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Lou Danielson Lou Danielson Managing Director American Institutes for Research Louis Danielson, a national leader in the field of special education, has been involved in programs that improve results for students with disabilities for over three decades. He brings an unparalleled and unique depth of knowledge in both special education policy and research to his current position as a Managing Director with the American Institutes for Research. Dr. Danielson was awarded a doctorate of philosophy in educational psychology from Pennsylvania State University. His career spans several roles in education including secondary school science and mathematics teacher, school psychologist, and teaching at the university level. Until recently, Dr. Danielson held leadership roles in the U. S. Office for Special Education Programs and was responsible for the discretionary grants program, including technical assistance and dissemination, personnel preparation, technology, and parent training priorities, state improvement grants. He has served in numerous research and policy roles and has been involved in major school reform activities. A frequent contributor to professional journals, Dr. Danielson has published extensively in the literature and is a frequent speaker at national and international conferences and events focusing on special education. His particular areas of interest include policy implementation and evaluation and scaling up of evidence based practices.

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Question 2: Often times, students with disabilities are overlooked in the classroom, how does Tiered Intervention help students with disabilities on the High School level?

Of course schools that are implementing tiered instructional or behavioral interventions could overlook students with disabilities in the same way that schools who are not implementing tiered interventions could. But, schools who are implementing tiered interventions may be in a better place to address the needs of students with disabilities because they are likely to focus on kids whose needs are not being fully met in the general classroom and they are likely to be implementing more intensive interventions that would benefit students with and without disabilities who need assistance. If the tiered intervention schools are also using performance data to screen for "at risk" students and to assess the progress of these students, assuming that students with disabilities are part of this data collection, the schools are also much more likely to implement more intensive interventions for these students.

I would bet that every high school in the country that there are students with disabilities in general education classes. High schools that are implementing tiered interventions distinguish themselves by having made the decision that there is a need for more intensive interventions. That is, these schools have recognized the need to differentiate instruction because they recognize that there are students who start out behind or who progress more slowly or who really need either more intensive or more individualized instruction. I think that it is very likely that these high schools will be very sensitive to the needs of students with disabilities.

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