The Alliance for Systems Change/Mid-South Regional Resource Center (ASC/MSRRC) is one of six Regional Resource Centers (RRCs) funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education programs. ASC/MSRRC provides technical assistance to state early intervention lead agencies, departments of education and other related state agencies in Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
NATIONAL NEWS
* NEW * Part C Coordinator Orientation Videos Announcement
This announcement provides information on the New Part C Coordinator Orientation video training now available online. The New Part C Coordinator Orientation committee created this training from a Part C orientation session held in December, 2009. The target audience is the new Part C Coordinator.
Data Sharing for Early Childhood Transition Webinar: January 6th 2010
This webinar was conducted by the RRC Program Early Childhood Transition Priority Team.
MSRRC REGIONAL NEWS
* NEW *MSRRC Directors' Forum: September 20-21, 2010
The Mid-South Region Part B Directors' Forum is held twice annually to enable Directors to discuss with their colleagues the issues related to APR indicators, finance (MOE, etc), NCLB challenges related to the special education subgroup, assessment, and many others.[posted 8-10]
MSRRC Develops Part B & Part C Survey Guides
The Mid-South RRC has developed these guides to assist states in developing improvement activities using their parent survey data in response to Indicator 8 of the Part B State Performance Plan (SPP) and Indicator 4 of the Part C State Performance Plan (SPP). The purpose of these guides is the help states use the findings of their surveys to improve services, no matter what survey instrument (e.g., NCSEAM or state-developed for Part B; and NCSEAM, ECO, or state-developed for Part C) is used. The intent is to answer the questions, "What do the results mean?" and "How can we use this information to improve services?" [posted 12-09]
FEATURED TAP
STATE LEVEL MONITORING IN TENNESSEE
As part of states' general supervision responsibilities, all states are required by OSEP to oversee districts' compliance with IDEA. Each state reports to OSEP, via their Annual Performance Report (APR), the number of IDEA noncompliance findings and corrections.
MSRRC staff (Rich Lewis) and subcontractors (Bruce Bull and Karen Martens) conducted a series of meetings with state administrators and regional compliance monitors in TN to review the entire monitoring system. This was driven by the OSEP State Verification Report and Letter as well as results from the previous year's APR.
The result of this initiative is a compliance monitoring system which:
Is congruent with the requirements of IDEA and OSEP guidance
Provides the state with the data needed for its APR
Provides the state with the data needed to formulate improvement activities and corrective action plans that are targeted to specific issues being experienced by the districts and the state as a whole
Provides the state with an on-going process and reports which greatly improve its general supervision capacity
This technical assistance also resulted in the state improving its ability to identify and correct noncompliance in virtually all areas of IDEA implementation. It built capacity of the state to make further improvements, developed ownership by the state staff for their responsibilities, and discovered other issues that needed to be addressed because we looked at the system as a whole and not just focused on the known specific issues.
The outcome of this statewide technical assistance work is equally applicable to all populations within the target groups of individuals (students and their parents) served under IDEA, IDEA service providers within a district, and IDEA administrators within a district. [posted 6-19-09]
For more information, contact:
Rich Lewis,
