State of Minnesota, Division of Special Education
The Client: State of Minnesota, Division of Special Education
The Issue: The U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), required a rigorous outcome-based evaluation as a requirement of their five-year State Improvement Grant (SIG) award to the State of Minnesota to address three areas of systems change: access to general education, multi-agency planning and coordination, and critical staff shortages and training needs.
The Solution: Lange Research and Evaluation provided a rigorous evaluation system for the SIG, which brought a higher degree of accountability to the Minnesota Department of Education and an emphasis on outcomes generated. The evaluation provided not only the required evidence of outcome-based results, but also formative evaluation recommendations based on sophisticated evaluation databases and reports developed by Lange Research and Evaluation. OSEP awarded the State of Minnesota a follow-up multi-year SIG contract and the state once again selected Lange Research and Evaluation to conduct the required evaluation.