Special Ed Connection: Special education resources
Find ItSpecial Ed Connection provides practitioners and researchers access to a vast array of legal, regulatory, administrative and advisory resources all centered on special education issues. Included are statutes, regulations, administrative decisions, court cases, state-specific pages, advisory tips and more. Clustered by topics and subtopics and intricately intertwined, the materials in Special Ed Connection are both browseable and searchable.
The home page contains links to the latest and most important general news and developments. Six additional topic pages do the same for specific areas of interest: Section 504, Early Childhood, Behavior & Discipline, Technology, Specific Disabilities, and Legal Research Center. The Stats/Regs link below the topic headings leads to the fundamental statutes and implementing regulations pertaining to special education.
Special features within Special Ed Connection include SmartStarts and Special Ed Roundups. SmartStarts are analyses of difficult situations involving Section 504. They include an overview of the issue and links to pertinent cases, policy letters, statutes, and so on. Special Ed Roundups provide the latest practical guidance on a number of broad topics of special interest to the busy practitioner.
The search options provide many point-and-click limiters which change based upon the category to be searched. The most complex limiting is in Interactive Search. Here the researcher can enter a search string and then select to a very granular degree where the results should come from, e.g., Federal Policy & Guidance | OCR Policy Memoranda. But more importantly, the researcher can change that selection on the fly enabling a very quick sorting by source.
Special Ed Connection is of great benefit to anyone with an interest in the legal and policy aspects of special education.
By: Marilyn Scott, education research librarian
Image: Creative Commons