001Hi, welcome everybody to today's uh TEAL LEA webinar. Uh today is November 18th and if you had a chance to look at the agenda, we have two topics for today. But before we get started, just a few housekeeping items. First, my name is Stephanie Cotch and I will be your facilitator this afternoon and I am a manager with ESC and stakeholder engagement team here at TEA. And the webinar is being recorded. It will be posted on TEA's website in a few days, so you can check back for the recording. Um, the Q&A is enabled, so if you have any questions, if you will drop them in the Q&A, that would be fantastic. The chat is disabled because we do not have any live questions during this presentation. So, with that said, we have two agenda
002items. We are going to hear about meaningful access resources collection and we're going to hear information about the autism circuit academy and initiative services for students autism grant. That was a mouthful. So all right Carrie I will turn it over to you. Great. Thank you Stephanie. I am going to go ahead and share my screen. Make sure everybody can see my slide deck. Um are we good? You see it perfect. Um hi everyone. I'm so glad that you're able to log in today. I'm Carrie Hibden. I am the director of academic supports with the Office of Special Populations and Student Supports. And I'm um really excited to get to share with you this new collection that we've recently launched. So before I do that, I um want to introduce our TEA's definition of meaningful access.
003Meaningful access ensures that students with disabilities who receive special education and related services under um IDA have equal opportunities to engage with and make progress in the general education curriculum and environment. The concept is deeply rooted in inclusive practices which involve intentional systematic actions designed to meet the individual needs of students. Inclusion is achieved when these practices are implemented with fidelity, allowing students with disabilities to learn, participate, and make progress alongside their peers without disabilities in a meaningful and equitable manner throughout their entire school experience. So overall, meaningful access is this overarching concept that ensures students with disabilities can engage with and progress in the general education curriculum. Um, it includes inclusion and inclusive practices. Our inclusive practices are really about the how. Um, it's those intentional strategies, supports, adjustments that make sure students are
004not just present in the classroom, but they're actively learning, participating, and progressing. And before I share more about the resources that we have to support meaningful access, I really wanted to ground ourselves in some of that national and statewide d statewide data. So for students with disabilities, our national average is 15% of K12 students. Um Texas serves slightly higher at 15.5%. Um together these students really represent a significant portion of our classrooms each with very unique needs considerations that we must address. And the number of students served by special education um as you can see in the slide has been steadily increasing. Um, so since uh 2017 to 2018 school year, we've seen a 72% increase in the number of students served by special education in Texas. Also, about 13.9% of our emergent bilingual students
005also receive special education services and that's of our PE's data from 2425. So dually identified students which are students served um both by special education and emergent bilingual um they uh require support uh systems that integrate both language development and disability related needs making coordinating planning essential. A little bit more on our data. So on this slide you see that students receiving special education services are continuing to fall below the state averages. Um when you look at the two graphs, they highlight the trends in reading language arts and mathematics. And the data points um seeing that gap really identify these real opportunities we have to connect back our goal of equipping equipping teachers and school systems with the instructional strategies to promote meaningful access for all of our learners. Right? So to get to the
006resources to do this, we've launched this new collection of resources that can support educators and administrators with ensuring that our students with disabilities can meaningfully engage with and make progress in the general education curriculum and the environment. So I've uh bucketed these resources into three areas with universal design for learning, specially designed instruction, and collaborative instruction. Um, you can access this using the QR code on the screen. Um, and then there's also a link in the agenda for today. I do want to take you out to Texas Fed support and just show you a quick live demo of the collection. So, I'm going to change my share and Stephanie, if you wouldn't mind giving me a thumbs up if we're looking at Texas Bed Support now. Thank you. Okay. If you look at Texas Bed
007Support, um I first of all I encourage everyone um if you haven't done so already to definitely create an account, you can see in the top right hand corner where I have my accounts. I'm logged in. That really helps. So I can bookmark resources. I can share them with others. Um, if you're looking for the meaningful access collection, you could just do a general search or right now for this month, it is one of our featured collections. So, if you want to go ahead and bookmark it, you can. And again, like I said, you can also um use those three connected dots to uh find the link and share it with others. When you're in the collection, you have some just a brief description. And then down here, you see those subolctions or buckets with
008collaborative instruction, specially designed instruction, and universal design for learning. We have a couple more collections that go along here. And then I'm going to go into this in a little bit more detail, but we have these guides um co-eing, specially designed instruction, UDL, and working with pair of professionals that are also included within each of those related subcolctions. So, encourage you to check that out. I'm going to go back to my slide deck now. Okay, thumbs up, Stephanie, if I did that right. Thank you. Okay, perfect. Um, all right. So, um, I do want to go over each of these in more detail. When I'm going through that, you'll see this star, and that just indicates if the resource is either new or it's been recently updated. All right. So, um, like I said, I'm
009going to take a go a little bit deeper into each of these collections. The first one is universal design for learning, which is really more than just a framework. It's this belief in the potential of every student to achieve high levels. And UDL really challenges us to move away from this one-sizefits-all teaching and toward flexible approaches that can really give students multiple ways to succeed. Here are a few of the resources that we have. Now, this is not exhaustive. We have a lot of UDL resources throughout the agency and on Texas sped support, but these are the ones that you're going to find within the um meaningful access collection. So, we have a UDL course um that can be taken either face toface or um asynchronously on Tea Learn. The star on the UDL training
010indicates it's a revision. So, the course was previously a three-day course with pre-work and it's now a comprehensive one-day training. With both of these, educators can opt into coaching um from their local education service center to improve their UDL practice. And when you go to both of these can be found on Texas Fed support and when you go to if you wanted to take the face-to-face training, you can find that information on how to contact someone from your ESC. Then the UDL implementation guide. This one is not new, but it has been updated. It includes a lesson example that moves from a traditional lesson plan to UDL enhanced lesson. You'll find guiding questions that an instructional coach could use to support implementation of UDL. And then we also have administrator look fors. There's a readiness
011checklist that can help with teachers just beginning this journey. And then we also have a very comprehensive updated rubric to support teachers moving from beginner to leader with UDL. Um and then the current trainings and resources that we have available at TEA are aligned to UDL 2.2 um which can be found on TEA's website. There's another QR code if you want to snag that. um it takes you directly to the page where you will find thorough descriptions of each principle guideline and the corresponding checkpoints with actionable strategies. Um and just to bring in a little bit more data, um research shows that schools that implement UDL have seen up to 31% gain in student achievement across diverse student populations. So that is not just a number. It's really a reflection of the impact that improved
012engagement, um, increased access to learning materials and stronger collaborative inclusive teaching practices can have on our students. All right, the next subolction or bucket that I um mentioned was specially designed instruction, which is a core component of special education in our work with meaningful access for students with disabilities. This is one of the most powerful levers that we have. When a student receives special education services, their IEP must include SDI that's tailored to their unique needs. And it's how we move from this idea of access to the reality of access so that we can ensure instruction is adapted and students with disabilities can engage with master the same rigorous standards as their peers. Oh, here are some of the resources. The SDI guide has been updated and within this revision we have a clear description
013of what SDI is, how to implement SDI, strategies for instructional delivery with guidance on how to integrate SDI into daily instruction and some tools for planning and monitoring the effectiveness. And then we also have a collection um of quick learn videos. They provide educators with just really quick, impactful, professional learning opportunities. And this one that you see on the screen, the SDI quickear, offers just practical examples to understand and implement as a specially designed instruction. Next up, I'm very excited to launch these, the SDI field user guides. They're brand new. Um they're a resource aligned with Blue Bonnet Learning, a highquality instructional material. These are for reading, um language arts, K5, uh K5 math, and then also secondary math. The guides go over um evidence-based practices. There's detailed examples of SDI um that are aligned
014to blue bonnet and include accommodations and and modifications. Each guide will include um a like an case student with an IEP and the SDI implemented within a sample blue bonnet lesson. Now the third subolction that I mentioned um last but not least collaborative instruction. So one of the most powerful ways to deliver instruction in the classroom is through collaborative teaching. So this approach levers the expertise of both general and special educators to provide students with rigorous um access to rigorous grade level learning. And so we have guidelines for co-eing was previously one guide because of the depth of information um for different audiences. The guide was divided into a teacher guide and an administrator guide. The teacher guide goes into detail about the six co-eing approaches, examples for implementing the approaches within a lesson. It
015um provides planning tools, guidance on communication and collaboration. Uh the administrator guide will focus on practical schoolwide planning for effective co-eing and supporting that professional collaboration. On the right hand side you see another training. So the co-eing training is brand new. Um it's also provided by your lo local education service center. It's a one-day workshop for special educators and general education teachers that take them through establishing partnerships, co-eing approaches, and then how to apply the co-eing approaches for um to learning for daily instruction. Uh coaching is also available through the ESC similar to the UDL training. And we have quick learn videos for co-eing for educators. again looking for just a quick impactful professional learning opportunities. Um, one video is going to be an overview of co-eing and the other focuses on the approaches with
016real classroom examples. Next up, another type of collaborative instruction working with paraprofessionals. So, this guide has been designed to help maximize the impact of pair of professionals in the classroom. Um and then we have our quick learn video that also um contains similar information that the guide has that provides clarity on roles and responsibilities, consistent communication and the need for continuous professional development for paraprofessionals. We also have um collaboration and flexible grouping courses which were launched last year. They include 19 engaging professional learning pathways for educators, both special ed and general ed, and instructional leaders that can help with developing skills in collaborative instruction, datadriven decisionmaking, and student centered small groupoup planning. And then um the last resource that we have in this collection is the dually identified guide um which as I mentioned at
017the beginning of this presentation 13.9% of our students that are emergent bilingual also um qualify for special education or receive special education services. So even though this is in collaboration between a general education teacher and a a special education teacher in the classroom, collaboration is still necessary between special education and bilingual supports for a student dy identified. That is receiving both special ed services and emergent bilingual. So the guide was really created through collaboration of these two different two divisions and formed by each other and by stakeholder groups. And through this collaboration, we have um we were able to develop this purpose and establish a foundational guidance with common language for our educators. And that is the full overview of each of those sections. But before we go, um I wanted to share with you
018this slide because this contains all of the resources that are in the collection that I didn't go over. Um, I do want to point out one more training that is new and offered by your local ESC. Um, and it's meaningful access for administrators. And it takes administrators through a deep dive into meaningful access and the inclusive practices that I mentioned and how to apply those at the campus to support their um, teachers and ultimately supporting student success. And another plug for Texas Bed Support. Be sure to um to visit Texas Bedup support, create an account if you haven't already done so. Really start exploring, bookmarking, sharing the resources that I presented today. And lastly, oh before I before I say thank you, um one last piece, I really would love to hear your feedback on
019um the resources that I just shared. It's really important that we're making sure that these are um making an impact in the field. So, I have a QR code on the screen. If you wouldn't just take a minute um capture that QR code, start the survey, just leave a few comments on your thoughts. Um and it really does help us make improvements and improving what we can for students. We'll just pause there for a minute so everybody can capture that. Okay, hopefully you've had a chance. Um, know the record the presentation is being recorded. So, if you want to come back later, you can. It'll still be available for you to leave any feedback. And I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much. Thank you, Carrie. That was great information. uh lots of information.
020You guys have been super busy putting out all kinds of wonderful resources. So, thank you for that. And again, the link to that deck, you can find it in the agenda. So, um you can access that. There are some Q&A questions in there. So, um we'll get those to Carrie and um Carrie will respond to you guys. Okay. All righty. Thank you so much. Um, next up, what we're going to do is Nathan Poland is our uh, autism program manager and he unfortunately is unable to be with us today, but we do want to share the information with you. So, Anna Montreal is here with me and I'm going to share the links to the um, information and she's going to tell you about it. >> So, I'm gonna turn it over to you while
021I pull that up. >> Thank you, Stephanie. and she is pulling up links that were in the agenda as well. There was two separate links in the agenda. So, the first link in the agenda is going to take you to the Autism Circuit Academy. Um, and just so that you know, the Autism Circuit Academy spring application is open now and it will be open through December 15th. Um, there's a lot of information on this, but what the Autism Circuit Academy is, it's a professional learning community. It includes training and coaching or evidence-based practices in working with individuals with autism. There's coaching and training part of the circuit that is conducted and led by the autism specialists at the various ESC's. It's important to know that it's free for Texas educators. It's two semesters long now,
022so that's a little bit different than it was before. And there's different evidence-based practices in the spring semester than there is in the fall semester. So, you're welcome to sign up for one or both. Um, and the spring cohort starts in January and then ends in April of 2026. So, that's why the registration is open now or the application December 15th and when is when it closes for the um spring cohort to actually begin. And it looks like there's some other spring application dates on there as well. and then the cohort for January will begin uh not sure what date, but January 2026 is when it passed. So that's it for the autism circuit. There is a email at the bottom. So if there's questions that you have, you can pop them into the chat
023or excuse me into the Q&A and we'll make sure that Nathan gets those. But there's also an autism circuit at esse13 texas educationnet.net. That's another place to get a lot of questions answered regarding this. So, the second link on the agenda I think Stephanie's going to open for you and that one's on innovative services for students with autism grant. This is not a new grant. It's something that has been around. We have an opportunity site, grant opportunity site within that Texas Fed support. So, I'm glad Carrie alluded to having you all save that site as a favorite because you can find lots of grant opportunities within this site as well. And so, the one we're going to highlight today is the Innovative Services for Students with autism grant. Um, it's available to public schools and
024open enrollment charter schools in Texas. Um, it's for innovative programming for students with autism ranging between ages 3 and 21. The application will open in early January. So, it's not open yet, but it'll be open in early January. There's a couple new features that are not here yet, but will be coming probably this week. Um, there's going to be an FAQ document posting, and there's going to be a sample application with all the questions. So, that sample application is going to be a good resource if you're planning on completing um the grant application for innovative services for students with autism. But hopefully the Q&A as well as that sample application will be posted sometime this week. Um it gives you information on the allowable and nonallowable expenses. That's another thing that's going to be posting
025soon. Um this is a collaborative application with multiple LEAs that will be prioritized in in the competition. So, a lot of applications come in and then there's a scoring and prioritizing um of the applications that come in. One of the things that's new this year as well is that there's a 1 million maximum award per fiscal year on this grant. No minimum, but there's a maximum for the annual amount, which is 1 million maximum for the award year. Um there is also Stephanie, if you'll scroll to the bottom, a email at the bottom of this page as well. Um, if there's any questions that you have about this grant or if you can't find the documents that we're telling you about that hopefully will be posted this week, that email is going to be your
026surefire way to get some questions answered. So, thank you guys. I probably didn't do as well as Nathan would have done, but at least the information got out to the districts. >> Thank you. Yeah, and the links are in the agenda again, so you can just click on those links and it'll bring you right to those web pages that we were sharing with you. So that is the end. >> I apologize. I looked at the Q&A and I saw that my QR code at the end was not working. So if you wouldn't mind, can I reshare with the correct link? >> Absolutely. >> Thank you. Okay, this one should be a working one. I apologize for that earlier. So, if you would just go ahead and capture this if you can. And again, it will
027be in the recording for later on if you need to come back. That was some of your questions that came in, Carrie. So, your questions about the link, you'll you'll be able to disregard those. >> Thank you. I'm going to stop sharing. Okay, thanks Carrie. Thanks for making that correction. That's awesome. All right, everybody. Well, that that is the end of our webinar for November and we will be back in December for another one. So, please check on the website for the date and the time and also for the recording once it's available. Have a great day. Thanks a lot for joining us. Bye.