Special Education Spotlight Series for Administrators

AI has made its way into classrooms before we’ve had a chance to fully understand what it is, how it works, and how it can support K–12 education. Amidst this whirlwind, special education administrators find themselves grappling with unprecedented legal intricacies. In this session, Anne Mickey, Esq., will uncover essential insights to help safeguard your district from the legal quagmire of AI in special education and navigate the future with more confidence and clarity. By attending, you’ll learn:

• Potential positive and negative effects of incorporating artificial intelligence into special education processes.
• Considerations to help assess whether AI platforms and technologies can be utilized in a manner that will comply with your district’s obligations to maintain the confidentiality of personally identifiable student information; and
• Guiding principles for the types of policies and/or procedures your department should consider adopting regarding the use of AI platforms and technologies in special education.

As administrators, we want to plan for everything but often have so much on our plates that it can be challenging to clarify what work is moving the needle vs. what work is pulling us away from our core initiatives. An effective and proven way to solve this is by creating and incorporating a tailored logic model into your work. In this session, you’ll be guided through a proven process to develop a strong logic model for your department that will frame your theory of action into one simple visual representation that you can use as a guiding document and tool to inform your work and communicate it to all stakeholders. By attending this session, you’ll learn:

• The power of logic models and how other education departments have used them to align on initiatives, identify key results, and allocate appropriate resources and activities to ensure the projects are completed
• The key components of an effective logic model and how you can identify them for your own department
• A turnkey logic model framework that you can complete for your own department to build coherence across your staff and focus results
• Proven communication tips that you can use to leverage your logic model and garner support when talking with superintendents, school board members, staff, and other key stakeholders

In the rapidly evolving landscape of AI, many administrators are encountering a challenging predicament—how do you navigate the world of AI in K–12 education while facing the unique and formidable legal challenges of special education? In this session, Brandon Wright, Esq., will walk you through the emerging legal information you need to know in order to keep pace with the evolving world of AI and compliance. By attending, you’ll learn:

• How AI is transforming opportunities for students with disabilities and what legal considerations you should keep in mind throughout the transformation.
• Pitfalls to avoid as AI begins to impact decisions about student services, instruction, and discipline.
• Key things to evaluate to maintain compliance with the IDEA, FERPA, and copyright laws as your teams start to utilize AI tools.
• How AI is creating challenges for special educators and IEP teams and what you can do to help navigate those challenges.

One of the challenges of designing individualized education plans is having the ability to analyze diagnostic data and assessments to select IEP goals and objectives. With a national focus on using data to drive instruction, diagnostic data, as well as additional assessments, should be considered not only for selecting IEPs and objectives but also for progress monitoring those goals and objectives. This ensures that not only are the correct areas being targeted on an individual basis, but also that there is progress monitoring to support student progress or lack thereof to guide IEP development and changes. In this session, you will learn:

• Key principles of data validation and data triangulation
• Turnkey methods to utilize a diagnostic as a baseline and select additional assessments as needed
• Practical tactics your teachers can implement to utilize data to inform goals and objectives and guide instruction

As inclusion rates grow, the varied needs of the tier-one classroom grow, too. With the increase in tier-one classroom size, it can be challenging to ensure every student with an IEP receives the support they need while in the least restrictive environment. Co-teaching is one solution because it supports a more robust inclusionary model that allows students with IEPs to meet their minutes while being in the least restrictive environment. However, utilizing co-teaching with Universal Design for Learning (UDL) can be even more effective because it empowers pairs of teachers to play off of one another’s strengths to best support ALL students’ learning needs, whether they have an IEP or not. If you’re striving to improve the quality of instruction for your students with IEPs in the least restrictive environment, this session is for you. By attending, you’ll learn:

• Specific ways in which UDL can support co-teaching pairs in their planning, instruction, and assessment.
• How co-teaching with UDL can remove as many barriers as possible, for as many students as possible
• Practical ways to integrate UDL into co-teaching environments
• Turnkey resources to take to your co-teaching pairs