North Dakota Abstract or Conceptual Framework for State Systemic Change

Through the systematic analysis of a wide range of needs assessment data, the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction and its State Improvement Grant (SIG) Partners have established three goals to improve the results for children and youth with disabilities.

Goal 1: North Dakota will have the necessary personnel to ensure effective services for children and youth with disabilities.

Goal 2: Preservice and professional development systems will build capacity of general education, special education, educational administration, and related services personnel and families to ensure quality education for all students in the least restrictive environment.

Goal 3: Youth with disabilities will attain positive post-school results through consistent statewide transition planning and implementation.

Goal 1 focuses on recruitment and retention of qualified special education and related services personnel in North Dakota, which ranks 49^th in average teacher salary. Goal 1 strategies address shortages of personnel that are found statewide, as well as those that are chronic for specific geographic region as or specialized fields. Additionally, issues of reciprocity, funding, and underrepresentation are examined.

Goal 2 addresses preservice and professional development needs. In planning this grant, the SIG Partners discovered many common agendas and a wide range of resources that can be brought to bear to provide more coordinated training of educators, parents, and others. Goal 2 will develop a coordinated approach to meeting personnel development needs statewide, including participation of SIG Partners in NASDSE Leadership Academy, a roundtable of providers, and numerous collaborative training activities. Because time was named as the number one barrier to personnel development, the SIG will capitalize on mechanisms (e.g., annual conferences or institutes, established inservices training days, etc.) currently in school improvement strategies that are data based and support access to the general education curriculum for all students. This includes positive behavior supports. The pilot sites will serve as the geographic focus of training that will result in a cadre of Field Based Consultants. This strategy will result in increased local capacity to provide technical assistance to school personnel. In addition to assistance with school improvement planning, instructional strategies, program evaluation, and related topics, the project will provide technical assistance to administrators that will result in use of consolidated funding from various sources (Titles 1,2,3,4, IDEA, Goals 2000) to accomplish more focused personnel development schoolwide.

In addition, Goal 2 provides support to strengthen the capacity of the state's parent organization. This will be accomplished through facilitating a roundtable of the organizations, and offering mini-grants for parent and family participation in various activities including co-training. In addition, the grant will support a Parent Liaison to ensure that parent and family perspectives and concerns are considered throughout the project.

Goal 3 addresses inconsistencies statewide in secondary level transition planning and access to services of adult agencies. Improvement will be accomplished though support of Mountain Plains Regional Resource Center personnel to assist in identifying and addressing system barriers while simultaneously providing intensive technical assistance at the school district level.

The North Dakota State Improvement Grant will extend over a five-year period. SIG Partners will contribute significant in-kind resources to accomplish the goals and objectives. The IDEA Advisory Committee will provide guidance for the project.

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North Dakota Basic Information 

Project Title	North Dakota State Improvement Grant
Primary Contact Person	Mary Rose
Address	Department of Public Instruction Office of Special Education 600 East Blvd. Avenue State Capitol 10th Floor Bismarck, N.D. 58505-0440
Phone	(701) 537-5351 or (701) 328-2277
Fax	(701) 328-4149
Email	marose@sendit.nodak.edu
Web site	http://www.dpi.state.nd.us/dpi/speced/
Date SIG Application was Written or Submitted	December 15, l999
Begin and End Dates for Funding	1st Year Period July 1, 2000 End June 30, 2001 5 Year Period July 1, 2000 End June 30, 2005
Funded Amount	$500,000.00
Who Wrote the Application	Jean Newborg & Mary Rose ND Dept. Public Instruction Phone 701-328-2277

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North Dakota Improvement Strategies

1. What products or activities are planned by the SIG?

• Develop an adequate supply of well-qualified education and related services personnel.
• Enable North Dakota education and related services personnel to use administrative, curricular and instructional practices that focus on improved educational results, meaningful access to the general curriculum, and that invite parent involvement.
• Adults with disabilities will be satisfied with the leisure activities and social relationships they develop as well as their level of independent living skills in their natural environments. Additionally, they will be enabled to obtain gainful employment and/or participate in post secondary learning opportunities.

2. What interstate connections are planned?

• Exploring reciprocity credentialing with neighboring states for both special education teachers and related services personnel.
• Training of educational interpreters in the classroom as part of a consortium agreement among Mountain Plains states with Front Range Community College at Westminister, Colorado.
• Regional distance learning training from University of North Dakota (UND) for interdisciplinary graduate training regarding low incidence disabilities such as autism.
• Regional transition IEP Planning project through Mountain Plains Regional Resource Center.

3. What strategies are planned for service delivery?

 For Goal 1: Developing an adequate supply of well-qualified and related services personnel.

• Improve preservice recruitment of candidates and retention of entry level educators.
• Facilitate recruitment and employment of personnel from outside the state.
• Increase retention of qualified personnel through developing an administrative and general education environment conducive to and supportive of appropriate educational outcomes for students with disabilities.
• Increase the diversity of North Dakota's education workforce through active recruitment and support of persons with disabilities and members of minority groups.
• Collaborate with legislative committees and participate in the Quality Schools for the 21st Century Committee to draft recommendations for Legislative action relating to maintaining a workforce of sufficiently qualified personnel.
• Develop and implement a continuous feedback mechanism for North Dakota Department of Public Instruction (NDPI), LEAs, and other consumers to inform the North Dakota University System and individual IHE teacher preparation, educational administration, and related services programs of numbers and characteristics of needed personnel.

For Goal 2: Preservice and professional development systems will build capacity of general education, special education, educational administration and related services personnel, and families to ensure quality education for all students in the least restrictive environment.

• Enable preservice and professional development systems to develop common priorities and a coordinated action plan for improving the quality of preparation in general education, special education, educational administration, and related services.
• Enable preservice and personnel development providers to support comprehensive school improvement strategies that respond to documented needs and which support access to the general education curriculum for all students.
• Invite family involvement organizations to participate in collaborative opportunities designed to build and sustain statewide capacity to support families of children with disabilities.

For Goal 3: Attain positive post-school results for youth with disabilities through consistent statewide transition planning and implementation.

• Collaborative relationships that support positive post-school results will be demonstrated by school and adult service providers.
• Strategies proposed will achieve the following outcomes:

  l. Change North Dakota policy barriers to improving learner outcomes.

  2. Hold schools accountable for student progress.

  3. Provide technical assistance to general and special education staff, with specific emphasis on school administrators.

  4. Address identified needs for inservice and preservice preparation.

  5 Address systemic problems identified in federal compliance reviews.

  6. Disseminate results of local capacity building and improvement projects.

  7. Focus on improving results for children with disabilities in the geographic areas of the state having the greatest need.

  8. Assess the extent to which project activities/strategies have been effective.

4. What partnerships are intended?

• North Dakota Departments of Public Instruction divisions and departments involved with school improvement planning
• LEAs
• IHEs preparing educators
• North Dakota School Administrators Association
• North Dakota Teacher's Fund Retirement System
• NASDSE
• North Dakota LEAD Center
• North Dakota Education Standards and Practices Board
• Protection and Advocacy Project
• Teaching Learning Centers
• North Dakota Parent Training and Information Center
• North Dakota Adult Service Providers
• North Dakota's Governmental Administration-Governors and Attorney General's Offices
• North Dakota Division of Juvenile Services
• North Dakota Residential and Corrective Facilities
• North Dakota Education Association
• North Dakota State School Boards Association
• North Dakota Department of Residential and Corrective Facilities
• North Dakota Departments of Vocational Rehabilitation, Workforce Development and Job Service
• North Dakota Council of Educational Deans
• North Dakota IDEA Advisory Committee

5. Who are the partners?

• North Dakota State Department of Public Instruction and its divisions and departments addressing School Improvement
• NASDSE
• The Department of Human Services
• Mountain Plains Regional Resource Center
• North Dakota's IHEs involved with preparing teaching, administrative, and related services personnel

6. What types of contracts or subgrants are intended to partners, LEAs, IHEs, PTIs and others (including lead agency under Part C)?

• University of North Dakota has been contracted to coordinate the various preservice and inservice training components from their campus.
• The Parent Training and Information Center (Pathfinders) will receive a subgrant to support parents' attendance at conferences, workshops, and planning meetings to ensure their participation.

7. How will resources be pooled with other resources?

• The University of North Dakota will participate in the project through providing indirect costs, office space, payroll and accounting services, and other office expenses associated with the training component of the project.
• Part B funds will augment project activities which dove tail with ongoing SEA goals and objectives.
• Mountain Plains Regional Resource Center's technical assistance for post school employment outcomes and the appropriate development of Transition IEP's will be a major component of Goal 3's Transition emphasis.

8. What specific SIG products, activities, initiatives and strategies are pertinent to Part C (birth to 3, infants, toddlers and their families) services and activities in your state?

A major project task will be the development of an interagency summit meeting in North Dakota early in the Fall of 2000. Parent information agencies and other organizations and other agencies working with very young students with disabilities will become involved in cooperative planning of quality services for their children from the beginning of their lives. Some of these agencies are Family to Family Network, Federation of Families, Protection and Advocacy, and Sacred Child. As part of their planning activities, these agencies and organizations will share information regarding the focus and strengths of each program, determine areas of overlap, areas of need, common training needs, and common priorities. In addition to developing improved communication and understanding of each other's areas of expertise, this activity is intended to achieve collaborative relationships that will lead to opportunities to build capacities of the organizations. This will enable them to have better informed families of children with disabilities and be more effective partners in planning for children's needs. Follow-up joint activities for these same parent organizations will include specific training opportunities that will build their organization's capacities to provide training for parents. One of the products of this planning summit will be a Resources Directory which will facilitate the location of appropriate services for children between and among agencies.

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