About NDPC-SD

Who We Are

The National Dropout Prevention Center for Students with Disabilities (NDPC-SD) was established in January 2004 to support states in assisting local education agencies to increase school completion rates and decrease dropout rates among students with disabilities. NDPC-SD is funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) and is part of OSEP’s Technical Assistance and Dissemination Network designed to support the national implementation of provisions of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

Our Focus

The mission of the NDPC-SD is to build the capacity of states to provide local education agencies with enhanced services related to dropout prevention and re-entry programs to increase school completion rates for students with disabilities. In keeping with our mission, the primary focus of our Center is threefold:

1. to synthesize research and practice into actionable information that can be readily used by states to develop and/or enhance dropout prevention programs for students with disabilities. This actionable information includes, but is not limited to, producing research-based manuscripts, information monographs, and a toolkit of evidenced-based strategies to serve as technical assistance documents for administrators, educators, policymakers, and other service providers in designing dropout prevention programs.
2. to provide effective technical assistance and dissemination activities to "scale up" the use of research-validated programs and interventions in dropout prevention. We believe effective technical assistance to be a systematic process for transferring knowledge about dropout prevention research, practices that work, and policies to assist states and their stakeholders to accomplish goals and plans for systems change in reducing dropout rates and improving school completion rates for students with disabilities. Part of our agenda will consist of translating work being done in other venues into actionable information that states can readily use.
3. to expand state and local practices through intense technical assistance and coaching, which will lead to the development of model sites—exemplars that others can replicate.

    

Our Broader Role In Linking People With Knowledge

To fulfill our mission to build the capacity of states to provide local education agencies with enhanced services related to dropout prevention and re-entry programs, we are committed to making the knowledge base on dropout prevention for students with disabilities widely available. The Center uses a broad array of methods to disseminate information including:

• producing research-based manuscripts, information monographs, and evidenced-based strategies to serve as technical assistance documents for administrators, educators, policymakers, and other service providers;
• maintaining a Web site with evidence-based practices and ongoing research related to specific implementation issues, searchable databases, opportunities to participate in the dropout prevention/ special needs community through interactive features and electronic discussion lists;
• hosting conferences, forums, and institutes on dropout prevention programs and strategies to keep students with disabilities in school; and
• publishing NDPC-SD's electronic newsletter for the dropout prevention/special needs community.