New Special Education Initiative by Beth Dubose
Posted by cloetz on Feb 15, 2008
New Special Education Initiative: Six states to participate in rolling out new national technical assistance education center
Next month the US Department of Ed will announce the six states that will be participating in a new initiative that will develop a national education center focused on improving student achievement, especially for students with disabilities. The selection process included awarding a $1 million dollar multi-year grant to a University to spear-head the project. They recently announced that the University of South Florida won the grant and will begin facilitating the project this spring. The new Center on State Implementation and Scaling-up of Evidence-Based Practices (SISEP) will work with the selected states to look at proven, well-researched special education strategies, which they will then share nationwide through a Web site, conferences and publications.
I came across this initiative for the first time while I was reading the February 2008 issue of District Administration. There was a small blurb about it in the News Update section. It peaked my interest so I did some research and found out a little more. The best article I could find was at Ed.gov, http://www.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/2007/11/11022007.html, which includes a link to the document that the school districts had to submit to possibly be chosen for this initiative. I plan to continue to monitor this initiative and provide updates via this blog.
