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Leadership for Personnel Development: State, Local and Higher Ed collaboration. Phoebe Gillespie, Ph. D. Director The National Center for Special Education Personnel and Related Service Providers @ NASDSE. Can the State DOE do it alone?.
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Leadership for Personnel Development: State, Local and Higher Ed collaboration Phoebe Gillespie, Ph. D. Director The National Center for Special Education Personnel and Related Service Providers @ NASDSE
Can the State DOE do it alone? • Districts deal with the problems and need to implement solutions. • States can assist in identifying problems and implementing solutions. • Higher Ed can help bridge the gap between supply and demand.
Focus Areas for Collaboration on Personnel Needs • Data Planning and Management • involves all three partner- State, locals and IHEs. • Strategic Action Planning • should reflect wide, diverse stakeholder input and involvement. • Recruitment • is everyone’s job! • Personnel Preparation • can provide innovative program development and delivery. • Retention • happens at the building level, but is clearly influenced by the quality of preparation.
Personnel Development Strategic Action Planning Challenges and Barriers • Image of the special educator is a deterrent to recruiting persons to the field. • Working conditions, lack of administrative support and need for high quality special ed-specific mentoring programs are major contributors to both attrition and lack of persons coming into prep programs. • Financial aid is lacking for interested candidates. • Prep program entry requirements and lack of access to prep coursework and programs deter minority candidates from entering field.
Solutions • State staff must take leadership to both plan and implement. • Designated state staff to assist the taskforce in completing the plan (NJ). • Funding to pay for the implementation work to be completed (CA SIG, KY). • State resources to fund a “state recruiter” for special ed personnel (RI SIG). • District buy-in is essential to implementation assist in bringing other local staff on board. • State staff must have working relationships with district staff at the HR, special ed director and superintendent levels.
Solutions • Higher ed is the lynch-pin in making solutions work at both the state and district level. • Try innovative approaches (RI, NJ) • Assist districts in PD and training of administrators for support (NH, NJ) • Act as leaders in bringing new recruits into the field (RI, NH and MA)