Discussion 2: Applying Strategies for Change

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Education Program for Evaluation and Recommendation

Education Program for Evaluation and Recommendation

Part 1: Interventions Training Program for Educators in Special Education

Evaluating educational programs requires an accurate understanding of those programs and subsequent application of effective evaluation criteria for their evaluation. The K-12 training education program emphasizes a core issue in providing effective behavioral interventions in special education. The program requires K-12 educators to learn from real-world teachers and borrow classroom concepts that apply to special education. The focus will be on using the acquired leadership skills to solve behavioral interventions effective for teaching. Special needs teachers are often too traumatized to learn effectively, which is the aspect that this paper has considered. Overall, the program posits that educators learn actively from past special needs teachers by way of imitating directly from those teachers. The program participants also will apply their core leadership skills acquired from the program to improve their ability to alleviate behavior in the classroom. This will help increase the effectiveness of their knowledge imparting experiences in special needs schools of learning and their immediate environments.

The program's purpose is to train educational K-12 educators to learn behavioral interventions and acquire core leadership skills to excel in their career. The program will also make them achieve work-life balance to not be stressed with their work or not be left behind in social circles. It provides personalized support for them and ensures that they grasp opportunities within their reach. These educators will work with people who are directly in leadership. They will be able to understand what works in the real world and what does not work. They will be able to identify various behaviors in the classroom as it influences special needs. The program will last for three years and it will involve various stakeholders. These stakeholders include the special needs K-12 teachers, trainers for the program in special needs, administrators, the immediate special needs community members, the immediate school environment, and alumni of special needs.

The program's current data relies heavily on staff data or information while also considering behavioral interventions. Staff data indicates that the program depends on more than 100 honoraria to implement the plan. In contrast, country-wide information suggests that it is most effective program in the United States of America. The program also boasts over 150 "teachers of the year" in America. This aspect has proven to be the benchmark of its success. The program examines K-12 educators success rate from teachers utilizing behavioral interventions, but it does not mention whether these are special needs cases. For instance, many educators utilize behavioral interventions, making it clear that the program is very valued in the labor market because it increases after completion.

However, all these statistical data do not present the information necessary to undertake an extensive evaluation of the program's core success. This data does not include the number of participants who have become successful from the special needs educational training program. According to Day & Sammons (2016), indicates that “educational training programs can be a resultant success and the level of satisfaction in special needs classrooms”. It would be prudent to include more adept and accurate data representing the number of post-graduate teachers who have achieved the leadership level that the program promises success for special education teachers. Furthermore, the program should also identify the number of total educators who have enrolled in the special education training program and the percentage that has scaled their leadership to the community level. The program can either diverge into improving behavioral interventions in special needs for elementary, middle, and high schools. This program can also focus on other community-related training programs to ascertain its accuracy of promising reducing behavior in special education classroom settings.

Various strategies are put in place to ensure that the program eventually becomes a success after completing it. The first benchmark is that every participant will receive various behavioral intervention tools to apply within a special education classroom setup. This benchmark will ensure that they participate directly in practicing with guidance that will be taught in the classroom environment. This strategy is often referred to as actionable learning.

The second strategy involves an actionable project, which requires educators under the training program identify their environmental issues. They can use this knowledge they gain to apply to their communities directly. In this case, the core KPI would be to identify any behavior in the classroom setting, when it happened, and how many they can identify.

The third strategy is using personalized leadership support to provide immediate solutions. This strategy has been formulated and chosen because they are the most appropriate solutions for individual participates to become more effective in learning and leading their communities. The fourth strategy is to review the overall performance improvement after successfully implementing the interventions. In this case, the overall participates performance is expected to have either slightly or substantially improved. All the qualifying educators who undertake this training program will interact directly with experienced trainers including other teachers. They will facilitate the implementation of behavioral interventions from this training program, so it can be applied effectively to their classroom settings.

Part 2: Evaluation Tool Planning

It would be vital to consider the strategic strategies that have been put in place to ensure that the key indicators of the program are successful. Firstly, the program seeks to provide actionable training for K-12 special education teachers. The evaluation questions will be followed as: To what extent did the program present behavioral interventions-identifying resources for K-12 special education teachers? What was the specific type of actionable interventions identification method used? The second one will evaluate the strategies used in special education. This strategy intends to ensure that the participants acquire the skills needed. The related question would include to what extent did the eventual teachers became successful in maintaining entitled to apply what they learned (Giancola, 2014)? The third evaluative question will include how many illustrations or what percentage of the total number of special needs learners experience behavioral learning difficulties? The fourth criteria will explore the level of connections between the K-12 graduates and the honorees after graduation to assess these educators continual growth. Lastly, the evaluation tool will consider how often the graduates have identified community training program or issues at worked to continue their training program.

The type of criteria used in the evaluation tool will easily follow attempts to answer the questions above with some yes or no responses. For instance, the first criteria will examine how often educators were presented with tools such as intervention models and tech-related models. These criteria will also assess how educators used these models to identify their current special educational needs, and the participants will also include past teachers and administrators. The second one will examine the school’s interventions records to evaluate how successful they have been handling interventions in special education (Adams & Miskell, 2016). The third will be to identify the number of intervention instances that the K-12 special education teachers have worked on after fulfilling the intervention. This analysis will determine the extent to which the program has impacted their learning and their immediate communities. The participants will include post-graduate teachers and not necessarily those who have become teachers. The last criteria will consist of direct connections to real-world teachers that the graduates have made after graduation.

It would be necessary to influence a few people to accept getting into the training program. The first stakeholders will be the administrators, board members and the superintendent. These stakeholders will evaluate the effectiveness of the program and make appropriate recommendations for improvements. Convincing the administration, board members and immediate superintendent will help re-evaluate the program's effectiveness and its future revision or the lack of it thereof, by realigning their vision, mission goals, and objectives (Gurley et al., 2015).

The second strategy will be the participation of various special educations participants to ascertain how the interventions have helped them. Involving teachers, administrators, parents, students, and the community in an evaluation and feedback provision process affects brand recognition, either positively or negatively. In this regard, it is bound to create long-lasting debates on the program's effectiveness by increasing trust (Covey, 2009). When such widespread discussions occur, there is an extensive transformation that a program for teachers can be put into practice (Peurach et al., 2016). The last effective strategies will be to examine the level of success of the interventions. This approach will ensure a direct comparison of the program's benefits, achievements, and losses, thereby leading to new participants for future attractions into the training program.

References

Adams, C. M., & Miskell, R. C. (2016). Teacher trust in district administration: A promising link of inquiry. Journal of Leadership for Effective and Equitable Organizations, 52(4), 1-32. doi: 10.1177/0013161X16652202

Covey, S. (2009). How the best teachers build trust. Leadership Now. Retrieved from http://www.leadershipnow.com/CoveyOnTrust.html

Day, C., Gu, Q, & Sammons, P. (2016). The impact of leadership on teacher outcomes: How successful school teachers use transformational and instructional strategies to make a difference. Educational Administration Quarterly, 52(2), 221-258. doi:10.1177/0013161X15616863

Giancola, S. (2014). Evaluation matters: Getting the information you need from your evaluation. U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved from https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/oese/sst/evaluationmatters.pdf

Gurley, D.K., Peters, G.B., & Collins, L. (2015). Mission, vision, values, and goals: An exploration of key organizational statements and daily practice in schools. Journal of Educational Change, 16(2), 217-242. doi:10.1007/s10833-014-9229-x

Peurach, D.J., Glazer, J.L, Winchell L. S. (2016). The developmental evaluation of school improvement networks. Educational Policy, 30(4), 606-648. doi:10.1177/0895904814557592