Updates

This year building a “kindness” culture and empathic classroom community is more important than ever. We want to support our kids with consistent routines whether they are learning at home, in the classroom, or both! This is why we were so excited when our friends at Red Nose Day created remote learning ready SEL resources that are tied to key learning moments throughout the year.

When COVID-19 first became a national conversation topic, a flurry of articles in major U.S. publications followed proposing what, post-COVID-19, would remain the same and what would be different. There seems to be an assumption that these issues have largely been resolved; while we may not like every change, we at least have a pretty good idea of what post-COVID U.S. education will look like. A previous experience with the interaction of a school system and a disaster this century, Hurricane Katrina, should warn us that we’re probably underestimating how extensive and profound those changes are likely to be.

As many as 3 million of the country’s most marginalized students may not have returned to school — online or in-person — since the COVID closures in March, a new analysis suggests. English language learners, homeless and disabled students, and children in foster care are among the groups that have had the most trouble accessing school since the pandemic began, according to the “Missing in the Margins” report by Bellwether Education Partners.

Julie Mason, a contributor for We Are Teachers, writes: “We are trying to keep things as normal as possible for our kids. But why? There’s nothing normal about this school year. I’m going to make the case to please stop expecting normal from kids and teachers right now and to start questioning why we thought normal was so great in the first place. Sure, there’s a lot of comfort in routine and the structure of school, but we are so used to things that we stop questioning why we do them in the first place.”

Washington CASE will be hosting a Virtual Happy Hour

November 19, 2020

Sign in by 4:30 PM

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about the Happy Hour.

For Black and Brown students with disabilities, online instruction has often been a failure. It is also suboptimal for students with disabilities across racial groups, especially as teachers without training have had to shift instruction. Many Black and Brown families include essential workers or individuals who are more vulnerable to COVID-19. Fewer Black and Brown communities are able to access services for students with disabilities and high-quality instruction for their children in public schools.

Important information and resources from the Office of Special Education (OSEP), Director Laurie Van der Ploeg. Includes: use of funds, procedural safeguards, dispute resolution, evaluation and assessment timelines and much more. Refers to IDEA Part B and Part C.

In addition to the alternative forms of dispute resolution under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the two decisional avenues are adjudicative and investigative. The adjudicative avenue starts with a due process hearing (DPH) and culminates in court proceedings. The investigative avenue is the written state complaints (WSC) process, which provides for judicial appeals in only the minority of states (e.g., Zirkel, 2019). Read More…

The NSQ Project team would like to remind educators of the updated National Standards for Quality (NSQ) Online Learning.  The (NSQ) standard sets include Online Courses, Online Teaching, and Online Programs. Read More…