The Future Workforce: Will Our Students be Ready?

By Kit Casey, Transition Specialist

January 2016

How can educators better prepare students for work in what appears to be a shrinking job market? For now, the answer may lie in helping students, perhaps as early as kindergarten, to develop work-related skills and abilities. If the demand for human labor will be reduced over the next two...

Integrated Learning and the CDOS Learning Standards

By Randy Ascher, Special Education School Improvement Specialist, in collaboration with Stephanie Wozniak, Transition Specialist

December 2015

Since joining the RSE-TASC and working with students in the high school, I have come to realize learning is most effective and meaningful when students can relate what they are learning to their future lives. This approach to connecting school and work is referred to as “integrated learn...

What is a Standards-Based IEP?

By Ann Quinones-Narcisse, MS, Regional Special Education Trainer

November 2015

About four years ago, I received a text from a colleague asking me how I write IEP goals. "Carefully", I responded, imagining what lay beneath this seemingly benign query. Soon the discussion turned to the role of the Common Core in the IEP. We debated what IDEA. the individuals with Disab...

The Case for Videotaping Lessons

By Martha Trujillo-Torp, EdD, Special Education School Improvement

October 2015

I often coach teachers as part of collaboratively developed Quality Improvement Process Plans designed to help them improve outcomes for the students with disabilities in their classrooms. Together, we learn about evidence-based instructional practices that have been proven to be effectiv...