Strategies: Elk Grove Unified School District

The instructional strategies utilized follow the simple premise that ''good teaching is good teaching,'' regardless of who provides that instruction. Indeed, there are more similarities between ''good'' general education teachers and ''good'' special education teachers than there are differences. Identification of student need, learning styles, and use of research-based interventions are all crucial in providing high-quality instruction focused on meeting the needs of students, whether they are labeled or not. Additionally, the ''Grid of Nine'' (36kb) | HTML based on the work of Jeff Sprague and Dianna Browning Wright, provides a format for maximizing instructional benefit.

Organizational strategies are structured according to the flowchart (60kb) | HTML . Starting with a student in general education, data is collected about student performance, and this is discussed in the context of a class of students in a CAST team meeting. The team evaluates student needs and makes decisions on needed interventions, which are then implemented. After 8-10 weeks of intervention, data is again collected and reviewed, and the team then decides what interventions, at what level, are needed. After a minimum of three times--linking to the three tiers--through this process, the student is then referred to an SST team for discussion about the need for an assessment to determine qualification for special education.

From the original inception of Neverstreaming, the overall concept was to reduce initial referrals to special education by providing intervention before the fail-first paradigm of qualification as specific learning disabled. In applying for the waiver required by the state at that point in time, Elk Grove Unified School District theorized that, if we were successful in providing the appropriate intervention, the identification rate would reduce; and, indeed, it has dropped from 16 percent to approximately 9 percent, even with our dramatic growth rate. Much of our work has roots in the article Early Warning Signs (184kb) | HTML by G. Reid Lyon and Jack Fletcher.