July 2010
Get Florida Crossroads Magazine Delivered to your Inbox or Mailbox!
Florida Crossroads, Florida’s magazine for special needs families, is filled with parenting tips, resources and moral support for special needs families. You can get a printed subscription (1 year/6 issues), mailed to your home or office for $7.50 or read the digital edition FREE online anytime! Go to www.floridacrossroadsonline.com and click subscribe to learn more.
Publications available from the Minnesota Governor’s Council
“It’s My Choice” is a workbook published by the Minnesota Governor’s Council on Developmental disabilities. It is available in English, Spanish, PDF and text versions, and as an audio file. Checklists are included to help individuals prepare for meetings focusing on Individual Program Plans, Transition Plans, Employment Plans, Housing, and Quality of Life.
Other publications available from the MN DD Council web site include: “Friends, A Manual for Connecting Persons with Disabilities and Community Members”, “It’s Never Too Early, It’s Never Too Late, A Booklet about Personal Futures Planning”, “Making Futures Happen” and ”Parallels in Time” which traces present attitudes and the treatment of people with disabilities.
These publications can be found at http://www.mnddc.org/extra/publications.htm.
Lighting the way to Guardianship and Other Decision Making Alternatives (LTW)
The LTW manual is a companion to the Planning Ahead Guide (both produced by the FL Developmental Disabilities Council). LTW greatly expands the information in Chapter 8 of Planning Ahead. Additional copies of either resource are available free of charge from the FDDC. Questions may be emailed to helpis@guardianshiptraining.com.
Website-Building Tool
Build a free website in a matter of minutes. Think of the many ways you and your students can use this tool! Lifeyo has made creating a website as easy as typing on the screen. You’ll be amazed at how simple it is. Choose from several professional designs to get started. Learn more about Lifeyo at http://www.lifeyo.com/.
Free Video Calling And Messaging Web-Based Service
No downloads. Use anywhere. Call anyone. Free for everyone.
Welcome to SnapYap.com, where video calling and messaging is simple, fun, and free for everyone. SnapYap is a video communication tool that allows you to participate in live video calls, record video messages, and send and receive video emails with absolutely no downloads. Designed to be as straightforward as possible, the applications on SnapYap.com make video technology available to anyone with a webcam and an internet connection. Learn more about SnapYap at http://www.snapyap.com/.
Making Student and School Data Accessible and Meaningful to Families
The U. S. Department of Education has adopted using data for school improvement as one of its major education reform priorities. In the past decade, the Department, school districts, and states have spent more than a billion dollars to build data systems that collect, organize, and report on student data to foster continuous improvement.
We are now in a position to transform this data into information that can promote student success by tracking academic progress and by guiding the daily actions of families, schools, communities, and the students themselves. Making this data accessible and presenting it in a meaningful way can increase student success by empowering families to monitor their children’s academic progress from early childhood to college and beyond.
This third webinar—Data Driven: Making Student and School Data Accessible and Meaningful to Families—will take a look at practical examples of how districts and schools are using data to engage families in their children’s education. The webinar will also introduce tools that enable practitioners, districts, and schools to incorporate data into their own family engagement strategies.
August 10, 2010 from 3:30 – 5:00pm (EDT)
Registration is required for this event. For more information or to register please refer to http://www.nationalpirc.org/engagement_webinars/. Archives of the first to webinars are also available. Don’t miss this opportunity to gain an understanding of what is needed to engage families through the use of student data, discuss some of the challenges in building capacity, and highlight strategies to overcome them.
Hope for ADHD, Autism Spectrum Disorders & Learning Disabilities
In the last two decades childhood disorders including ADHD, Autism Spectrum Disorder, developmental and neuro-behavioral disorders have skyrocketed to epidemic proportions.
This seminar will discuss a comprehensive treatment approach along with therapeutic modalities including Applied Behavior Analysis and RDI (Relationship Development Intervention) program. These programs are intended to help lay missing pathways in the brain. Come learn how these treatments may dramatically improve the lives and well being of your children.
July 31, 2010
The Children’s Board of Hillsborough County
1002 East Palm Avenue
Tampa, FL 33605
This seminar is offered free of charge through the HIT Autism Support Group. Registration is required. Register today at (813) 935-4744 or online at www.hitautism.com.
Grants for Special Needs Children’s Programs
Founders conceived the Innovating Worthy Projects Foundation to address the need for an organization to provide financial help to quality special-needs children’s programs. The Foundation makes grants to organizations dedicated to serving developing innovative programs, disseminating ideas, or providing direct care or services for children with special needs, acute illnesses or chronic disabilities. Requests for financial assistance grants are now being accepted. Deadline: August 31, 2010. We typically send out notices regarding approval of financial assistance requests between the following April and June. For more information please refer to http://www.iwpf.org/application/index.html.
Earning a High School Diploma through Alternative Routes (NCEO Synthesis Report 76, July 2010)
By M. Thurlow, M. Vang, and D. Cormier
Earning a standard diploma has increased in importance during the past several years. Not only is it a document that improves postschool outcomes, but it also has become a part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act
(ESEA) accountability system at the high school level<with the required graduation rate including only those students who have earned a regular/standard high school diploma or higher. Complicating matters in several states is the addition of an exit exam requirement to the traditional coursework requirements. The addition of a testing requirement to other requirements for earning a standard diploma is a challenge for students who do not perform well on assessments. Many, but not all, of these students have disabilities. The purpose of the study reported here was to examine the alternative routes to passing the high school exit exam that were available during the school year 2008-09 to students to earn a standard high school diploma. It examines alternative routes in the 26 states with active or soon-to-be active exit exams, and documents the alternative routes available for all students and those specifically for students with disabilities. Available on the web at http://www.cehd.umn.edu/nceo/OnlinePubs/Synthesis76/Synthesis76.pdf.
Low Cost, Stunning Results
In a profile of the Boston program City Connects on his Public School Insights blog, Claus von Zastrow writes that a rigorous study by Boston College, which runs the program, “tells a pretty stunning story.” City Connects (CCNX) exists in 11 Boston elementary schools, and works to link each child to a “tailored set of intervention, prevention, and enrichment services located in the community.” The beneficial impact of CCNX on student growth in academic achievement (across grades 1 to 5) was on average approximately three times the harmful impact of poverty. By the end of grade 5, achievement differences between CCNX and comparison students indicated that CCNX intervention moves students at the 50th percentile up to or near the 75th percentile, and students at the 25th percentile up to or near the 50th. For multiple outcomes, the treatment effects were largest for students at greatest risk for academic failure. After grade 5, the lasting positive effects of CCNX intervention can be seen in middle-school state standardized test scores, ranging from approximately 50 percent to 130 percent as large as negative effects of poverty. Von Zastrow conducts an interview with two of the program’s leaders, who explain that at root, the program ensures that already existing services actually reach students previously under-served. Implementing the program by putting a support person and the model into schools costs a little less than $500 per student per year.
Read more: http://www.publicschoolinsights.org/interview-when-city-connects-helps-whole-child-achievement-gaps-shrink.
