The purpose of this article is to focus specifically on professional development that is needed to ensure that preservice and in-service teachers are prepared to deliver intensive intervention to enhance reading outcomes of students in special education. Our aim is to provide recommendations to ensure that special educators are prepared to design and implement data-based individualization in the area of reading. We highlight what special educators need to know to implement data-based individualization and provide recommendations for improving professional development using findings from federally funded projects. Implications for practice and next steps for research and policy are provided.
This article discusses the story of administrators in a school district � whose plan for school reorganization was undermined by hostile community reaction. Their struggle teaches a lesson about the importance of including various levels of the school community in the process of imple menting change and offers useful information to future school reformers who might be engaged in similar efforts. Nam es of schools and individuals have been changed to ensure confi dentiality. Developmental Change Contemporary educational literature abounds in such phrases as "shared de cision making," "common values," and "community participation." Although this vocabulary is commonplace in many practitioners' conversations, these collaborative concepts challenge the professional autonomy of many admin istrators who are accustomed to making decisions, developing action plans, and implementing change independently. A meaningful shift from au tonomous to collaborative problem solving involves a sometimes painful transition to developmental change. Duffy (1996) states that developmental change is change that evolves in a kind and gentle manner that involves divergent groups in the planning stage and allows for adjustment to change over a period of time. Although this process can lead to long-term change, developmental change involves a costly investment of time and energy. School administrators practiced in developmental change solicit represen tatives from various levels of the educational community to participate in the earliest stages of planning for a given change effort. These administrators strive to include external partners or "critical friends" (that is, parents, com munity, and school board members) who can exert complementary forces on the change in question (Stoll & Fink, 1996). Costa and Kallick (1993) de scribe a critical friend as a trusted person who asks provocative questions, provides data to be examined through another lens, and offers critique of a person's work as a friend. A critical 64
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