Achieving Career Competencies with Education Standards and Skills
A Model Demonstration Project to Improve the Delivery and Outcomes of Secondary Education Services for Students with Disabilities
CFDA 84.158V
This project has three primary goals:
1. To eliminate a dual system of reform efforts between special education and general education by promoting the inclusion of special education teachers and students in the School-to-Career (STC) reform.
2. To develop outcome-based instructional units that integrate academic standards with life skills (occupational preparation, daily living, and personal-social) for use in special education and general education classrooms.
3. To reduce the drop out rate and repeated course failures of special education students.
This project’s efforts are coordinated under the West Contra Costa County Urban School-to-Career (STC) Partnership. This partnership has been widely recognized as being highly successful in its ability to maintain sustainability of the reform changes that have occurred as a result of its efforts. All district high schools, alternative schools, and most middle schools are a part of this partnership. The ACCESS Project is an integral part of this STC Partnership and has been very instrumental in developing the ongoing success of this endeavor.
To accomplish the goals of this project, a core team of six special education teachers and two general education teachers, representing three comprehensive high schools, one alternative school, and one middle school has been established. In addition, several special education and general education teachers work with the team in providing assistance on an “as needed” arrangement. The teachers are developed instructional units with rigorous academic and life skills standards. There are additional special education and general education teachers implementing the instructional units that have been evaluated and refined by the ACCESS team of teachers who are wrote the units. Several of the units, or components of units, have been piloted in the special education setting and have been edited based on evaluations during the piloting process. In addition, several general education teachers have implemented some of the units in their classrooms. Several key general education teachers from the high schools participated in training opportunities and writing of the instructional units. This provided content expertise (i.e., math teachers assisting with math units, etc.) and attempted to get buy-in to the implementation of units in the general education setting. Other activities accomplished by the project teachers include working closely with their school site School-to-Career coordinators to work on all school site STC activities (depending on the activities occurring at each of the individual sites).