| For Immediate Release
April 24, 2006
Illinois State Board of Education announces Illinois
ASPIRE
Four regional centers to carry
work forward
SPRINGFIELD – The Illinois State Board of Education
is pleased to announce Illinois ASPIRE, the Illinois Alliance
for School-based Problem-solving and Intervention Resources
in Education. This new training and technical assistance
project is funded through a five-year State Personnel
Grant under Part D of the Individuals with Disabilities
Education Improvement Act of 2004. The primary goal of
Illinois ASPIRE is to establish and implement a coordinated,
regionalized system of personnel development that will
increase the capacity of school systems to provide early
intervening services, aligned with the general education
curriculum, to at-risk students and students with disabilities,
as measured by improved student progress and performance.
Illinois ASPIRE will be carried out through four regional
centers—one in the city of Chicago and one each
in the northern, central, and southern parts of the state.
To establish the Illinois ASPIRE Centers, ISBE issued
a Request for Proposals in October 2005 and applications
were due in December 2005. The Illinois ASPIRE Center
grants were awarded in February 2006, and the entities
that will administer each of the four centers are:
Illinois ASPIRE – Chicago: Chicago Public Schools,
District 299
Illinois ASPIRE – North: Northern Suburban Special
Education District
Illinois ASPIRE – Central: Peoria Regional Office
of Education #48
Illinois ASPIRE – South: Southern Illinois University
– Edwardsville & Carbondale
All Illinois ASPIRE Centers will provide standardized
professional development and technical assistance to educators
and parents in their geographic regions, focused on the
following topics:
- Designing and providing early intervening services,
with an emphasis on reading instruction that is scientifically
research-based;
- Student progress monitoring;
- Response to intervention; and
- Standards-aligned instruction and assessment.
A unique aspect of Illinois ASPIRE is the fact that it
is designed to integrate components of the Illinois Flexible
Service Delivery System, Illinois Reading First and the
Standards-Aligned Classroom Initiative.
To facilitate school- and student-level data collection
and evaluation, school demonstration/data collection sites
will be identified within each region through a Request
for Proposals process. These sites will receive training
and technical assistance services from the Illinois ASPIRE
Centers.
For more information about Illinois ASPIRE, the regional
centers and applying to serve as a demonstration/data
collection site, please visit the ISBE website at http://www.isbe.net/spec-ed/html/illinois-aspire.htm
or contact Kathryn Cox in the Special Education Services
Division at 217-782-5589 or kcox@isbe.net.
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