an impressive body of research has accumulated detailing the social problems experienced by students with LD, identifying promising classroom-based interventions for ameliorating some of these problems, and testing the effect of public policy (namely, class placement) on the social-emotional status of students with LD. The purpose of this article is to highlight the scientific base in each of three areas: characteristics, interventions, policy impact (i.e., full inclusion). SCOPE OF THE PROBLEMEstimates of the prevalence of social problems in students with LD in the United States range from 38% (Baum, Duffelmeyer, & Geelan, 1988) to 75% (Kavale & Forness, 1996). About 2,800,000 children have been identified as having LD; hence a sizable population of students has LD as social problems. Moreover, social problems have been reported across ages (preschool-elementary-junior-senior high schools-college-adulthood), race and ethnicity (some Volume 27, Winter 2004 45

Students with learning disabilities are more likely than other students to have problems doing homework. In this article, we describe how deficits in language, attention, memory, and organizational skills as well as in reading, writing, and math affect homework performance. We describe family and school factors that may exacerbate-or ameliorate-their problems as well as the intervention research that has included students with learning disabilities. At this point, there appears to be a huge gap between the strategies successfully applied in intervention studies and teachers' preferences for interventions, a serious issue that spills over and has a negative influence on family life. Nonetheless, an emerging area of intervention research suggests that effective efforts to improve homework completion, accuracy, and test performance may require parental involvement, peer cooperation, self-monitoring and graphing, "real-life" assignments, teachercollaborative problem solving, or all.

The authors' purpose in this study was to compare the effectiveness of two instructional approaches on mildly handicapped and nonhandicapped students' science achievement. Students were assigned at random to one of two conditions: (a) direct instruction, and (b) discovery teaching. The content of the lessons remained constant across conditions and focused on such concepts as displacement, flotation, variable, controlled experimentation, and scientific prediction. The results show that students in both groups learned equally well as measured by an immediate posttest. However, students in the discovery teaching condition outperformed their direct instruction counterparts on a retention test administered two weeks after the posttest. Finally, learning‐disabled students in the discovery condition performed better than their direct‐instruction counterparts on a performance‐based measure designed to assess generalization. Implications for research and for practice are discussed.

This study was designed to measure taskoriented and social behavior of learning disabled and normal children in the classroom. Using an Interaction Process Analysis, the classroom behaviors of children were coded for five days over a fivemonth period. Results indicate that the learning disabled children spent significantly less time engaged in attending behavior for a variety of school subjects and that learning disabled children had different interpersonal relationships with teachers and peers than did comparison children.