Session Resources

The typical structure of traditional special education communications often miss some of the needs of a diverse family population, and it’s likely having a negative impact on the way your students are served in your schools. To properly design communications with families for things like IEP meetings and progress reports, we need to look at a new way of communicating and ensure each communication is inclusive, culturally responsive, and engaging for both the learners and their families. In this session, Andratesha Fritzgerald will provide you with practical ways to:

• Design student- and family-centered communications in your district using principles of the Universal Design for Learning (UDL)
• Evolve the way your special education department creates progress reports for students with special needs to ensure they’re inclusive and culturally responsive
• Help your special education teachers leverage their communications to ignite family and student agency and input

The evaluation and re-evaluation procedures of the IDEA are an essential framework upon which FAPE and the creation of an appropriate IEP rests, but how do you guide staff members to use the evaluation and re-evaluation data effectively in an IEP? In this session, School Attorney Brandon K. Wright will provide you with effective ways to help your staff turn compliant evaluations into model IEPs: from present levels to goals to progress monitoring. You’ll learn:

• Tips to help your staff effectively use the evaluation process to plan for the eventual drafting of the IEP, both for an initial and re-evaluation
• Recent and important court and agency guidance that indicates how the evaluation process serves as the foundation of the IEP
• Practical steps to help your staff craft specially-designed instruction based on a sound evaluation or re-evaluation

We know that disproportionality in restrictive placements creates a negative impact on equity and outcomes, but how can special education leaders make progress to address this complex problem?

The answer lies in understanding the foundational causes in your district and knowing what efforts you can take as a special education leader to address them. In this session, Sowmya Kumar will help you analyze your practices and help identify more effective and efficient ways to address over-representation in a systematic and sustainable way. By attending this session, you’ll learn:

• The most critical data points and planning steps to focus on as a leader to address causes and contributing factors
• Strategies, policies, and systems of support that lead to more equitable access in the least restrictive environment and improved outcomes for all students
• Examples of continuous improvement plans and how you can create your own as a district leader

In this unique session of the Spotlight Series for Special Education Administrators, we’ll have an open conversation with Judith Heumann, an internationally recognized leader for disability rights, special education, and civil rights. In 1975, Judy helped write the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, which was reauthorized in 1990 as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Later, she was instrumental in enacting Section 504. She also served as the Assistant Secretary for the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services in the Department of Education. Judy became the first Special Advisor for International Disability Rights at the U.S. Department of State and starred in the documentary “Crip Camp” (Winner of the 2020 Documentary Award at the Sundance Film Festival). Judy is also the author of two books: Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist and Rolling Warrior: The Incredible, Sometimes Awkward, True Story of a Rebel Girl On Wheels Who Helped Spark a Revolution. Throughout our conversation, we’ll touch on key lessons Judy has learned through her vast experience and glean impactful ways to support and advocate for students with disabilities.

When your IEP team outlines the accommodations, supports, services, and placement they anticipate the student will require in order to accomplish their goals, they have the best intentions in mind.  But even the most comprehensive and creatively drafted IEPs can create legal exposure for school districts if the IEP fails to effectively communicate how a special education program must be implemented by responsible school personnel. In this webinar, School Attorney Anne Mickey will highlight common areas within an IEP where imprecise or ambiguous language can create significant problems for IEP implementation. As a special education administrator, you’ll walk away with:

• An understanding of pitfalls in the IEP relating to IEP goal progress monitoring, accommodation frequency, and service delivery
• Practical tips on IEP drafting that set the stage for more compliant implementation
• IEP monitoring strategies that will help staff foster a culture of consistent IEP implementation

If you’re looking for effective ways your teachers can foster genuinely equitable and inclusive learning environments, then this session is for you. Andratesha Fritzgerald will start by exploring how behavioral expectations can create equitable and inclusive learning environments. We’ll examine the power of choice, empowerment, and the restorative practices as intentionally antiracist actions will equip teachers and providers with insight that invites all students to powerful positions by honoring their identity, culture, and learning needs. You’ll learn:

• The definitions of honor and power in a K–12 context
• How to evaluate power-filled choices and examine the implications of power in equitable access to learning
• How to create a community of educators and providers who are conscious of how to use power to honor all learners
• How to co-create behavioral expectations and reduce and eliminate culturally assaultive practices.

Did you notice that the pandemic disrupted learning for all students, but especially for students with disabilities? In this session, Nathan Levenson will share three common-sense, yet not commonplace, strategies for helping students with disabilities catch up academically. Pre-pandemic, these shifts helped close the general education – special education achievement gap by 40 points in some districts and drove 2 years of growth in just one year in others. Coincidentally, it’s what many students need post-pandemic as well. By attending this session, you’ll learn:

• How to ensure students with disabilities in your district receive high-quality core instruction
• Why extra time to learn is critical
• How you can engage your general education counterparts to help students with disabilities catch up
• How to identify the most appropriate staff to provide extra help in reading, writing, and math
• Two common strategies that many special education administrators use that might hurt more than help

Many students face barriers that prevent them from accessing grade-level instruction and opportunities to learn with their peers. To ensure classrooms are more equitable and inclusive, we need to build educators’ skillset in inclusive practices, but inclusive practices are often seen as competing initiatives (e.g. Universal Design for Learning (UDL), social-emotional learning (SEL), trauma-informed instruction, culturally responsive pedagogy, and differentiated instruction). If educators see these are separate initiatives, they’ll likely feel overwhelmed. In this session, Katie Novak will show you how to frame these practices under the single umbrella of inclusive practice to help ensure first, best instruction for all learners. Special education administrators will:

• Learn more about inclusive practices and how they impact first, best instruction
• Examine numerous analogies to explain to colleagues how inclusive practices work together
• Brainstorm how to share the connection of inclusive practices in your school or district using the principles of UDL

As the hallmark document for showing a school district’s compliance with the IDEA, a student’s IEP is naturally the central focus of most special education litigation. Based on her experience reviewing thousands of IEPs and representing school districts in IDEA litigation, School Attorney Anne Mickey will share valuable insights and processes you can implement to create a systemic approach for reviewing IEPs in your district. You’ll learn:

• Practical solutions to improve your district’s IEP process and drafting decisions to reduce special education litigation
• Tips and processes to identify IEP procedural compliance gaps
• How to audit for a legally defensible IEP that reduces your district’s exposure to litigation

How often have you seen special education cases result in monetary damages being awarded? That may be changing. In the past, cases involving special education students primarily focused on denials of FAPE and obtaining educational remedies for IDEA violations. More recently, however, parents of students with special needs are suing schools in federal courts for money damages under Section 504. In this session, School Attorney Jose Martín will review the three main sources of these cases: disability harassment, retaliation, and serious FAPE violations that may involve injuries to a child. As a special education administrator, you’ll learn:

• Useful lessons on how your district can avoid these situations and the resulting potentially damaging cases
• How your administration should respond in tandem with your IEP teams to reports of disability-based harassment
• How you should train your administration and IEP teams to promptly investigate and take action when staff act improperly with respect to students with disabilities
• How to prevent retaliation claims from arising after parents engage in protected advocacy actions

An increasingly vexing problem for special education administrators is the dilemma of students with disabilities who are excessively absent from school or resistant to school work. The problem inherently impacts the students’ progress and is challenging to address. In this session, School Attorney Jose Martín will provide actionable takeaways about:

• Common decision-making pitfalls made in the IEP process for school-avoidant students that administrators should regularly look for
• How specially designed instruction will look different for school-avoidant students than traditional academic assistance
• Ideas administrators can implement for IEP goals to address attendance and work refusal
• The role of counseling and behavior intervention plans
• The role of truancy actions under state laws

Do you ever wonder if you’re measuring the right things for your special education department? With so much paperwork and pressure, it’s easy to feel like the outputs are the focus rather than outcomes, and you’re not alone!

In this session, Katie Novak will walk you through an effective step-by-step process you can use to help your department design for outcome data—not output data—that includes new approaches to focus groups with teachers, survey data from parents, and changes in eligibility or referrals based on updated procedures. You’ll learn how to:

• Design action plans with clear outcome data, data cycles, and communication plans to increase transparency and maximize outcomes
• Universally design improvement goals
• Compare and contrast outputs and outcome data
• Practice transforming goals to reflect outcomes instead of outputs using the principles of UDL

Every hour in schools, special educators make decisions that have consequences for students. Many of these decisions—often quick and instinctive—are unconsciously influenced by racial bias. In order to help all students succeed, it’s essential to help your special education team understand the phenomenon of unconscious bias, how it can show up in your schools, and how it can impact students. In this session, Dr. Tracey Benson will teach you effective methods you can use to help your special education staff:

• Analyze data to identify where bias is impacting student learning
• Use data to establish the conditions necessary to address unconscious bias
• Shift conversations among educators to a more productive, collegial approach to help normalize talking about race and bias amongst your team to help all students succeed

Do you feel like you could benefit from some fresh ways to make decisions around student behavior? If so, this session is for you. From IEPs to BIPs and FBAs, Attorney Brandon K. Wright will point out the red flags for special education leaders associated with the IDEA’s least restrictive environment requirement in the context of student behavior. You’ll learn:

• Insights into what the law and regulations say about behavior
• Recent court and hearing officer interpretations of the laws 
• How to use data in the decision-making process for IEP teams and how to ensure your teams are using data properly
• Practical guidance for special education leaders on how to navigate student behavior decisions

Do you feel like progress monitoring is a weak link when it comes to improving outcomes for your students with disabilities? If so, be sure to join this session. As an administrator, you’ll walk away with concrete strategies to expand your district’s capacity to track student growth and use data to improve student outcomes. After this session, you’ll be able to:

• Identify barriers to effective progress monitoring and tools to assess your district’s capacity
• Identify strategies to address tools and time
• Train and coach staff toward more effective progress monitoring

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Could you benefit from having more vetted strategies for handling “difficult” special education cases in your district — including those where a formal complaint has (or may soon be) filed? If so, register for this session where you’ll learn:

• Practical knowledge about potential “pitfalls” that can derail a special education case (and how to avoid them)
• Best practices for parent communication, record keeping, and procedural compliance
• Insights into important nuisances in the formal compliant mechanisms under IDEA
• How to strengthen data collection and record-keeping to best support the district’s case and demonstrate the provision of a free appropriate public education
• Tips and tricks for working with your district’s legal counsel

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The legal standard changed years ago, but is there an opportunity to further shift teacher practice and mindset to create more appropriately ambitious goals?

We can certainly help teachers create appropriately ambitious goals, but what qualifies as “appropriately ambitious,” and how do we know if we’re meeting the mark?

The answer lies in the evaluation team report (ETR), and in this session, we’ll explore how you can train staff members to leverage the ETR data to develop appropriately ambitious goals and data collection processes that will create a more comprehensive and impactful plan to address student needs.

You’ll learn how to:

• Conduct truly comprehensive evaluations that clearly identify student needs
• Turn student needs into measurable goals that foster student success
• Leverage the vital link between evaluation, needs, goals, and progress monitoring

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Too often, the typical structure of an IEP meeting misses some of the needs of a diverse student population, and it’s likely having a negative impact on the way your students are served in your schools. In this session, we’ll explore the new way of conducting IEP meetings which ensure each meeting is inclusive, culturally responsive, and engaging for both the learners and their families. You’ll learn how to:

• Evaluate and challenge the traditional format of IEP meetings
• Design student- and family-centered meeting experiences with principles of the Universal Design for Learning (UDL)
• Igniting student agency and input within the IEP development phase

Register today to save your seat!

Are you looking for a proven system to continually improve the quality of services your district provides for students with disabilities in a systemic and sustainable way? If so, register for this session where you’ll learn how to do that as well as:

• How to develop a measurable and continuous improvement plan based on needs
• How to implement, monitor, and evaluate the plan
• How systems and processes can lead to shared responsibility and accountability of stakeholders and staff

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Do you feel like your district’s FBA and BIP process could benefit from research-based practices around high-quality assessments, intervention design, and progress monitoring?

If so, this session is for you. Join us to discuss the best practices and concrete steps you can take back to your staff to transform assessments and support plans from all-too-often vague and subjective exercises to effective components of the IEP. You’ll learn: 

• The research supporting best practices in moving from FBA to BIP
• Best practices for the major functional assessment methods
• How to implement reliable, valid, and feasible progress monitoring and data-based decision-making practices
• How to generate an effective support plan from FBA summary statements
• And more!

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As a Director of Special Education, designing instruction for students with needs is one thing, but getting your general education counterparts to collaboratively implement services and instructional supports aligned to the student’s IEP often presents a high hurdle. In this session, we’ll discuss how you can facilitate conversations with your general education counterparts at the leadership level to better support all students with special needs in the LRE.

Key takeaways from this session include:

• An enhanced understanding of how Universal Design fits into a Multi-Tiered System of Support to meet the needs of all learners
• How to help shift mindsets and support colleagues with systems change to ensure all students’ needs are met
• The importance of using PLCs and data meetings to help facilitate change in the classroom

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If you’re looking for effective ways your teachers can foster genuinely equitable and inclusive learning environments, then this session is for you. We’ll explore how equitable and inclusive learning environments are built on the choices of individuals and how your teachers and providers can leverage antiracism and Universal Design for Learning to invite all students to powerful positions. You’ll learn:

• The definitions of honor and power in a K–12 context
• How to evaluate power-filled choices and examine the implications of power in equitable access to learning
• How to create a community of educators and providers who are conscious of how to use power to honor all learners

Register today to save your seat!

Do you want more inclusive practices that are consistent and effective across all of your schools? In this session, we’ll explore innovative ways to create a district-wide system that saves you time while improving student outcomes. You’ll learn how to:

• Create an infrastructure of supports and practices that benefit students in a proactive and preventative manner
• Strategically support all schools based on their data 
• Collaboratively develop support plans to ensure each school receives the help it needs in a timely and personalized way

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As an administrator, have you ever wondered what other options you have when a student with disabilities presents dangerous or disruptive behavior? If so, attend this session to gain new strategies for managing dangerous and/or severely disruptive students with disabilities. You’ll learn:

• Non-disciplinary strategies you can use to address dangerous and/or severely disruptive behaviors
• Interim alternative educational settings for students exhibiting dangerous or severely disruptive behaviors
• When IDEA’s “special circumstances” exist (which allows removal of a student)

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Inclusive practices are more than the physical placement of our students. Students with special needs are required to spend as much time as possible in the general education classroom, which begs the question: “How can we design general education in a way where students with moderate to severe support needs can have access to grade-level instruction in relevant, authentic, and meaningful ways?” We’ll answer that question in this session. 

Key takeaways from this session include:

• A deeper understanding of how Universal Design for Learning helps us meet the needs of all learners in an inclusive classroom
• How implementing UDL in the general education classroom reduces barriers for students with IEPs, allowing them to reach grade-level rigorous standards
• How Universal Design for Learning and Differentiated Instruction are different and where they are most useful 

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Discover new approaches to increase teacher capacity and develop higher-quality IEPs by avoiding substance and content errors, including how to use a simple but powerful two-pronged model that improves teacher self-efficacy in identifying IEP compliance issues. You’ll learn:

• The top IEP mistakes that special education teachers and providers should avoid
• The most common legal challenges made to IEP content (and how courts are ruling concerning those challenges)
• Strategies for avoiding the most common substantive and content mistakes to ensure IEP defensibility

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If you want to shift teacher and parent mindsets from deficit- to strengths-based IEPs, then this session is for you. Join us to discuss the self-defeating practices common in IEP writing and gain fresh strategies to change conversations with teachers and parents so that you can move towards more effective strength-based IEPs. You’ll learn:

• The current research and literature on teacher efficacy, mindsets, and UDL that underpin strengths-based IEPs
• Strategies to change the IEP conversation and content from deficit- to strengths-based language
• Helpful tools and models to support changes in practice (before, during, and after the IEP meeting)

Register today to save your seat!