National Center for Systemic Improvement
Strengthening State Capacity to Realize Positive Outcomes for Students with Disabilities
This user guide is primarily designed to assist facilitators in developing learning sessions that support the implementation of the principles, tools, and strategies presented in the Leading by Convening suite of modules. The guide provides suggestions for how to use the modules, how to prepare for learning sessions, and includes a module outline for each of the five modules. The module outline can be used to structure the learning session. Each outline contains an overview of the module and each individual lesson, includes additional learning activities, and provides opportunities for reflection.
This module provides an overview of the IDEA Partnership blueprint on Leading by Convening. It outlines the essential habits that leaders need to cultivate to build allied relationship across groups. The tools and learning activities help groups identify their values and shared interests, and work together to improve practice.
This module helps us understand and develop a habit of practice in which diverse groups of people come together around shared issues or problems of practice that they want to resolve. This habit is called Coalescing Around Issues. Individuals with differing backgrounds and experiences share, learn, and act together to achieve their common goal.
This module helps us understand and develop a habit of practice that ensures the right mix of stakeholders is identified and participates in solving a shared issue or problem. This habit is called Ensuring Relevant Participation. Ensuring relevant participation encourages leaders to develop activities that are important and relevant to stakeholders.
This module helps us understand and develop a habit of practice that focuses on the work being accomplished and the interactions between and among stakeholders. This habit is called Doing the Work Together. This module includes tools and messages from earlier modules to help the user understand how the three habits of interaction are applied together.
This module helps us understand the changes that we are making to ourselves and to our practice when leading by convening. It outlines skills that can be developed by consciously thinking and acting in ways that cultivate the technical and adaptive aspects of leading change. The resources help groups learn to listen, value other perspectives, and practice shared leadership.
Sustainable change depends on having people with the problem internalize the change. Heifetz and Linsky, 2002
The IDEA Partners know the value of this statement. In years of bringing people together, we have focused on both the technical and the human side of change. The work of many researchers have guided us, especially the common sense approach of Heifetz and Lipsky. You will find their influence throughout our site. Visit the People to People Collection to learn more about the human side of change and learn how we have operationalized it in our Blueprint: The Partnership Way.
Coalescing Around Issues Tools
Ensuring Relevant Participation Tools
Doing the Work Together Tools
Bringing It All Together Tools
Meetings to Co-Create Tools
Use the Leading by Convening (LbC) framework to engage stakeholders in improving results for infants, toddlers, children and youth with disabilities.
Today’s leaders face urgent challenges with short timelines for producing positive outcomes. Effective leaders understand the need to cultivate habits that widen their area of impact across roles and levels of the system to support sustainable change.
Learn more about how to apply these essential habits — coalescing around issues, ensuring relevant participation, and doing the work together — to help achieve state goals.
These self-study modules introduce and explore the LbC habits of interaction that can help state leaders engage stakeholders as allies to reach shared goals.
Each module provides several short, easy-to-access lessons that can be applied to state work.
LbC rubrics describe the behaviors observed within systems, and exhibited by people as they build authentic engagement. They describe different ways that groups can contribute in meaningful ways to add value to state work. The rubrics provide a useful way to assess interaction and deepening levels of engagement.
Leaders have used the LbC Blueprint, tools, and learning activities with success across state and local settings.
Working together for more than 15 years to move research and policy into practice, IDEA partners agreed that collective influence has the potential to change outcomes. Learn how to engage decision-makers, practitioners, and consumers in ways that lead to unified action.
Use the latest LbC strategies and tools to deepen stakeholder engagement around the State Systemic Improvement Plan. Learn more about the strategies states employed and customize them for your use.
State technical assistance (TA) facilitators or NCSI Communication and Collaboration team members can help state leaders to structure effective stakeholder interaction.
Contact a TA facilitator or Ask the NCSI to explore customized TA options.
State agencies (the state educational agency, SEA under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act [IDEA] Part B Section 611 and Section 619, and the lead agency, LA under IDEA Part C) must have a general supervision system in place to (1) improve educational results and functional outcomes for infants and toddlers with disabilities and their families and children with disabilities and (2) ensure that local education agencies (LEAs) and early intervening services (EIS) programs and providers meet the requirements under the IDEA. State general supervision systems must be reasonably designed to meet these goals. A key responsibility of state general supervision systems is the identification, correction, and reporting of noncompliance. This guide focuses on the steps involved in these processes and is based on the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) QA 23-01: State General Supervision Responsibilities Under Parts B and C of the IDEA.
CIFR and NCSI provided expertise, dedicated time, and peer learning opportunities to help 18 states develop rigorous IDEA fiscal procedures. This impact story explains how this happened and the impact on SEAs from attending the workshop.
