Bulletin Boards |Shopping & Classifieds |Calendar |About Us

Front page

Behavior Management

Conflict Resolution

Early Intervention

For Educators

For Families

Internet & Assistive Technology

Recreation & Sports

Specific Disabilities

State By State

Transition

Washington Watch

Site Map

NINE STATES GET NEW GRANTS UNDER IDEA

May 10, 2000

WASHINGTON -- Nine new states made it through the U.S. Department of Education's exacting applications process this month to win state improvement grants worth a total of $7.5 million. The awards bring to 25 the total number of states using federal funds for improvement programs authorized under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The government is laying out more than $25 million for the projects, which fall under IDEA's Part D provisions.

Illinois, North Carolina and Minnesota each were awarded more than $1 million, with Illinois receiving the most money -- $1.4 million. Connecticut was allocated $920,000 and Oklahoma $814,000. Alaska, Montana, Nebraska and North Dakota were awarded between $500,000 and $576,000 each.

State improvement grants are specifically designed to help states provide services in three areas -- education, early intervention and transition from school to the community. However, 75 percent of the money must be spent on professional development programs for educators, administrators and related service personnel. States can use the rest of the grant money to provide schools or school districts technical assistance and information on proven educational practices that may help students with special needs. The Department of Education's Office of Special Education Programs also encourages states to combine their state improvement grant money with funds from other federal programs.

Examples of projects funded in this year's grant round include paying educators stipends to attend special ed training programs, designing web-based instruction plans and developing alternative learning sites. Some grant plans include setting up career ladders for paraprofessionals, improving reciprocal teacher certification policies between states and setting up mentoring and enhanced professional development opportunities that will help schools retain staff.

While the state improvement grants are highly coveted by many state education agencies, they are far from easy to obtain. The challenges of meeting the grant program's strict requirements and surviving the close scrutiny of OSEP staff were the subject of much complaining, and some pointed humor, during the states' three-day annual state leadership conference last week hosted by OSEP and the Federal Resource Center, which administers the grant program.

To qualify for a state improvement grant, a state education agency must submit a plan based on a comprehensive needs assessment. That assessment must identify "critical aspects of early intervention and regular and special education that must be improved to enable children with disabilities to meet the goals that each state must establish for itself under IDEA," OSEP says. The assessment must look closely at the state's training and personnel needs, the performance of its students with disabilities, the effectiveness of current programs and the state's performance in recent federal monitoring reports.

More than half the applications submitted in the past two years were rejected by OSEP's reviewers, the agency said. According to new OSEP Director Ken Warlick, many states who are turned down fail to match their improvement plans to their needs assessment. In most cases, the states know what they need to do, he said early last week at a conference of the National Association of State Directors of Special Education, but they do not present a plan that will directly address those needs.8