Oregon's Council for Exceptional Children

Oregon CEC 2011 -Call for leadership

Tobias — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 22:56:37 +0000

We believe our nearly 400 members receive great benefit through their membership and would like to see the Oregon Unit actively contribute to the overall mission of CEC, especially here in Oregon. We are looking for committed members who want take on a leadership role.

Have you checked out the CEC Smartbrief?

Tobias — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 02:08:46 +0000

This is an exciting way to get current information about ongoing work in the field of special education.

http://www.smartbrief.com/cec/

2 Tips to a Smooth Extended School Year

admin — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 22:14:56 +0000

Extended School Year (ESY)-

2 TIPS from Larry Linebaugh

Extended School Year is an opportunity for students in Oregon to maintain academic, language, social and behavioral goals during the summer. I had the opportunity to teach a class of 12 kinder students this year and I would like to share 2 things you can do as a student’s teacher during the regular school year to help assure things will go smoothly during ESY.

Clearly label all student materials you send. I cannot express how nice it was to see the name and school of a student right on the front of their materials. Adding a label (like the ones below) increased organization which made it much easier to both set-up and clean-up the classroom.
Send a student introduction sheet in addition to the IEP for each of your students. For teachers who are unfamiliar with your student, this will provide the most critical information they need to know so they can work successfully with your student from day one. Below is an example or you can click here for a blank Word document that you can edit.I hope you find these tips useful. Am I missing anything? If so, please share in the comments.

Meet our Past President, David Guardino

David — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 20:54:55 +0000

My involvement with the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) began when I was a graduate student in special education at the University of Oregon. I enjoyed a two year run as president of the UO Student Chapter with a great group of fellow graduate student officers, graduate and undergraduate members and the support of a committed faculty advisor. Together, we presented at state and national conferences, held a fund raiser for exceptional children, and increased membership in the student chapter. As a graduate student, I conducted research with children at-risk for behavioral disorders and focused my studies on school-wide positive behavior support, functional behavioral assessment, and disproportionality.

In 2006 I was elected President of the Oregon CEC State Unit. As president, I attended the state leadership conference in DC and learned a great deal from national representatives and other state leaders. I also represented Oregon at the National CEC Conference Representative Assembly. That same year I also started working full-time at the Oregon Department of Education in the Office of Student Learning and Partnerships as the Special Education State Grant Coordinator. In this position, I oversaw the Oregon PBS and RTI Initiatives and the State Personnel Development Grant.

In 2007 I changed positions at ODE and now coordinate the Systems Performance Review and Improvement (SPR&I) process. SPR&I is a district/program driven system founded on evidence based decision-making. It supports improvement planning through the collection and interpretation of data and assists ODE to evaluate the effectiveness of district/program improvement strategies. The SPR&I system supports a close relationship between special education improvement planning and other district or community improvement planning efforts.

On a personal note, I am very lucky to have a supportive wife, Minkyung and two beautiful daughters, Jade 4 and Zoey 2. As a family we love to be outdoors and spend time with our friends. Last April we attended the CEC convention in Seattle together and enjoyed all the city had to offer.

CEC is a great organization helping to improving the practices and making available resources to those who work with and on behalf of those with exceptionalities. I am honored to continue to serve as the president of the Oregon CEC State Unit and look forward to an increase in activities that involve our diverse membership with a focus on special education in Oregon.

Sincerely,

David Guardino

Oregon Response to Intervention Resources

admin — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 18:54:19 +0000

Oregon RTI Resources

On the heels of our last post, Can RTI Relieve Oregon’s Growing Needs?, I found a couple Oregon-based Response to Intervention (RTI) links.

Oregon’s Response to Intervention Initiative (Or-RTI)

The Oregon Department of Education’s Response to Intervention page contains links and documents to RTI resources specific to the state of Oregon as well as links to general information from various internet sites.

Training Materials from Tigard-Tualatin

The Tigard-Tualatin School District has developed a Response to Intervention (RTI) training program for the Oregon Department of Education. The Oregon Response to Intervention Guided Development Project provides intensive training and support to Oregon school districts. Training is focused on multi-tiered instruction, systems requirements, teaming, data analysis, and using the RTI approach to identify learning disabilities. Materials used in this training, as well as other materials that districts may find useful, are available through this Web site.

Other RTI Resources

Also, Christina Samuels’ recent post, Response to Intervention Tools You Can Use, is a nice compliment to our post that provides links to some great resources you may find useful (I recommend the PDF Assisting Students Struggling with Mathematics: Response to Intervention (RtI) for Elementary and Middle Schools which defines eight recommendations for educators developing RTI math programs).

If you know of other great links special educators would benefit from, please share in the comments below.

Can RTI Relieve Oregon’s Growing Needs?

admin — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 23:39:35 +0000

(If you are unfamiliar with RTI, take a moment and read What is RTI? on CEC’s RTI blog then download CEC’s formal position on RTI.)

Oregon’s Growing Special Needs

The Oregonian reported that 72,800 Oregon students qualified for special education services this year, an increase of 800 from last year. Educating students with disabilities costs roughly $6,000 a year, twice that of typically developing students, creating a need for an additional $4,800,000 to meet the needs of those students.

Can RTI help?

Yes it can.

RTI can help ease the financial strain by reducing inappropriate referrals to special education. Recent amendments to IDEA have designated RTI as an additional option for districts to identify students with learning disabilities. “School districts are no longer required to adhere to the traditional ability-achievement discrepancy to determine whether a student has a specific learning disability. Rather, school districts can now opt to implement Response to Intervention (”RTI”), where students receive early intensive intervention and frequent progress monitoring, as part of the process for eligibility determination.” With nearly 28,000 students in Oregon with learning disabilities, even a 5 percent reduction in referrals would save the state nearly $1 million.

Has your school/district implemented RTI? Have referrals to special education decreased? What has worked well and what are some of the challenges? Please respond in the comments.

Welcome to Oregon CEC!

admin — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 18:21:59 +0000

Welcome to Oregon CEC

Oregoncec.org continues to be a place for Oregonians who work in the field of Special Education to share what they are doing and learn from what others are doing to increase student achievement. Oregoncec.org will have videos, media presentations, and links to relevant online resources that provide an engaging environment for visitors to participate regularly!

When you visit please share your thoughts and insights by leaving comments. (Click here to learn How to Comment.) Your comments are will add depth to the conversations and really make this blog valuable for everyone.

We want to take this opportunity to thank Larry Linebaugh for being the driving force behind setting up this blog and the current look of the Oregon CEC website. A special thanks goes out to Ronald Cox, a Portland graphic designer, for helping setup the blog and designing a professional background for our twitter page. Ronald makes cool things that make people smile!

Thanks for stopping by, see you again soon!