Today we bring you the first segment of a very special two-part episode in which we get to speak with three guests representing all three of the focus areas that we've been working to bridge in this podcast: Joel Boehner, Assistant Director of Exceptional Learners at South Bend Community School Corporation, Dr. Sarah Hurwitz, associate professor in special education at Indiana University - Bloomington, and Dr. Jennifer Meller, Associate Manager for Special Education Consulting Services at PCG (Public Consulting Group), the vendor providing the statewide Indiana IEP (IIEP) software for managing data and documents related to the education of students with disabilities. In the first segment of this episode, we discuss how the connections among these individuals' work came about, as well as several relatively recent trends in the federal requirements for educating students with disabilities, such as the move from a focus on compliance to results-driven accountability (RDA) and the challenges and opportunities for utilizing a data standard with very individualized education goals and progress data. We hope you enjoy listening to this as much as we enjoyed recording it! Stay tuned for Part II next week.

Show notes & abbreviations

Joel Boehner: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelboehner/

Dr. Sarah Hurwitz: https://education.indiana.edu/about/directory/profiles/hurwitz-sarah.html

Dr. Jennifer Meller: https://www.publicconsultinggroup.com/leadership/education/dr-jennifer-meller/

Equity in Action: https://education.indiana.edu/community/aac-in-action/index.html

Autism Research Collaborative: https://www.iidc.indiana.edu/what-we-offer/autism/

INSOURCE: https://insource.org/

PCG (Public Consulting Group): https://www.publicconsultinggroup.com/

Indiana graduation pathways: https://www.in.gov/doe/students/graduation-pathways/

RDA: results-driven accountability

NWEA (MAP - Measures of Academic Progress test from the Northwest Evaluation Association) https://www.nwea.org/the-map-suite/

LEA: local education agency (school district/school corporation)

IDEA: Individuals with Disabilities Education Act: https://sites.ed.gov/idea/

IEP: Individualized Education Program (a requirement of the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act)

IIEP (Indiana IEP): software program to manage IEP data in Indiana (statewide)

FAPE: Free, appropriate, public education (a requirement of the federal Individuals with Disabilities Act)

FBA: Functional Behavioral Assessment (part of the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act; https://www.pacer.org/parent/php/php-c215a.pdf)

LRE: Least restrictive environment (a requirement of the federal Individuals with Disabilities Act)

Music: 

Music: Exploring The World by Vlad Gluschenko is licensed under a Creative Commons License. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... https://soundcloud.com/vgl9 Support by RFM - NCM