Teacher judgments about students' academic abilities are important for instructional decision making and potential special education entitlement decisions. However, the small number of studies evaluating teachers' judgments are limited methodologically (e.g., sample size, procedural sophistication) and have yet to answer important questions related to teachers' judgments. Thus, a primary goal of the present study was to examine unanswered questions about teacher judgments (e.g., what is the relationship between teacher judgments and students' performance on widely used reading measures) and to meaningfully improve upon earlier research methodologically (e.g., involving a large enough sample of teachers for sufficient statistical power). In doing so, teachers' perceptions of students' reading performance were examined across five different measures of reading ability, including direct measures such as the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) and state-mandated end-of-grade tests, and indirect measures such as a brief teacher rating scale. Findings suggested that teachers had considerable difficulty judging students' reading levels across most of the measures (e.g., DIBELS and end-of-grade tests), and were better judges of high-performing readers compared to low- and average-performing readers. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Since the 1970s, Italy has had a national policy of integrating nearly all students with disabilities into the general education classroom. As a result, many advocates of inclusion in the United States have identified Italy as an excellent example of how wide-range inclusion can be accomplished. However, some U.S. and Italian educators have expressed concern that very little research has directly examined Italy's inclusion practices and outcomes. In this article, all of the available literature in English in a 20-year period that pertained to Italy's inclusion outcomes and classroom practices was reviewed. Of the studies directly addressing Italy's inclusion practices, survey studies were the most common, and very few studies used experimental methodology. Furthermore, survey studies generally found outcomes considered to be favorable toward inclusion practices, whereas the results from experimental studies called the benefits of full inclusion into question. Of the studies that described interventions for students with disabilities, only a small percentage was conducted in a general education setting. Implications, limitations, and future research directions are discussed.