Federal Center Aids Special Education Practices

August 6, 2009

A federal center is trying to help states incubate and spread goodspecial education practices that are already taking place in theirdistricts.

The State Implementation and Scaling-Up of Evidence-based Practices Center,has been working with Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, and Oregon sinceSeptember. The center intentionally picked states that have made asubstantial investment in evidence-based practices; starting newprograms from scratch offers a different set of challenges.

DeanL. Fixsen, a principal director of SISEP, as the center, located at theUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is known, likens goodeducation practices to a medical vaccine: Without the equipment toinoculate children and a medical establishment that can reach lots ofchildren, vaccines do little good.

“Until we develop the infrastructure, we’re going to be stuck,” Mr. Fixsen said.

Amongthe practices the SISEP states are trying to spread are the use ofpositive behavior supports and interventions, dropout-preventionprograms, and tiered instructional models. One key ingredient toscaling up programs is creating teams of engaged, “overqualified”school personnel, Mr. Fixsen said. That keeps a promising practice fromdying on the vine.

School teams also have to push past theawkwardness of trying new practices while still working within the oldsystem. “It’s very easy to slip back into the old ways,” Mr. Fixsensaid.

The states that he and the SISEP team are working withare eager to get started with some of the techniques that they’velearned through the center because they’ve already had some experiencetrying to grow their own programs.

“They know the cost of going down the wrong path,” he said. “All of what we’re saying makes immediate sense to these people.”