El Paso Independent School District, Texas

During this school year, the district focused on two pressing needs: (1) reducing the number of students in self-contained special education classrooms, and (2) improving reading outcomes in general and special education students.

To address the first need, the director of special education worked with the Center for Research on Learning, to implement a model he developed called the Strategic Intervention Model (SIM). The model offers new instructional, organizational, and motivational techniques for teachers and staff. Its objective is to help general education teachers work with students with disabilities in a general education setting. SIM includes teaching devices and routines that are developed and used with the following goals:

• meeting the needs of both the group and the individual;
• maintaining the integrity of the content;
• selecting the critical features of the content;
• transforming the content in ways that promote student learning; and
• carrying out instruction in a partnership with students.

In order to implement SIM, several administrators went to a training seminar at the University of Kansas to familiarize themselves with SIM and how to effectively carry it out in the classroom. To see how SIM works in practice, these administrators also visited a district near Houston that was using another version of SIM. They met with regular and special education teachers, administrators, and the board of trustees to learn more about implementing the model. When they got back, they met with and trained special education teachers, and received highly positive evaluations from these training sessions. When other teachers learned about SIM, the initiative started to spread on its own among the district's high schools, with the Office of Special Services "nudging it along" as well. The Linking Agent's role in implementing SIM includes providing administrators with information and research relating to the model, and coordinating staff development activities to put the model into practice. Starting in the fall of 2001, the initiative will be expanded to middle schools and then in elementary schools.

To improve students' reading skills, EPISD has continued implementing the Balanced Literacy project, which uses an integrative approach to teaching reading, combining language and spelling along with teaching students how to read. The Linking Agent's responsibilities on this initiative have remained the same: facilitating teacher trainings, working with a consultant who was hired to assist in Balanced Literacy's implementation, and keeping principals abreast of developments involving the project. In addition, the Linking Agent's activities include coordinating teacher training and staff development; following up with teachers and staff after these training sessions; and making sure program assessments are completed and turned in. The initiative has been endorsed for the entire district, and is being expanded from K-3 to K-5. It has also scaled up from 9 schools in its first year to 18 in its second, and next academic year, it will be implemented in even more schools in the district.

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