This project funds a portion of a larger collaborative project with the Illinois State Board of Education, along with a number of other funders, including the Joyce Foundation and the Grand Victoria Foundation. The larger project is developing the Illinois Early Childhood Asset Map (IECAM) to provide decision-critical data on early childhood care and resources for state officials, business community, advocates and legislators. This portion of the project funds the provision of GIS programming and interface, and of web page programming needed to enable a web-served data feed from the Early Childhood Information System (ECIS).

This funding supports the technical and logistical development of the Early Childhood Information System (ECIS) for use in the State of Illinois, which is part of the larger Illinois Early Childhood Asset Map, funded in collaboration with the Illinois Department of Human Services. ECIS is intended as a comprehensive system that can bring together all available information on early childhood care and education in Illinois. It responds to the increasing priorities placed on early childhood education needs by reducing gaps among currently disparate systems.

The Illinois Early Learning Project builds and maintains an extensive Web site of materials intended to promote school readiness and foster implementation of the Illinois Early Learning Standards. The Web site, training events, Internet chats, and publications from this project are intended for caregivers, teachers, and parents of young children in the state of Illinois.

This project supports advanced professional development for general and special education teachers, literacy leaders, and principals in Quincy Public Schools. The faculty member functions as a facilitator and information resource to support the development, implementation, and ongoing evaluation of the following: (1) Continuing Literacy Intervention Specialists (Grades 3-6); (2) Initial preparation of Literacy Intervention Specialists (Grades 7-9); (3) Literacy leadership series for principals; and (4) District Initiative in the areas of Universal Design for Learning and Response to Intervention.

Early communicative exchanges between young children with substantial language delays and their social partners (primarily families and teachers), are the study target. This project consists of a three-year sequence of studies. Year One focuses on intensive descriptive study of eight children and their partners. An intervention in Year Two teaches multiple functionally equivalent and socially acceptable alternatives for requesting and protesting. Year Three assesses the maintenance and generalization of the intervention.

The goal of this subcontract to UIUC from Hope School provides funds from The Autism Program (TAP) to support a project to coordinate and enhance the services currently available in Champaign-Urbana for children with autism and their families. The university staff will function as facilitators and information sources to the community to support their grass-root efforts and to assess current services and identify high priority services that are needed in the community. Finally, Project staff will collaborate with the community stakeholders to develop priority services and ensure their sustainability within East Central Illinois.

The purpose of this proposed project is to enhance the overall teaching and learning environment at University Primary School (UPS) by purchasing large acrylic frames to hold documentation boards. Documentation boards are used to enhance student learning and inform instruction, but teachers lack a means to display them effectively. Instead of displaying the boards randomly, the new frames will serve as central locations to effectively display students engaged in the phases of the Project Approach, and to emphasize to both students and adults that the process of inquiry and the disposition to inquire is highly valued at UPS.

This project studies the effects of providing a classroom-wide, teacher-planned literacy intervention, an individual tutoring intervention, and a combination intervention on young children's emerging literacy development. Early childhood classrooms primarily serving children who are at risk based on low income as well as children with disabilities are included and randomly assigned to one of these intervention conditions or to a control group. This project is also focusing on developing a collaborative training model for helping teachers implement literacy interventions.

Project TIES is a personnel preparation grant focused on strengthening linkages between general and special education while preparing teachers to work more effectively with students with emotional behavior disorders and those with challenging behaviors. Approximately 150 special educators will be provided with either initial or advanced certification over a 4-year period, and over 800 elementary and secondary general education candidates will receive specialized instruction and activities focused on managing difficult behavior in their classroom and teaming with their special education colleagues to provide effective instructional and behavior interventions.

This grant supports a doctoral dissertation research project.

The University of Illinois collaborates in consortium with other institutions to operate the Center on the Social and Emotional Foundations for Early Learning. Illinois develops and producing synthesis papers, coordinates and produces outcome briefs, develops training modules and trainer web pages, coordinates teleconferences and presentation of findings, coordinates the in-state recruitment process and implements training and technical Assistance events.

This grant supports students’ research project.

The purpose of the Preparing Leaders in Access by Design (PLAD) is to prepare competent leaders in special education with the expertise to help students with disabilities access the general curriculum. Through collaboration among faculty in special education and faculty from other units across campus, doctoral students will receive instruction in five core areas: disability policy and law, cultural and linguistic diversity, collaborative practices in inclusive environments, universal design strategies to enhance student outcomes, and service learning. At the end of four years of the project, a minimum of 16 doctoral trainees are expected to have completed the program

The Early Childhood/Infancy program in the Department of Special Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has been awarded federal funding to support students interested in attaining a master's degree in early childhood special education, with an emphasis on working with infants/toddlers with disabilities and their families. This is a two year program of study for full time students; some students also work toward this degree on a part time basis.

This project trains local teams of administrators, lead teachers, parents, and other decision-makers to systematically collect and use data (e.g., student assessments, programmatic characteristics, student needs/experiences, and demographics) that impact individualized education programs (IEPs) to make program and policy decisions. The intent of the project is to promote access to the general curriculum and increase the achievement of students with disabilities.

This project seeks to test a Web-based Individualized Education Program (IEP) Tutorial and decision making support system linked to the Illinois State Board of Education's archiving system. The intervention has four components: (1) Web-based Professional/Parent Resources, (2) Decision Supports, (3) Implementation Support, and (4) Case Consultation Summaries. Stage 1 develops and beta tests the Tutorial, and in Stage 2 the revised Tutorial is used in a randomized design experiment. The measures of key outcomes include process measures of quality, interview data, teacher self-reports, observation, and teacher and parent perception.

This project will continue a program that facilitates integrated employment outcomes for individuals with significant disabilities through (a) Continuing education and technical assistance; (b) Development of the regional infrastructure for promoting employment through training; (c) Externships focused on replication activities for the dissemination of promising programs and practices; and (d) Leadership development. All components of this project will include an ongoing evaluation component that will allow for identification of successful strategies and procedures, as well as lessons learned. Formative and summative evaluations will be widely disseminated to facilitate regional and national replication of activities during and after the project-funding period.