Purpose 
The purpose of this project is to establish and implement a coordinated, regionalized system of
personnel development that will increase the capacity of school systems to provide early intervening
services, aligned with the general education curriculum, to at-risk students and students with
disabilities, as measured by improved student progress and performance.  Hence, the project intends to
reform and improve state educational agency systems for personnel preparation and professional
development in early intervention, educational, and transition services in order to improve results for
children with disabilities.

Method   
The method by which to achieve the project's goals is through establishing four Regional Professional
Development Centers that will be collaborative partnerships of local education agencies, regional
providers, institutions of higher education, and parent entities.  All centers will provide standardized
professional development and technical assistance to educators and parents in their regions, focusing
on designing and providing early intervening services, with an emphasis on scientific, research-based
reading instruction; progress monitoring; response to intervention; and standards-aligned instruction
and assessment.  School demonstration and data collection sites will be established within each region
to facilitate school- and student-level data collection and evaluation.

Products  
The anticipated outcomes of this project include: (a) increased knowledge and skills of personnel and
parents in the identified professional development focus areas; (b) improved school and student
performance due to applying the knowledge and skills; and (c) increases in the number of educators and
parents with current information and up-to-date knowledge and skills regarding improving results for
individuals with disabilities.