IOWA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
Developing Our Youth: Fulfilling a Promise, Investing in Iowa's Future -- Enhancing Iowa's System of Supports for Development and Learning
This concept paper explains the Iowa Learning Supports. This design is intended to demonstrate the continuum of supports that students need to be ready and able to learn. A graphic is included which shows the range of readiness for learning and how many students are "blocked" from success when barriers to their learning exist. The "learning supports" that are needed to achieve success are grouped into six areas.
Special Education Eligibility Standards under Iowa's RtI model. (2006) This 45 page document includes extensive information on assessments, working with culturally and liguistically diverse students, and determining discrepancy.
Implementation of a Response to Intervention Program
This PowerPoint presentation details work in Iowa on Response to Intervention as implemented in Heartland AEA 11. It was presented at the National Association of School Psychologists conference in Dallas, TX in 2004.
IOWA COLLABORATION FOR YOUTH DEVELOPMENT
Learning is everyone's business. Schools alone cannot fulfill this imperative. The support of families and communities is essential if all students are to achieve at high levels. Without their help and support, the challenge will not be met. For this reason, the Iowa Department of Education works in partnership with the Iowa Collaboration for Youth Development to implement the Iowa System of Supports for Development and Learning. The Learning Supports initiative views success in school as the responsibility of more than just the school itself. In fact, for those youth with barriers to learning, success often requires the collective response of a myriad of services and resources available through the community to provide support for the learning that occurs inside and outside of the school building. Not only is it what occurs within the classroom, but the ability to mitigate through the social and emotional expectations that occur with middle and high school students, especially those with barriers in their lives. (SEE: Learning Supports Logic Model). Therefore, addressing the area of "successful in school" requires a three-pronged approach: Academic Instruction, Leadership, and Learning Supports. A graphical illustration of this approach is provided.
Fulfilling Iowa's Promise: Iowa's Youth Development Strategic Plan 2007-2010
State agencies have worked with their regional and and community partners to develop a strategic plan to achieve these results for Iowa's youth. This plan focuses on youth (defined as young people between the ages of 6 to 21) while Iowa's Community Empowerment initiative has developed a strategic plan for early childhood that addresses children from birth through age five. Building on the lessons learned over the last several years this plan links together efforts of multiple youth-serving agencies across systems, issues, age groups, and settings. The four strategies for change included in the plan are designed to improve "the way we do business" so that all youth, and especially the most vulnerable young people, have access to the services, opportunities and supports they need to become engaged, productive citizens.
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