The purposes of the Forum were to address capacity building in the area of dropout prevention for students with disabilities and to provide states with tools and strategies for analyzing their data, determining needs, and identifying potential solutions to their dropout issues. Participants gained an in-depth understanding of dropout among students with disabilities and related issues.
As a part of the Forum activities, each team began developing an implementation plan for activities to address dropout and related indicators in their state. To this end, each state brought its State Performance Plan, which served as a starting point in brainstorming about desired outcomes and potential resources that could be leveraged to achieve those outcomes. Forum presentations and activities were structured as working sessions in which states acquired information, participated in facilitated team discussions with focused questions, and collaborated as a team on their state implementation plan.
