“SUMMARY: The Department of Education is issuing a notice inviting applications for new awards for fiscal year (FY) 2017 for Personnel Development to Improve Services and Results for Children with Disabilities—Early Childhood Personnel Center, Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) Number 84.325B.
Funding Opportunity Description
Purpose of Program: The purposes of this program are to: (1) Help address State-identified needs for personnel preparation in special education, early intervention, related services, and regular education to work with children, including infants and toddlers, with disabilities; and (2) ensure that those personnel have the necessary skills and knowledge, derived from practices that have been determined through scientifically based research and experience, to be successful in serving those children.
Background: All infants, toddlers, and preschool children (young children) with disabilities should have access to high-quality early childhood programs (U.S. Departments of Education and Health and Human Services, 2015). To achieve this, it is essential to have an early childhood workforce that is able to provide to young children with disabilities and their families the specialized services and supports necessary for active participation and ongoing learning in early childhood programs. Research suggests, though, that much of the current early childhood workforce is not adequately prepared to do this (National Governor’s Association, 2010), as does a survey of IDEA Part C and Part B, section 619 coordinators (Bruder, 2010). To address this challenge, IDEA Part C (section 635) requires the State lead agency to develop and support highquality, coordinated comprehensive systems of personnel development (CSPD) and IDEA Part B (section 612) requires the State educational agency (SEA) to ensure that personnel are appropriately and adequately prepared and trained. State IDEA Part C and Part B, section 619 coordinators have indicated that their greatest technical assistance (TA) need is in implementing a high-quality, cross-sector CSPD (Lucas et al., 2015).”
Excerpted from / Vol. 82, No. 74 / Wednesday, April 19, 2017 / Notices