Improving Test Performance of Students With Disabilities...On District and State Assessments, Second Edition and IEP Pro CD-Rom Value-Pack

Martha L. Thurlow, Ph.D., is Director of the National Center on Educational Outcomes in the Institute on Community Integration (University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities) at the University of Minnesota. In this position, she addresses the implications of contemporary U.S. policy and practice for students with disabilities and English Language Learners, including national and statewide assessment policies and practices, standards-setting efforts, and graduation requirements. Dr. Thurlow has conducted research for the past 35 years in a variety of areas, including assessment and decision making, learning disabilities, early childhood education, dropout prevention, effective classroom instruction, and integration of students with disabilities in general education settings. She has published extensively on all of these topics, and also recently completed serving as co-Editor with Bob Algozzine of Exceptional Children, the research journal of the Council for Exceptional Children. Dr. Thurlow is a co-author of several books, including Testing Students with Disabilities, Improving Test Performance of Students with Disabilities, Alternate Assessments for Students with Disabilities, and Critical Issues in Special Education. Dr. Thurlow was one of the original developers of the dropout prevention program Check and Connect, which was empirically tested, and replicated in several settings. She is the author of numerous reports, journal articles and chapters on the topic of dropouts and dropout prevention, and also addresses the dropout problem within the current context of federal legislation, high stakes testing, and standards-based education.

Lawrence Steel is a special services teacher at Centennial High School in Ellicott City, Maryland. Prior to becoming a teacher in 1993, he worked as a computer system operator for a United States Senator in Washington D.C.

Shortly after becoming a teacher, he began to realize that there was a great need and demand for productivity software in the field of education. Several of Mr. Steel's computer programs are in the area of special education, and are designed to help streamline paperwork tasks. Mr. Steel is the author ofTeacherEvaluationWorks Pro, Student Discipline Data Tracker, and IEP Pro all of which are designed to increase school administrators' productivity and streamline necessary paperwork. Mr. Steel is also the author of the evaluation software that accompanies Writing Meaningful Evaluations for Non-Instructional Staff--Right Now!! and Writing Meaningful Teacher Evaluations - Right Now!!, Second Edition.

Mr. Steel, an avid traveler and bicyclist, currently resides in Silver Spring, Maryland, with his wife Kristin and twin daughters Sydney and Samantha.