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Special Education Receives State Incentive Grants

CSU, Chico's emphasis on the assessment of student outcomes received a major boost this month when Special Education Program faculty within the Department of Professional Studies in Education were awarded two complementary grants totaling $73,000 to improve intern teacher preparation and assessment.

The first, the result of a research proposal by Lisa Churchill and Mary Jensen to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, funds development of a process to monitor the performance of K-12 pupils taught by intern teachers. Annually, over 100 special education interns staff classrooms in the 14-county region served by CSU, Chico's Special Education Program.

The second award, secured by Jensen from the California State Department of Education's Institute of Higher Education Incentive Program, supports faculty efforts to redesign IHE teacher preparation curricula and methodology in continuous response to this emerging K-12 pupil data. This redesign of teacher preparation curricula represents a major shift in teacher education, moving from the study of texts and exemplary case studies to the use of direct pupil measures as guides to IHE seminar content.

Faculty members Michelle Cepello and Rita Mulholland will direct the projects. Cepello considers this "a unique opportunity to explore the relationship between each intern teacher's performance and pupil growth."

"The projects are very exciting for university faculty working with the special education internship program," Mulholland states. "The grants allow us time to study specific pupils' assessment data and to work with the intern teachers in their university courses to develop instruction that will directly foster their pupils' academic development."