Our Partners
NCSI partners are nationally recognized leaders in technical assistance, research, and knowledge utilization, particularly in the special education field. NCSI contributes expertise and experience in evidence-based practices, stakeholder engagement, and long-standing positive relationships with national and regional leaders.
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WestEd is a nonprofit research, development, and service agency working at the national, state, and local levels to promote excellence, achieve equity, and improve learning for children, youth, and adults.
NCSI is housed within WestEd’s Center for Prevention & Early Intervention, which has more than twenty years of experience providing state-level technical assistance to improve the capacity of local early care and education providers.
In addition to NCSI, WestEd operates the Center for IDEA Fiscal Reporting, three regional Comprehensive Centers (Mid-Atlantic, West, and Southwest), two national Content Centers (Center on School Turnaround and Center on Standards & Assessment Implementation), and the Regional Educational Laboratory West.
WestEd also serves as a partner with the Regional Educational Laboratory Northeast & Islands, serving the Northeast, Puerto Rico, and the United States Virgin Islands; and with the Regional Educational Laboratory Appalachia, serving Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.
WestEd’s previous special education work included successfully operating the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP)–funded Northeast Regional Resource Center (1999–2014).
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American Institutes for Research (AIR) is one of the world’s largest behavioral and social science research and evaluation organizations. AIR operates the OSEP-funded National Center on Intensive Intervention and formerly housed the National Center on Response to Intervention.
AIR has provided high-quality, customized professional development and other technical assistance in each of the 60 federal states and territories as well as in several hundred school districts in urban, suburban, and rural areas.
AIR’s experience, research, and use of evidence-based practices to improve results for struggling students contributes to NCSI’s ability to provide high-quality technical assistance to states as they are developing and implementing SSIPs to improve results.
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National Association of State Directors of Special Education (NASDSE) is a nonprofit organization that has affiliated special education leaders across the country for more than 75 years. As the national professional organization for State Special Education Directors,
As the national professional organization for State Special Education Directors, NASDSE is uniquely positioned to represent and address states’ interests and needs for technical assistance as they work to develop and engage stakeholders in creating and implementing SSIPs.
NASDSE also has extensive experience integrating research, policy, and practice, including over 15 years of operating the IDEA Partnership, an affiliation of more than 50 national professional and family groups that bridge special and general education.
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The Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk (MCPER), University of Texas at Austin, is NCSI’s external evaluator. MCPER has a large portfolio of research and evaluation work in special education, including evaluating OSEP-funded Technical Assistance and Dissemination projects.
NCSI evaluations provide timely and actionable feedback for continuous improvement. These evaluations also measure the extent to which NCSI builds state capacity in areas of critical need and contribute to the field’s knowledge base on how states should best enact systemic improvement.
Meet NCSI MCPER Leadership Team Members
NCSI Evaluation Brief: This brief describes the evaluation activities that will be undertaken by the Meadows Center as part of the NCSI Evaluation Plan.
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Parent and Family Center Partners represent the families of students with and without disabilities across the country.
• Family Network on Disabilities – Florida
• Parent to Parent of Georgia
• Region D PTAC – Region D Parent Technical Assistance Center
• South Dakota Parent Connection
• Statewide Parent Advocacy Network – NJ
