§1140q National technical assistance center; coordinating center

Summary

The Secretary must use money from section 1140r to fund a National Center for Information and Technical Support for Postsecondary Students with Disabilities. The center will be run by the office that manages other college programs. A college, nonprofit, or partnership with experience helping students with disabilities, making info accessible, and working with different types of colleges may get the award. The center must give students and families help planning for college while in high school, help IEP teams and outreach programs with transitions, share research-based supports and services (including other agencies), and give information on mentoring, recruiting, and transition programs. It must also help college faculty and staff improve services, accommodations, retention, and graduation by sharing best practices, offering training modules (including universal design ideas), and making tech tutorials. The center must build and keep a public, highly accessible website and database with information on documentation rules, support services, financial aid links, accommodations policies, accessible materials, and related topics. It must work with experts, hire staff experienced in training and technical help, and produce a report to the Secretary and authorizing committees three years after it starts and every two years after that. The report must review program activities, give enrollment and graduation rates from public data, and offer recommendations to improve supports, remove barriers, and describe strategies that work. Using funds from section 1140r, the Secretary must also competitively award a five-year cooperative agreement to create a coordinating center for inclusive transition and postsecondary programs for students with intellectual disabilities. The eligible grantee must have expertise in higher education, education of students with intellectual disabilities, program development, and evaluation. The coordinating center must serve as the technical-assistance hub, help develop and evaluate programs, create an evaluation plan that measures academics, socialization, independent living, and employment, help grantees award meaningful credentials, recommend key program components and ways to measure credit equivalency, study funding options, draft model agreements with funding agencies, share information with programs and families, meet with grantees at least once a year, and form a workgroup (including experts in higher education, special education, a disability organization, a NACIQI representative, and an accreditation representative) to recommend model criteria and standards. Within five years of starting, the coordinating center must report the workgroup’s recommendations to the Secretary, the authorizing committees, and NACIQI.