White Paper: The Special Education Transformation Approach PCG’s latest white paper, Getting to Effectiveness: The Special Education Transformation Approach, was released today at the third New Jersey Special Education Annual Summit focused on teaching, learning, and leading in an inclusive world. [More]
The challenge to change You might never imagine us giving each other professional advice–but in fact, it’s Jason I can thank for one of the most important insights I’ve ever gained into what it takes for leaders of struggling schools to be willing to commit to better intervention strategies to improve results: Committing to the whole program of change from day one–even when you feel just starting one adjustment will be hard enough. [More]
How Do You Identify Students At-Risk? Proactively identifying students at-risk of academic failure is essential to ensuring students are maintaining appropriate grade-level progress and graduating with their four-year cohort. However, in often using home-grown solutions, districts struggle to easily and longitudinally analyze some of the most critical indicators to assess student risk, including student-level assessments, attendance, and other academic or student behavior data. [More]
What MTSS boils down to “At-Risk, Disproportionality, Over-Identification, Child Find, Student Outcomes…” These words, often associated with Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS), haunted me as a former director of students with disabilities in need of special education supports and services – but I thought to myself, do they need to be? I often woke up in the middle of the night pondering what I could do differently to help ensure the appropriate students were being identified for special education and the services they received were fitting. [More]
New American School Board Journal article examines disproportionality in urban school districts Disproportionality in urban school districts, specifically as it relates to instruction, is the focus of a new American School Board Journal (ASBJ) article out this month. The article, “Urban districts strive to solve disproportionality in their schools,” features several experts from across the U.S. who share ways districts are addressing this issue—one of those experts, is PCG’s own Dr. Jennifer Meller. According to the article, minority and socioeconomically disadvantaged students are more likely to be identified for special education than any other students. Meller argues that by implementing culturally responsive interventions, schools can begin to address this overrepresentation in special education programs. [More]