Under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, states created statewide systems of support, in collaboration with existing agencies, to deliver targeted assistance to districts and schools identified as in need of support. With limited personnel and resources, state education agencies partnered with outside agents to address the needs of a growing…

This guidance document is designed to support state and local technical assistance (TA) providers in implementing effective professional development (PD) on the Child Outcomes Summary (COS) process with early intervention and early childhood special education practitioners. This document provides an overview of national resources and materials…

About 13 percent of children aged 3 through 21 enrolled in public schools received special education services in school year 2015-16, and about 3 percent of children from birth through age 2 received special education services. Concerns about the difficulties identifying and evaluating children for special education have been raised by the media,…

The Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) in the U.S. Department of Education funded the National Center on Intensive Intervention (NCII, or the Center) in 2011. NCII's mission during the first five years of funding was to build the capacity of local education agencies (LEAs) to support schools, practitioners, and other stakeholders in the…

The Elementary and Secondary Education (ESEA) flexibility program initiated in September 2011 holds several implications for special education accountability and, by extension, state education agencies and the technical assistance providers who support them. The U.S. Department of Education has approved ESEA waiver applications for a majority of…

An itinerant service delivery model takes early intervention and special education services to environments where young children with disabilities participate in their communities. Reconciliation of the mismatch that often occurs between recommended and actual practice requires support at all levels of the service delivery system, including…

Response to Intervention (RTI) is an instructional framework through which schools can provide early intervention for students experiencing academic and behavioral difficulties. It is also promoted as an alternative to the IQ-discrepancy model for identifying students with learning disabilities. Most states have developed, or are developing,…

A model developed by the Technical Assistance Customizer (TAC) Project offers state education agencies and other organizations an approach to assist them with converting national findings and resources to state-specific materials in a timely and cost-effective manner. Moreover, the approach recognizes the importance of collaboration with and the…

This brief is intended to provide State Education Agency (SEA) and Local Education Agency (LEA) educators with a brief overview of key components of GraduateFIRST, a Georgia program targeting issues impacting school completion for students with disabilities. Georgia's GraduateFIRST program has redefined the state's approach to raising graduation…

Two schools in Idaho received ARRA SIG (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act School Improvement Grants) funds to enable them to implement improvement efforts. This paper describes the outcomes of these two ARRA SIG recipient schools: (1) Jefferson Middle School; and (2) Lakeside Elementary School. The experiences of this non-recipient school is…

Check & Connect was created in a five year period from 1990 to 1995. The original manual, entitled "Keeping Kids in School: Using Check & Connect for Dropout Prevention" and written by David Evelo, Mary Sinclair, Christine Hurley, Sandra Christenson, and Martha Thurlow, was published in 1996 (ED398701). This newly revised Check…

The purpose of this document is to provide operators with implementation and operational technical assistance related to special education in charter schools. Special education is a very complicated component of public education and providing operators with technical assistance regarding special education is particularly challenging. This primer…

This practicum aimed to facilitate development and implementation of recommended practices by an early childhood special education team working with a University Affiliated Program (UAP). A site development project was being developed in response to the recognition by UAP center staff that their activities were not sufficient in helping early…

Describes Technical Assistance Centers established by the Virginia Department of Education to provide support services to preschool professionals throughout the state. Technical assistance--provided only at the request of the person who will receive it--includes needs assessments, information services, library services, on- and off-site…

This report on the National Assistance Project for Special Education Technology provides a description, evaluation of the project, case studies, and vignettes. The project provided technical assistance to local school districts to implement technology within special education programs. In year 1, technical assistance was provided to 27 local…