Region 13 Comprehensive Center: Projects

Regional Webinar Series: Making a Difference for American Indian and Alaska Native Students

The Making a Difference webinar series convened and equipped tribal and SEA leaders to focus on emerging innovative policies and practices that tackle persistent challenges for American Indian and Alaska Native students. The series amplified systemic, policy-level approaches for transforming outcomes for Native American students and supported participants in identifying action steps.

BIE Tiered School Leadership Support

The Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) recognized the need to provide increased support to school leaders. The R13CC assisted BIE in designing and implementing a tiered system of support for school leaders that includes universal, targeted, and intensive support. BIE is now able to provide differentiated needs-based support to veteran and new school leaders. Several resources were developed to support school leaders in these sessions.

BIE Standards, Assessment, and Accountability

Faced with the challenge of assessing student needs in BIE schools that were using state standards, assessment, and accountability systems in each of the 23 states where BIE schools are located, BIE with support from the R13CC, embarked on the development of a BIE unified system of standards, assessments, and accountability. R13CC also assisted BIE in incorporating this new system in its ESSA Agency Plan and the related required tribal waiver process. BIE is currently implementing this new system.

New Mexico Practitioners’ Guide for Serving English Learners with Disabilities.

At the national level, disproportionate representation of English learner (EL) students in special education has been a pervasive problem. Likewise, current district-level data available on the Office of Civil Rights website indicates that in New Mexico, EL students are also disproportionately represented in special education. Research across the U.S. indicates that educators have low self-efficacy for meeting the academic needs of English learners with disabilities, and joint delivery of special education and EL services are often incomplete, fragmented, and incoherent.

Region 13 CC will work with NMPED to develop a Practitioners’ Guide for Serving English Learners with Disabilities. This guide will offer NM district leaders and educators guidance for ensuring that EL students with disabilities and suspected disabilities receive the services to help them thrive. The Guide will focus on the following key areas: 1. Appropriate identification of EL students with disabilities; 2. Collaboration among district leaders to best serve all students; 3. Alignment of MLSS guidance with services for EL students with disabilities or suspected disabilities; and 4. High-quality instruction for EL students with disabilities.

New Mexico Strategic Use of ARP Funds for Local Education Agencies

Recognizing the need for support to local education agencies (LEAs) in the strategic planning and use of American Rescue Plan funds in coordination with other federal and state resources, the New Mexico Public Education Department (NMPED) requested support from R13CC to design and implement a series of trainings for LEA teams. A six-part webinar series, three communities of practice and related resources and tools focused on the strategic planning, use, tracking and evaluation of ARP funds targeted for students most in need. Participant feedback was extremely positive on the ability to apply these resource planning practices to other budget planning processes in addition to ARP.

Oklahoma Circles of Reflection

Oklahoma Department of Education (OSDE) sought to increase communication and collaboration between the SEA and Oklahoma tribes. The R13CC, in partnership with the National Comprehensive Center, planned and facilitated a series of collaborative dialogue sessions that led to a shared action plan using a structured protocol, “Circles of Reflection.” Those sessions led to sustained communication, implementation, and networking.

Oklahoma Support for School Improvement

The R13CC assisted the Oklahoma State Department of Education (OSDE) in developing, revising and improving the tools it was using to support planning in schools identified for improvement. This included integrating resource allocation review into the improvement planning process, enabling an automated analysis of multiple data sources to better support root cause analysis and improvement strategy selection, and adding guidance to existing tools to empower more schools to utilize them independently. In addition, R13CC assisted OSDE in the revision of its more rigorous interventions for some schools based on evidence-based practices and measures of effectiveness. As a result, OSDE has a new toolkit and revised interventions to better meet schools’ needs and support their continuous improvement efforts.