Past Reports

SIGnetwork is proud to feature New York State

Special Message from the New York SIG Director: Matthew Giugno

The New York Education Department is delighted to be profiled for this month’s SIGnetwork feature.  We are proud of our accomplishments during the period 2001-2006.  I hope this information helps you understand where we are today and where we would like to be with the next round of SPDG support.

The current SIG Project is focusing on 2 key needs:

• Reducing the performance gap in educational achievement between general education and special education students in high need and low need schools, and
• Reducing or eliminating the disproportionality of language and ethnic minority students in classification and placement practices.

To give a little background, New York State is hugely diverse.  Understandably, most people equate New York State with New York City.  With nearly 40% of the student population of the state, it is an easy connection to make.  In fact, New York State has 4 other large cities (Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and Yonkers) as well as 20 or so medium size cities (Albany, Niagara Falls, Binghamton, etc.) The remaining school districts are either suburban or small rural districts.  While the New York City identification connection is obvious, we have nearly 700 other school districts of varying population, with over 100 serving less than 1000 students, and few that serve less than 100.  Given this diversity, it is always a challenge to support schools with performance difficulties in the various regions of the State.

We chose to have our regional funded networks of Professional Staff Developers (funded through IDEA and NCLB/ESEA) work within the 7 geographic regions of the State, with New York City as its own region.  Schools were targeted for support by their performance on certain key indicators.  Of this total potential constellation, each of the Big 5 cities plus 2 schools/districts (based on size demographics) were selected per region.  This gave us a total of 5 + 2 x 6, or 42 schools for 2-year cycles of support.  As reality dictated, most of the schools received network support for at least 3 and many all 5 years of the project.  Thus, the NYS SIG served approximately 60 different schools/districts during the 5 years of the project.

We plan on re-applying under the SPDG protocols for the 2006-2011 cycle.  Based on what we learned in the first SIG, we will narrow our focus to early and adolescent literacy issues, issues related to disproportionality and behavior.  These project goals will connect directly to the State Performance Indicators, and will help us to translate data into school district/building systems reform.  Tied into these targets are certain strategies that were initiated in the first SIG and will be threaded in the next SPDG:

• Infusing these strategies into the work conducted by the PD Staff in the newly targeted schools.

• Work with the targeted schools especially in relation to early literacy, behavior and disproportionality.

• Work with our currently established network of 72 colleges with teacher Preparation Programs to work directly with the PD teams in the targeted schools
•  Use the “Keeping Quality Teachers…” DVD to help the PD staff work those schools that have large staff turnover (especially in NYC)

• Work with our partners throughout the State, especially the PTIs and Children’s Aid Society in New York City, to infuse positive relations with families with the other systemic reform efforts previously cited.

Resources Available

The 4 yearly project evaluations are located at the Syracuse University Higher Education Support Center website and are available for downloading. Here is the website: www.systemschange.syr.edu

A summary of the program model and key successes, best practices, and learning to date can be found at: http://systemschange.syr.edu/lc/uploads/syschg_lc/SUMMARY_OF_NY_STATE_SIG.doc

The NYS SIG Grant supported the development of several products.  The first, developed with the Support of The Center for Appropriate Dispute Resolution in Education (CADRE), was an extensive document on family engagement.  This document is available on the CADRE website.

THE NYS SIG Teams also developed professional development modules on Literacy, Data/Root Cause Analysis, Family Engagement, and Mental Health in the Schools.  These modules are available upon request from SIG/SPDG Grant projects.

The SIG Supplemental grant also supported work on teacher retention.  The “Keeping Quality Teachers” DVD will be available in the fall of 2006.  Upon request, copies will be made available to each of the SIG/SPDG projects.  It will contain a video component and a “Resource Guide” developed in coordination with the New York State Education Department, the Northeast Regional Resource Center, NASDSE’s Personnel Center, and the Higher Education Support Center at Syracuse University. 

This website and the accompanying SigServe is managed by Technical Assistance and Consulting Services at the University of Oregon and financially supported by SIG and SPDG projects.