Kansas Monitoring and Technical Assistance Strategies for Inclusive Preschool Placement Options

A Collaborative PresentationNECTACKansas State Department of EducationKansas Inservice Training System

Kansas Overview and Planning for Improvement

Marguerite A. Hornback, Ed.D.Kansas State Department of EducationKansas Part B Section 619 Coordinatormhornback@ksde.org

Session Purpose

Share Kansas’ monitoring and TA processes to assist school districts in increasing the number of placements in early childhood settings

General Flow of Session

• History of LRE in Kansas

• Monitoring and TA Processes

• Overview of Pilot Evaluation

• Current Factors and Next Steps

Kansas Overview

• Kansas has 105 counties, only five of which are classified urban

• The remaining 100 counties are classified rural or frontier

• Population of approximately 2.5 million spread over 100,000 square miles

Kansas Overview• Currently 302 school districts

• History of local control

• Special Education Services often provided through Cooperatives/Interlocals

Kansas LRE History FFY ‘01

• 20% of preschoolers served in typical EC settings (nationally 36%)

• 30% of preschoolers served in reverse mainstream settings (nationally 1.69%)

• 39% of preschoolers served in ECSE settings (nationally 34%)

Process for Improvement

Developed State Work Plan

Desired Result: An increased number of preschool children with disabilities receiving services in high quality typical early childhood settings

Process for Improvement

• Clarify early childhood placement definitions in the Kansas data dictionary

• Implement training of data clerks with verification checks on data entry

Process for Improvement• Change the Kansas

Reimbursement Guide to resolve funding issues identified as barriers

• Require all LEAs to compare their data to the national rather than the state data and include EC LRE in their self-improvement plans

Process for Improvement

• Support collaborative preservice personnel development system

• Develop a collaborative set of early childhood standards and provide training and TA to promote consistency of practices across programs

Process for Improvement

• Develop and pilot a self-assessment process for LRE improvement planning by LEAs