The American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) & IDEA Recovery Funds for Services to Children & Youths with Disabilities will certainly have an unprecedented impact on practice and opportunities in the area of assistive technology in the schools. Will you and your school be ready when these funds hit your school? Four principles will guide the distribution and use of these dollars and include:
· Spend funds quickly to save and create jobs.
· Improve student achievement through school improvement and reform.
· Ensure transparency, reporting and accountability.
· Invest in one-time ARRA fund thoughtfully to minimize the “funding cliff.”
Likewise Congress has earmarked this money with some initiatives that are quite compelling:
· Obtain state-of-the art assistive technology devices and provide training in their use to enhance access to the general curriculum for students with disabilities.
· Provide intensive district-wide professional development for special education and regular education teachers that focuses on scaling-up, through replication, proven and innovative evidence-based school-wide strategies in reading, math, writing and science, and positive behavioral supports to improve outcomes for students with disabilities.
· Develop or expand the capacity to collect and use data to improve teaching and learning.
· Expand the availability and range of inclusive placement options for preschoolers with disabilities by developing the capacity of public and private preschool programs to serve these children.
· Hire transition coordinators to work with employers in the community to develop job placements for youths with disabilities.
It is clear from this mandate that schools will need to be in a position to act quickly as they put their programs together for assistive technology and professional development. This is a tremendous opportunity for schools to think systematically about assistive technology and its broad implications for the students you work with. In this free webinar Dr. Friedlander will talk about the The American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) & IDEA Recovery Funds for Services to Children & Youths with Disabilities in relation to students with mild to moderate learning disabilities and the role of professional development. So please join Dr. Friedlander on April 29th at 1:00 pm EST.
Please sign up for the webinar using the form that is located on the top of this blog page on the Right hand side. Space is limited for this webinar so sign up now! Once you sign up you will receive information about how to log into the session. Looking forward to your participation! Brian
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