Message from OSEP Director,
Ms. Valerie C. Williams

Dear Friends,

March was an upside-down month in Washington.  It came in like a lamb with warm temperatures and hopes for an early spring and is leaving like a lion with fierce snow squalls and a ridiculously cold temperatures.  Similarly, Congress passed a budget through September 30^th on March 10^th with a modest increase in IDEA funds and 18 days later the President submitted his 2023 budget with a sizeable increase in Department of Education funds and grants  and a large increase in IDEA funds—including doubling the IDEA Part C grants to States.  Hopefully Congress will get back to regular order, hold timely hearings and endorse the President and Secretary Cardona’s desire to fully fund IDEA.

You may have noticed that in my contributions to the OSEP monthly so far, I am very interested in data on children with disabilities.  I highlight areas where I think we as a nation need to take a deeper dive into the data as it indicates that we’re not where we need to be for our children with disabilities.  Since April is Autism Acceptance Month, I think it’s a great time to dig into some data about children with autism.  The most recent information from the CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network shows that based on their samples from 11 States, 1 in 44 eight-year-old children have an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis and boys are eight times more likely to have an ASD diagnosis than girls.  If you haven’t examined the updated report, I highly recommend it.  Here’s the link to the report and it generated a lot of questions for me including:

• What is the ASD identification rate in your State and school district? Are there discrepancies by gender, race or socio-economic status?  If so, do you understand the reasons for discrepancies?
• At what age are children suspected with having an ASD typically receive an evaluation? Do certain racial or ethnic groups get evaluated later?
• What percentage of children in your State and school district with ASD receive special education services?
• How many children with ASD receive early interventions services in your State? At what age do children with ASD typically begin receiving early intervention services?  Are early intervention services for infants and toddlers with ASD provided equitably across your State?

A data point that the ADDM did not explore was educational environments for children with ASD.  Our IDEA section 618 data shows that children with ASD, intellectual disabilities, multiple disabilities and deaf-blindness are mostly educated outside the regular education classroom and education within the regular education classroom has not appreciably changed between the 2012 and 2020 school years.  This data raises more questions and leads me to believe that we’re stuck in traditional service delivery models based on disability categories instead of ensuring a child is educated in the least restrictive environment.  If you haven’t already, I encourage you to check out the resources on supporting inclusive education for students with significant cognitive disabilities on the TIES Center website.  I really appreciate their understanding of how busy educators are and provide very impactful strategies to support inclusive education. 

In solidarity,

Valerie

Office of Elementary and Secondary Education

The Essential Conversations to Build Capacity through Family, School, and Community Partnerships

Join the Region 10 Comprehensive Center and the Wisconsin Urban Leadership Institute (WI-ULI) on Wednesday, April 13^th at 9:00 am CT for Essential Conversations to Build Capacity through Family, School, and Community Partnerships. This webinar will promote effective practices and strategies to engage all stakeholders. To register, click here. For more information, please contact Jenna Allerson at jallerso@umn.edu.

Differentiated Monitoring and Support (DMS)

OSEP’s next Technical Assistance (TA) Call on DMS is scheduled for April 28, 2022, and will review the stakeholder engagement process. Please check the OSEP Monthly TA Call page to register for the monthly calls, review previously recorded calls and information, and access the TA Call schedule. 

To review other resources and documents related to our monitoring activities (e.g., DMS 2.0, DMS Reports, and older monitoring reports), please refer to the DMS section on our IDEA website. 

OSEP has released new 2019-20/ 2020 state-level data files on the Department’s new Open Data Platform. A user can navigate to the IDEA Section 618 data products via the legacy site:  IDEA Section 618 Data Products (ed.gov). In addition to state-level data files, OSEP has released a number of static tables that provide commonly used percentages associated with the IDEA Section 618 data.

Did You Know? 

In SY 2020-21, the percentage of students with disabilities educated inside the regular class less than 40% of the day was greater than 43% for both school aged students with intellectual disabilities and school aged students with multiple disabilities and less than 13% for all disabilities in the US, Outlying Areas, and Freely Associated States.

New Publication on Access to the GEC

The National Center on Deaf-Blindness has a new publication for state deaf-blind projects called Understanding Access to the General Education Curriculum. It covers what the projects can do to help families and educators provide this access for students who are deaf-blind, including foundational information about academic content standards and academic achievement standards, and how they inform instructional planning.

Research Highlights from the National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER)

The Institute for Education Science’s NCSER funds research designed to expand knowledge and understanding of learners with and at risk for disabilities, from infancy through postsecondary settings. We share reports below on issues, findings, and events related to special education.

Integrating Social-Emotional and Literacy Learning in the Primary Grades features an interview with Drs. Ann Daunic and Nancy Corbett about their research on Social-Emotional Learning Foundations, an intervention that combines instructional strategies in literacy and self-regulation for young elementary school students at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders.

Improving the Reading Skills of Middle School Students with and at Risk for Disabilities celebrates Middle Level Education Month by highlighting current research projects that aim to support the literacy skills of middle school students with and at risk for disabilities.

Promoting Equitable and Sustainable Behavioral Interventions in Early Childhood features the reflections of former IES postdoctoral fellow Dr. Jun Ai on conducting research that addresses equity among young learners from underrepresented communities and advice to other emerging scholars from minoritized groups.

Korean-English Glossary of Common IDEA Terms

The Glossary of Korean Translation of Common IDEA Terms is now available on the Center for Parent Information and Resources (CPIR) website.  Two community parent resource centers — the Community Inclusion & Development Alliance and  Open Doors for Multicultural Families — developed the glossary with support from OSEP and CPIR. The glossary is intended to provide accurate and reliable Korean translations of commonly used terms in special education. We hope that this glossary will help increase communication between educational professionals and Korean-speaking families in the U.S. and support professionals’ efforts to better engage with Korean-speaking families.

Upcoming PROGRESS Center Webinar: Using Parent and Youth Feedback to Inform High-Quality Educational Programming for Students with Disabilities

What can we learn from the experiences of families and youth to guide our development and implementation of high-quality educational programming for students with disabilities? Join the PROGRESS Center and the National Center for Learning Disabilities for a webinar featuring Stacy Hirt and Joey Hunziker on April 21, 2022 at 2:00 pm ET. The presenters will share findings from a series of focus groups with families and caregivers who had a child with an IEP during their school years and young adults who were supported with an IEP while in school. Click here to register for the webinar.

Increasing Instructional Intensity Across Tiers of Support

Students with intensive reading needs, including those who score below the screener’s cut score and those in need of individualized intervention, should receive explicit, systematic instruction across a multi-tiered system of support (MTSS) framework. Check out this infographic from the Lead for Literacy Center to visualize how MTSS looks at the classroom level.

Part C Data System Functions Resources

This resource from the DaSy Center contains a list of Part C data system functions designed to assist in developing and enhancing high-quality state data systems. The primary audiences for this document are Part C coordinators and data managers, data system project managers, technical staff supporting state data systems, and possibly state data system vendors approved by the state. (While this list is designed specifically for Part C, many of the functions are applicable to Part B 619.)  The DaSy Center encourages state programs to work with DaSy Center staff for technical assistance (TA) on using this resource when they are considering or planning for a new or enhanced data system. DaSy Center TA could support state programs with developing a request for proposal (RFP) for a new data system as well as reviewing an existing state data system for possible enhancements. Learn more about Part C Data System Functions Resources.

New DaSy Center Blog Post! Data Dating

Imagine there is someone special with whom you would like to build a new relationship. Would you ask that someone out on a date, set a time and place to meet, have the date, set a second date, but not communicate directly with that someone? That relationship is doomed from the start, and yet this happens regularly in the world of stakeholder engagement. Read The DaSy Center’s latest blog post by Thomas McGhee II: Data Dating: Cultivating Effective Stakeholder Relationships.

PROGRESS Center Webinar

In February, the PROGRESS Center hosted a webinar with Dr. Erik Carter focused on ten ways schools can foster belonging among students with and without disabilities. In the webinar, he highlighted new resources form the TIES Center focused on the power of peers and peer engagement. For those that were unable to attend live, view the recording of the webinar on the PROGRESS Center website. In addition, check out the recent Stories from the Classroom video where Xuan Truong shared her school experience and the importance of being included in a significant and meaningful way.

 Visit the OSERS Blog

Visit our blog for powerful stories and useful information from parents, families, educators, and practitioners in the field. Be sure to bookmark sites.ed.gov/osers for future posts!