NICHCY: National Dissemination Center for Children with Disabilitites

What type of disability-related information or assistance are you looking for? OSEP's TA&D Network may very well offer it. Here's this month's sampling of the wealth of the network's expertise at your fingertips, organized to span the spectrum from early childhood to adulthood issues. Visit our OSEP TA&D Overview Page for more information on the network itself, project by project.  

Early Childhood

• Vulnerable Young Children
  This fact sheet provides data on infants, toddlers, and young children who are experiencing high stress as a result of a number of risk factors, including abuse or neglect, foster care placement, homelessness, family violence, and prenatal exposure to drugs or alcohol.

Available from: NECTAC, the National Early
Childhood Technical Assistance Center

• Planning Children's Transition from Part C to Part B
  States can use Designing and Implementing Effective Early Childhood Transition Processes to analyze their transition system infrastructure and identify how to support and improve local implementation of IDEA's requirements.

From: National Early Childhood Transition Initiative
A collaboration between OSEP, RRCs, the
National Early Childhood Transition
Center (NECTC), and NECTAC 

School Issues, K-12 

• Celebrating Learning Disabilities (LD) Awareness Month
  Join the Reading Rockets community in learning more about LD. Share one of their inspirational stories about parents and teachers who made a difference in the life of a child and find out how you can help a struggling reader.

From: Reaching Rockets

• Collaborating with Families
  This interactive module is designed to help teachers build positive relationships with families. It highlights the diversity of families and addresses the factors that school personnel should understand about working with the families of children with disabilities.
  

From: The IRIS Center for Training Enhancements

• The ABCs of RTI: Elementary School Reading
  This booklet is designed to assist families understand what RTI means, how it may be used with one's child, and how to ask questions of teachers and staff.  

From: National Research Center
on Learning Disabilities (NRCLD)

• RTI and English Language Learners
  In this brief, the authors look through the lens of culturally responsive practice to consider how best to implement RTI in a way that provides equitable educational opportunity for students who are English Language Learners.

From: National Center for Culturally
Responsive Educational Systems (NCCRESt)

• Coordinated Early Intervening Services (CEIS)
  This proceedings document includes an introduction and regulatory background on CEIS, including: requirements for LEAs to use CEIS funds, IDEA's significant disproportionality requirements, administrative issues, and implementation issues.

  From: Project Forum

• Resolution Meetings: A Guide for Parents
  This publication is designed to explain briefly what resolution meetings are, the benefits and concerns regarding resolution meetings, and how a family might use a resolution meeting to resolve an educational dispute for their son or daughter with a disability. A portion of the guide is dedicated to answering some of the frequently asked questions about resolution meetings.

From: The Technical Assistance Alliance
for Parent Centers (The Alliance)
and the Consortium for Appropriate
Dispute Resolution in Special Education
(CADRE)

• Communities of Practice: A New Approach to Solving Complex Educational Problems
  This document serves as a guide to a new approach to solving problems, as applied to work in special education. The collaborative approach is designed to address large-scale learning challenges by convening and cultivation of Communities of Practice among stakeholders.  In addition to this guide, a series of briefs, called New Eyes, provide examples, strategies, and tools to put the concept into practice.

From:IDEA Partnership

Postsecondary Issues

Collecting Post-School Outcome Data: Strategies for Increasing Response Rates
What are the IDEA requirements to collect post-school outcome data?  What strategies are recommended to secure sufficient response rates, especially from youth who drop out of school?

From: National Post-School Outcomes
Center (NPSO) and the National Dropout
Prevention Center for Students with Disabilities
(NDPC-SD)

Teaching Children With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: Instructional Strategies and Practices
Teachers who are successful in educating children with ADHD use a three-pronged strategy:

• Evaluate the child's individual needs and strengths.
• Select appropriate instructional practices.
• For children receiving special education services, integrate appropriate practices within an IEP.

- U.S. Department of Education

Doing What Works: Organizing Instruction to Improve Learning
Visit the U.S. Department of Education's "Doing What Works" Web site and check out the section called Psychology of Learning: How to Organize Your Teaching, which will empower educators and administrators with research-based strategies to help instructors organize their teaching and improve student learning.
- U.S. Department of Education

Early Childhood Briefs These short, web-based publications from the National Forum on Early Childhood Program Evaluation summarize the results and implications of recently published studies evaluating the effects of childhood programs and conditions.
- Harvard's Center on the Developing Child

Reviewing a Reading Program
The Curriculum and Instructional Projects Team at the Florida Center for Reading Research developed "Guidelines for Reviewing a Reading Program" to assist reviewers in determining if a program is consistent with the scientific research on reading. Based on that work, the Center on Instruction has developed a professional development module for Reviewing a Reading Program as a two-day training to guide reviewers of reading programs through the review process. The Participant's Guide contains resources (charts, summaries, and the Guidelines themselves) to help in reviewing a reading program. The Participant's Guide can also serve as a tool for reviewing any reading program.
- Center on Instruction

Response-to-Intervention (RTI) at the Secondary Level
The summary of the most recent TQ Connection discussion Response to Intervention at the Secondary Level is now available on the TQ Connection. This online discussion featured Dr. Mark Shinn from National Louis University who offered excellent resources and stimulating responses to questions surrounding secondary RTI implementation, scheduling considerations, graduation requirements, teacher preparation needs, and self-study instruments.
- National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality

More News You Can Use For more up-to-the-minute disability and education news, visit NICHCY's News You Can Use page.