SRI International Working to Improve Programs for Young Children with Disabilities; Researchers to Develop System for Measuring Outcomes of Programs for Young Children and Their Families.

MENLO PARK, Calif. -- SRI International, an independent nonprofit research and development organization today announced the completion of several major milestones in the five-year Early Childhood Outcomes (ECO) Center project, funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP). The ECO Center provides assistance to the federal government and state agencies for building systems that measure the outcomes of programs serving infants, toddlers, and preschoolers with disabilities and their families.

As part of the initial phases of the project, the ECO Center developed a proposed set of child and family program outcomes for young children with disabilities. An "outcome" is a benefit experienced as a result of services received. The family and child outcomes, available at www.the-eco-center.org, were developed through a year-long consensus-building process that involved input from and review by numerous stakeholders, including federal, state, and local policy-makers and administrators, local providers, family members of children with disabilities, and researchers.

"There are a wide variety of early intervention and early childhood special education programs serving young children with disabilities and their families," said Kathleen Hebbeler, Ph.D., SRI International program manager. "The ECO Center was funded to undertake a series of activities that ultimately will result in consistent and high-quality data on child and family outcomes. Such data can be used to inform policy-makers, program directors, and others. Initial steps included the convening of numerous stakeholder groups, resulting in the current version of desired family and child outcomes."

As the next step in the process toward building state and national accountability systems, the ECO Center recently submitted recommendations to OSEP specifying the kind of child and family outcome data the federal government should request from states. These recommendations were developed through discussions with stakeholders and can be viewed on the ECO Center Web site.

Greater Accountability Serves Children's Needs

The push for greater accountability has affected all public service systems and has led to pressure for program outcome data regarding young children with special needs. Although these programs are extremely popular with families, there is very little systematic data to document the value of the investment made in these programs.

The ECO Center focuses on developing data on outcomes for young children with disabilities that can be aggregated at the national level, and on using data to document program effects and improve programs at the state and local levels.

The next stage calls for ECO Center to work with OSEP and the states to develop an approach for measuring outcomes. The ECO Center already is working closely with several key states to develop the measurement system.

In fall 2004, OSEP funded the ECO Center through SRI International to undertake three additional projects: guiding the development of state-level outcome measurement systems in Florida, Colorado, and Hawaii. Initial work related to measurement and implementation is focusing on programs in these and a few other states before the outcome measurement systems are unveiled nationally.

The U.S. Department of Education's Office of Special Education Programs is dedicated to improving results for infants, toddlers, children and youth with disabilities in the age range of birth through 21 by providing leadership and financial support to assist states and local districts. OSEP recently announced the type of outcome data states will be expected to submit as part of their required reporting. The ECO Center will be providing guidance to states on how best to meet these reporting requirements.

The ECO Center is a collaborative project involving researchers from SRI International, Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, the Juniper Gardens Children's Project at the University of Kansas, the National Association of State Directors of Special Education, and the University of Connecticut Health Center.

About SRI International

Silicon Valley-based SRI International (www.sri.com) is one of the world's leading independent research and technology development organizations. Founded as Stanford Research Institute in 1946, SRI has been meeting the strategic needs of clients for nearly 60 years. The nonprofit research institute performs client-sponsored research and development for government agencies, commercial businesses and nonprofit foundations. In addition to conducting contract R&D, SRI licenses its technologies, forms strategic partnerships and creates spin-off companies.