This website, http://www.ideapartnership.org/ reflects the collaborative work of more than 55 national organizations, as well as technical assistance providers, and State and local organizations and agencies.  Together with the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), the Partner organizations form a community with the potential to transform the way we work.

Information, resources, and services available are highlighted below:

Dialogue Guides
Dialogue Guides are models for conducting interactive discussions across stakeholders in States and districts. These packages make new use of dependable and publicly available information, thus reducing the need to produce new papers. Each Guide circulates a common set of source materials and suggested procedures for involving various audiences in States and districts. In this manner, stakeholders (families, practitioners, professional associations, professors, policymakers, legislators) all over the country can begin interacting in new ways around implementation issues. 

Also in collaboration with the partners, additional Dialogue Guides are being written for your use. The current list of documents for Dialogue Guides development was selected by the partners. As other documents are selected, new Guides will be developed to communicate the additional information.

The partnership is interested in receiving your suggestions to make their work more responsive to your needs.

Community of Practice
A Community of Practice (CoP)   is quite simply a group of people that agree to interact regularly to solve a persistent problem or improve practice in an area that is important to them.  CoPs exist in many forms, some large in scale and dealing with complex problems, others small in scale and focused on a problem at a very specific level.  CoPs are a way of working that invite the groups that have a stake in an issue to be a part of the problem solving.  The CoP develops its own schedule or "rhythm" for interacting and creates mechanisms to communicate that give access to all the members.

As partner organizations work with each other and with States, they identify shared interests.  Shared interests are powerful motivators that can move people to come together for extraordinary results.  When stakeholders become allies with state agencies to improve the existing system, great things become possible.  In the CoP, members learn from each other and take action together in coordinated ways. IDEA Partner organizations choose to participate in a CoP based on the value it can add their organization.  

Collaboration on Issues
Cross-stakeholder work around issues is one of the major strategies for the IDEA Partnership. The emphasis in the work is on doing things that add value together.  

Several workgroups that are composed of representatives from national organizations are working together to create materials and guides that help their constituents to use the abundance of products that have been developed by federal technical assistance investments.  

A new section of the IDEA Partnership website will feature links to the collection of materials, customizable PowerPoint presentations, interactive dialogue guides, a compendium of available materials and much more.  All of the materials have been stakeholder rated and collaboratively developed.  

Collaboration with Groups
Acting on its goals of promoting collaboration, the IDEA Partnership pursues work across groups in two main ways:  working with partner organizations around their shared interests and issues and working with national issue centers to engage the partner organizations.

Topics Database
The Topics Database section contains information on a variety of topics and related issues regarding the implementation of NCLB, IDEA and other legislation. The section organizes the information by first providing the "big picture" of each topic and then sub-topics and issues from which you can choose to find out more information.

This approach provides the legislative context in which to understand each topic, as well as the important interrelationships to other topics in other laws that impact students and youth with disabilities. After choosing an issue, you can view information from Federal Sources and IDEA Partnership Organizations, including vetted documents from the U.S. Department of Education and resource documents from the fifty-five IDEA Partnership organizations.

Results for Kids: Resources
This library of online information responds to several challenges and opportunities inherent in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA 2004) and the No Child Left Behind Act:

(a) early intervening to prevent learning difficulties from leading to academic failure;
(b) response to intervention to determine progress and adjust instruction;
(c) the need for instruction that works for culturally and/or linguistically diverse students;
(d) the imperative to reduce referrals of children who do not need special education;
(e) the impetus to increase success for all students in the general curriculum;
(f) the contribution of non-academic services to improving academic performance; and
(g) "Raising Achievement: A New Path for No Child Left Behind," a 2005 initiative of the
      U.S. Department of Education.

Therefore, the RKR library centers largely on models, curricula, practices, policy, research, and resources generated in general education and related arenas -- to the extent that these can be applied to improve outcomes for all learners.  Because special education has developed ways to make general education more applicable to struggling learners, results of research and development from some of these sources are included.  

Many Voices: Citations from Web-Based Journals & Other Periodicals
This is a collection of citations and links to selected articles from a large number of professional journals and other substantive publications that are available online.  It will give you easy access to the voices of a broad range of organizations, centers, and institutions concerned with general education, special education, related disciplines, education of culturally and linguistically diverse students, and many other arenas.

 Articles are reviewed for their relevance to systems change, administration, policy, and practice in terms of the No Child Left Behind Act and  IDEA  and related concerns of policymakers, administrators, practitioners, and families.  The vast majority of citations are linked to full texts.  But there are some that lead to abstracts and information on acquiring the text. No article is dated earlier than 2000.

Your Voice
This section of the partnership website is designed to let you hear the voice of others and help you find your own voice.  In YOUR VOICE you can choose a topic from the drop down menu and share your insights.  You can identify emerging issues, recommend resources and/or share a promising practice. http://ideapartnership.org/page.cfm?pageid=9