The document features two articles on school reform in Pennsylvania. Part one discusses the Instruction Support Team (IST) (Kovaleski, Tucker, and Duffy). The IST process is an intensive building-based pre-referral intervention program to assist elementary students experiencing difficulty in the classroom. The IST is a working group of teachers…

The goal of this workshop for school psychologists is to provide high quality training in best practices for instructional evaluation. An objective of these trainings is to facilitate the implementation of the instructional evaluation requirement of the Special Education Regulations and Standards for determining eligibility for special education…

Collected are materials related to Mississippi's efforts to improve the educational services provided in the state for at-risk students. The first item describes the Superintendent of Education's Class of 2000 Project, which includes a request that the people of Mississippi adopt the class of 2000, which is in school now, and develop a legislative…

This workshop manual focuses on validation procedures designed to foster program improvement rather than compliance monitoring. The manual is in eight chapters. Chapter 1 looks at the elements to be evaluated--organization and management, training, student assessment, design and implementation of classroom interventions, team work, screening a…

The Instructional Support Team (IST) process is mandated in all Pennsylvania schools that include any grade from kindergarten through 6. Middle schools that house grade six or below are required to enroll in IST training and ultimately achieve IST validation. In addition to the IST requirement, all secondary schools are required to have a Student…

The Instructional Support Team (IST) process is an intensive building-based pre-referral intervention program using teams of teachers and other school professionals to assist elementary students experiencing difficulty in the classroom. This trainer's manual outlines a 3-day workshop for team training. The schedule for each day is provided, with a…

The Instructional Support Team (IST) Project of Pennsylvania identifies effective instructional approaches for students prior to referral for special education and helps support students with disabilities in regular classroom environments. Pennsylvania State Special Education Regulations and Standards require the IST process in schools that have…

This newsletter theme issue describes a state-local team partnership model for interagency transition efforts for young adults with deaf-blindness. Excepts from a presentation by Jane M. Everson identify key aspects and characteristics of effective state and local interagency partnerships. These include: (1) strategies for initiating and…

This introduction to and overview of the series of training modules was developed to assist school personnel in implementing the Instructional Support Team (IST) process. Although each module covers a specific aspect of training, each is interconnected and dependent upon an understanding of the purposes behind IST and the way the IST process…

"For the Common Good" was designed as a statewide project to facilitate the formation of local interagency linkage teams throughout Ohio to improve services to at-risk youth and adults. The state team conducted three workshops during which 36 local interagency linkage teams were trained. A major portion of each workshop was set aside for…

This trainer's manual focuses on facilitating collaboration in an educational setting. It begins with tips for trainers to involve training session participants, answer questions and respond to challenges, and evaluate their own performance, along with sample agendas and worksheets used in collaboration training. Each of the next six sections…

This final report describes a pilot project, "Quality Service Provision for Infants and Young Children with Deaf-Blindness: A Mechanism for State Intervention Teams," developed and implemented at the University of Southern Mississippi. The project developed a model of an intervention team that provides intensive training and technical…