Teachers of students with moderate and severe disabilities must possess the skills and knowledge to address a unique set of needs and challenges. These may include, but are not limited to, management of challenging behaviors, performance of health-related procedures, use of assistive technology, and instruction using evidence-based strategies.…

This paper highlights several current collaborative activities of the National Early Childhood Technical Assistance Center (NECTAC). There are many specific examples of TA (Technical Assistance) collaborations that take place on a regular basis; the seven examples presented here were selected to represent different types of collaboration. The…

A survey of all 50 states and the District of Columbia found that more than half the states utilized a Higher Education Consortium to facilitate personnel development and capacity building in the early intervention disciplines. Information about the membership, mission, and meeting structure is provided as well as possible explanations for why…

Describes a system of four separate but interdependent school-university consortia that have been developed as part of the special education department's reform and restructuring initiatives in a Florida university. The rationale for the consortia, barriers to their implementation, and their missions, activities, and governance structures are…

Discusses various aspects of the Midwest Retool Consortium, a project designed to provide continuing education for special teacher educators in the area of career education for the handicapped. The consortium is made up of the States of Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Iowa. (TA)

This handbook describes the development of the Advocacy Consortium for College Students with Disabilities in Rochester, New York, and provides suggestions on how to create such consortiums. It begins by discussing the following topics: the need for advocacy consortiums to assist support providers in addressing ongoing concerns about documentation…

This article describes Iowa's journey to establish and implement a unified endorsement in early childhood and early childhood special education, birth through third grade. It describes the formation of the Unified Institute of Higher Education Consortium and the support the consortium provided to help faculty make major curriculum changes.…

The Preservice Early Intervention Project of the Associated Colleges of Central Kansas (ACCK) was designed to recruit highly promising students into the preservice specialization in Early Childhood Special Education and to give them competencies from multiple disciplines to appropriately serve infants/toddlers with disabilities or developmental…

The role of teachers serving as policy board members of the Metrolina Educational Consortium (MEC) in North Carolina is discussed. The MEC is concerned with teacher education programs and is composed of classroom teachers, college representatives, local education agency staff, and state education department staff. The board members are mandated to…

A higher education consortium (HEC) in early intervention (EI) is described. An evaluation of the model found that benefits to faculty of HEC participation included development and implementation of EI coursework, development of interdisciplinary collaborative relationships, increased knowledge of state resources, and enhanced knowledge of EI…