Texas Deaf Ed Reform
- View Texas Education Code related to programs for deaf and hard of hearing students.
September 2011 Update: The most recent work of TNAC includes a side by side, work-in-progress document (Program Excellence Indicators 4-2011 - TNAC) relating the State Performance Plan Indicators, the State Deaf Education Results Statements, and Issues/Concerns/Needs identified by stakeholders statewide organized under the National Agenda Goals. From this document, TNAC is working toward the completion of a Companion Document to the Texas Deaf Education Plan based on the National Agenda. Our goal is that these two documents, in tandem, will be a Texas version of the National Agenda, comprehensive in scope and capable of helping to identify areas of improvement and generating specific action plans.
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Introduction to the Texas National Agenda Collaborative
The following is a history of the efforts for deaf education reform in the state of Texas. The Texas National Agenda Collaborative (TNAC) grew out of these reform efforts and is based on the goals of the National Agenda. The work of TNAC has been encouraged by our team’s participation in the State Leaders’ Deaf Education Summits. TNAC is made up of individuals representing the Deaf community, parents, advocates, educators, early interventionists, rehabilitation, post-secondary education, interpreters, and other stakeholders in the education of deaf and hard of hearing children.
Contents:
- Beginnings Texas State Reform and TNAC
- History of Implementing the National Agenda in Texas
- Background Documents (Hot Topics, 14 Areas for Reform, Indicators & Descriptors)
- State Plan for Deaf Education
- Ongoing Efforts
- TNAC Membership
Texas State Reform
After the first State Leaders Summit on Deaf Education in Atlanta in the spring of 2005, the Texas representatives met with Texas Deaf Education Administrators at their biennial conference in the following summer. The National Agenda was well received and these supervisors indicated their enthusiastic support of reform in deaf education by immediately creating a list of “Hot Topics” for the state of Texas. Many of these topics were carried forward in a stakeholders group that began work in March of 2006 to draft a revision of the State Plan for Deaf Education. This document is a requirement of the state education agency and is described in education code as a “comprehensive statewide plan for educational services for students who are deaf or hard of hearing.” The original goal was to align the Texas State Plan with the National Agenda. The initial work of the stakeholders identified fourteen areas for reform (see table below) and submitted these for consideration to the Texas Education Agency (TEA) Policy Team in the Division of IDEA Coordination. The TEA Policy Team separated these suggestions for reform into indicators and descriptors. They also determined that the indicators would be only those items that can be quantitatively measured using mechanisms already in place for current data collection. These four result statements and indicators are among those required by the State Performance Plan for Special Education mandated by IDEA 2004 and are posted on the TEA website as the Texas State Plan for Deaf Education 2007. http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index2.aspx?id=2147497727
AREAS OF IMPROVEMENT- 02-Mar-06 1. Communication Access |
The TEA Policy Team suggested the remaining reform submissions of the State Plan stakeholders were better described as descriptors or best practices and therefore these do not appear in the State Plan for Deaf Education. Many of the stakeholders believe that these descriptors are critical considerations that must be preserved to accomplish the scope of reform suggested by the National Agenda. Family involvement, the concerns related to lowfunctioning deaf students, and a myriad of other goals were labeled as descriptors and therefore not included in the State Plan. Consequently, the Texas National Agenda Collaborative has committed to creating a more comprehensive state plan that captures guidelines and standards that would direct the state’s implementation of the National Agenda.
Ongoing Efforts
The Texas National Agenda Collaborative continues to meet four times per year and at its Oct. 2007 meeting identified this year’s priority to be the writing of a comprehensive state plan for deaf education that is truly reflective of the goals of the National Agenda and of the concerns of the state plan stakeholders. Another function of the quarterly TNAC meetings is networking and sharing of information across agencies as well as exploration of potential collaborative projects.
Download the TNAC Members Contact List.