Photo: Rhode Island Governor (and Caped Crusader) Gina Raimondo. Source: Governor Raimondo’s Flickr account.

Thanks to the smart use of best practices, Rhode Island is leading the way on special education practices in pre-K.

We recently learned more about Rhode Island’s efforts from Lisa Nugent, the state’s Coordinator of Early Learning.

Rhode Island is a good example of success because it got a late start on building its pre-K system. But this delay enabled Rhode Island to learn from other states and choose effective strategies for serving young children.

Like Massachusetts, Rhode Island has a mixed delivery model. Children can attend programs in schools, centers, and through Head Start.

Across these settings, one of the state’s priorities is providing high-quality special education in early childhood settings through the Itinerant Early Childhood Special Education (IECSE) program.

“Teachers in the program, who have special education certification, would go to local pre-schools and work with teachers there to help children with disabilities,” The Westerly Sun reports.

And as the Rhode Island Department of Education explains:

IECSE “is a research based service delivery model for providing special education services to young children with disabilities within general early childhood environments.”

In other programs, children would be bused to get access to the services they need. But in Rhode Island, it’s the teachers who are itinerant, traveling around to bring needed services and supports to children. This lets children stay in the classrooms their parents have chosen and participate in activities with their peers. Any extra help they need is embedded around them.

“The goal is to prevent students from falling behind so they enter kindergarten on grade level,” Westerly High School Principal Michael Hobin tells the Sun.

Rhode Island deliberately chose not to bus children who are enrolled in state-funded preschool programs. The goal is to keep young children in one setting where they have fewer transitions and only have to learn one set of rules.

The approach also cuts out the costs and logistics of providing children with transportation.

And as a parent brochure explains, the program also provides “Ongoing and scheduled collaborative meetings between the special education and the early childhood teacher” as well as any required “professional development for the early childhood teacher.”

To build a broad knowledge base among early childhood providers, Rhode Island invites the staff of school districts and early childhood partners “who have previously or are currently participating” in professional development or technical assistance programs to attend monthly Community of Practice Meetings. The meeting topics include the biology of stress, family engagement, and monitoring children’s progress.

Rhode Island’s efforts stand on a strong base. Last year, the state met all 10 of the quality benchmarks established by NIEER, the National Institute of Early Education Research. And earlier this year, Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo announced that the her state had received a five-year, $27 million grant through the federal Preschool Development Grant Birth through Five (PDG B-5) program.

“Rhode Island is already a leader in early childhood education and development, and this grant will allow us to further support our youngest learners,” Raimondo said, adding, “I’m proud of our state’s commitment to giving the next generation a strong start, but we need do more. I look forward to working with my colleagues in the General Assembly to expand public Pre-K and ensure that every child has the opportunity to learn and grow.”

So keep an eye on Rhode Island. It promises to set an example for other states and communities that have mixed delivery systems and that want to strengthen partnerships among teachers in order to build high-quality special education programs for young children.