Center Director Interview, Center Inventory and Request Form

Westat FINAL DRAFT—9/2/08

Appendix D

Center Inventory of Products and Services

Center Inventory for the Personnel Development Program Evaluation

Dear Center Director,

Enclosed are a project inventory form and instructions to be used to compile a complete list of your center’s products and services during its funding from the U.S. Department of Education’s Personnel Development Program to Improve Services and Results for Children with Disabilities.

The evaluation will use the completed product and service inventory to select a sample of products and services for review by an expert panel. Please designate up to 10% (or at least 3 if fewer than 30 items are listed) products or services that you believe best represent the work of your center; these projects will be included among the sample of projects to be reviewed by the expert panel. This panel will rate nominated and sampled projects on several dimensions, such as quality, relevance, and usefulness.

Within 10 days after receiving this inventory, a member of the study team will contact you to see if you have any questions about how to complete the inventory. At that time, the study team member will send you an electronic version of the inventory, if you prefer.

We ask that you complete the inventory by MM/DD/YY. If completing a paper copy, please return the completed inventory form in the self-addressed, stamped envelope provided. If completing an electronic copy, please return to elainecarlson@westat.com.

Once we receive the completed inventory, a member of the study team will contact you

again within one month to discuss the list of products/services you have submitted and to ask you a few more questions about your center, and the product and services you have developed.

This collection of information is this evaluation is authorized by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) under Title I, Part D, Subpart 2, Section 663(c)(9); and Section 664(b)(2)(C). For this data collection, Westat will report results for each Center. Data about your Center will be available to the Department of Education and may appear in evaluation reports.

Thank you for support of the evaluation of the Personnel Development Program to Improve Services and Results for Children with Disabilities.

Instructions for Completing the Inventory

I. Background

The U.S. Department of Education’s (ED) National Center for Education Evaluation is conducting a study of the Personnel Development Program to Improve Services and Results for Children with Disabilities. All National Centers funded between 2001 and 2007 are being asked to participate in this important evaluation being carried out by Westat and its subcontractors, the Council for Exceptional Children and Compass Consulting. For the evaluation, we will select a sample of products and services developed by your center for expert review, including several products or services nominated by you as your center’s “signature works.”

II. Identifying Products and Services for Inclusion in the Inventory

The unit of analysis for the expert review panels will be the product or service. For the purposes of this inventory, a “product” or “service” will ordinarily comprise a group of closely related activities designed to achieve a specific outcome for a specific audience. The inventory should include all of the products or services developed or delivered by your National Center, including those developed or delivered in collaboration with other entities, during the grant period. It is critical that the inventory reflect all the products and services attributable to your center during the grant period.

Each product or service entered in the inventory should be a complete and coherent whole. Because each product or service listed in the inventory could potentially be sampled for expert panel review, each product or service shown as an entry (or row) in the inventory form should be complete and coherent—that is, works that can be understood and rated on their own by expert panel members who may not know anything about other aspects of the center’s work.

Avoid listing products or services separately in the inventory if they cannot be understood or evaluated without information about related products or services.

For example, the first example product in the sample inventory form at the end of the packet is a training video. This video required extensive planning (e.g., needs assessment, pilot testing the video prototype) and follow-up activities (e.g., providing a “helpline” in case users had questions about the content of the video). These planning and follow-up activities would be very difficult for a panel to rate in the absence of information about the video product itself. Therefore, the center should list these planning and follow-up activities and the product itself as a single work (one row) on the inventory form. Each phase of the project—planning, the product itself, and follow up—should then be described briefly in the “activities and deliverables” column. Likewise, in example two, for the Master’s coursework in emotional disturbance, the planning activities and all 20 syllabi for the courses should be listed as a single product.

III. What Not to Include in the Inventory

Products and services that were not intended to be used directly by or while assisting entities outside your Center should not be included on the inventory. Such things would include but not necessarily be limited to: (1) agendas, notes, or summaries from internal meetings; (2) reports or other products (such as annual performance reports) prepared for administrative purposes; and (3) materials prepared for your own grant evaluator.

IV. Identifying Signature Works

After listing all your products and services in the inventory, please go back and designate which products you consider to be “signature works.” For the purposes of the study, signature works are defined as products or services that meet at least of the following criteria:

• Prominent in terms of the proportion of the National Center’s effort;

• Exclusively or nearly exclusively a product of the National Center’s efforts;

• Predominately supported by Personnel Development Program grant funds; and

• Meets a critical need in the field or to the class of customers served.

V. Completing the Inventory Form

Centers may use an electronic or paper version of the attached form to complete their inventory. You will receive an electronic version of the form in Word, after a member of the study team has spoken with you to review the form and answer any questions you may have. Add rows to the table as needed.

Column A Number. Assign a sequential number to each product or service. You may want to complete this step last, after you have listed all the products/services.

Column B Signature Work. Indicate signature works by placing an X in this column (up to 10%, but at least 3 if fewer than 30 items have been listed).

Column C Name Assign a descriptive name to each product or service.

Column D. Description – Provide a brief description of the product or service.

Column E. Medium - Indicate the medium or media, e.g., in-person training, video, research paper.

Column F. Audience or Customer - Indicate the intended audiences or customers for the product or service.

Column G. Purpose - Indicate the intended purpose of the product or service.

Column H. Activities and Deliverables - Provide a description of the activities and deliverables, including planning and follow-up activities, as well as the product or service itself. If the product or service comprises multiple activities or documents, list them here. For services, include location and type(s) of participants.

Column I. Start Date - Indicate the month and year in which the product or service became available.

Column J. End Date - Indicate the month and year in which the product or service stopped being available. Enter ‘ongoing’ if the product or service continues to be available.

Column K. Estimated Cost - Estimate the cost, in dollars, of developing and delivering the product or service. For example, if a particular product or service consumed approximately 50 percent of the Center’s resources for the first year of the grant, multiply 0.5 by Year 1 expenditures. Include overhead costs in the estimates. The estimates should be as accurate as reasonably possible, but you do not need to complete a detailed audit of costs per product. If costs are ongoing, indicate what has been expended to date. If your center (1) disseminated a product developed by another individual or institution or (2) developed a product or service in collaboration with another individual or institution, include only the costs incurred by your center. The sum of costs for all the Center’s products and services should approximate total expenditures to date, excluding costs for the Center’s external evaluator.

Products and Services Inventory for National Centers Funded Under the IDEA Personnel Development Program

Center name and grant number: <THIS INFORMATION WILL BE PRE-PRINTED FOR EACH CENTER>

A. Number	B. Signature works	C. Name of product or service	D. Description	E. Medium	F. Audience/ customer	G. Purpose	H. Activities and Deliverables (including all the components of the product or service)	I. Start date	J. End date	K. Estimated cost
Ex.#1		RtI video	Technical assistance training on RtI	Video, DVD, and Web	Local special education administrators	Provide overview of RtI and its role in LD identification	Conducted needs assessment interviews with 5 school districts Created 15 minute video prototype and pilot tested with 10 special education administrators 30-minute video on different types of RtI; DVD and Web on how they can be used in LD identification, next steps, and where to get additional information and assistance. Helpline for users with follow-up questions about applications of training.	11/06	Ongoing	$22,000
Ex. #2		ED curriculum	Curriculum for master’s degree program in emotional disturbance	Paper	University administrators and prospective students	Define the content of a 60-credit graduate program for preparing teachers to serve children with emotional disturbance	Convened expert panel to discuss criteria for Masters course in ED. Conducted literature review in ED. Developed program description and 20 course syllabi: the Exceptional Learner, Contemporary Issues in Special Education, Introduction to Emotional Disturbance/Behavior Disorders, Classroom and Behavior Management, Assessing Learners with Disabilities, Initial Field Experience, Child Growth and Development, Adolescent Growth and Development, Learning Theories in Education, Advanced Educational Psychology, Collaborative Consultation, Methods in Adaptive Instruction, Intro to Reading Difficulties, Teaching Remedial Math, Research Foundations, Educational Research Project, Social Foundations in Education, Secondary Programming for Students with Disabilities, Elementary Practicum, Middle/Secondary Practicum.	10/04	Ongoing	$5,000
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Col A. Assign a sequential number to each product or service	Col G. Indicate the intended purpose of the product or service
Col B. Indicate signature works with X in this column (at least 3, and up to 10%)	Col H. Provide additional description of the product or service
Col C. Assign a descriptive name to each product or service	Col I. Indicate the date on which the product or service became available
Col D. Briefly describe the product/service.	Col J. Indicate the date on which the product or service stopped being available
Col E. Indicate the media, e.g., in-person training, video, research paper	Col K. Estimate the cost of developing and delivering the product or service
Col F. Indicate the intended audiences for the product or service

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