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Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act prohibit schools from discriminating against otherwise qualified individuals with disabilities because of their impairments. The major difference between the two statutes is that the former applies only to recipients of federal funds, whereas the latter extends protections to those in the private sector. Otherwise qualified individuals with disabilities are those who have physical or mental impairments, which substantially limit one or more of their major life activities, a record of such impairments, or are regarded as having such impairments but who are capable of meeting all of a program's requirements in spite of their disabilities. In this chapter, the authors review the statutes' various requirements as they apply to both students and employees in the school setting. Specifically, using numerous court cases as examples, the chapter outlines the reasonable accommodations schools must provide to extend the benefits of their programs to individuals with disabilities in terms of providing services or employment. Furthermore, the chapter discusses the limitations on the types of accommodations schools must provide when doing so would place an excessive financial or administrative burden on the school board.

The social movement literature is replete with review essays of the various theoretical formulations (i.e., Buechler 1993; Jenkins 1983; Tarrow 1989). Frequently, these intellectual histories contain descriptions of how one cohort of sociologists glamorized or debunked the favored theories of earlier generations (i.e., before the “resource mobilizers” were supplanted by the “framing” crowd, there was a supposed “collective behaviorist” heyday). While these theoretical depictions flourished, the number of methodological overviews remains small (see Crist and McCarthy 1996; Diani and Eyerman 1992; Morris and Herring 1987; Olzak 1989; Rucht, Koopmans, and Neidhardt 1998). To augment these methodological essays, this paper explores the problematic choice of using newspapers for protest information. In doing so, this inquiry initially compares some media and researcher impressions of a local protest mobilization (i.e., demonstrations against the Persian Gulf War in San Diego). Later, this paper chronicles a content analysis of 20 national, regional, and alternative news organizations. In the end, this investigation shows that every newspaper missed most of the protests and that coverage rate varied by newspaper. Furthermore, the widely praised New York Times fared badly and none of the papers displayed consistent coverage rates throughout time. With these warnings in hand, the discussion section provides some techniques that might offset these newspaper deficiencies.