A $25 million UF College of Education project that helps teachers serve students with disabilities has expanded to five more states.
The Collaboration for Effective Educator Development, Accountability and Reform recently added Arizona, Michigan, Missouri, Oregon and Tennessee to its project, bringing the number of involved states to 15.
“If you’re a parent of a student with a disability, nothing is more important to you than the quality of education that your child receives,” said Mary Brownell, a center director and UF professor who has been working more than two decades on special education.
People walk by the CEEDAR Center in the UF College of Education every day, not knowing it’s a $25 million program that’s affecting the way teachers teach, said Jonté Myers, a graduate assistant who specializes in special education.
The goal of CEEDAR is to make sure preparation programs helping general education teachers and leaders serving students with disabilities are able to do so using the best research available. On the state level, the center strives to design policies that encourage that.
“If we were able to accomplish that in every state,” Brownell said, “I would feel like I have accomplished my life goals, really, which is to improve education for students with disabilities.”
The center’s official launch date was January 13, 2013, but it had been an ongoing project started in 2012 by Brownell and Paul Sindelar, a center co-director.
The UF CEEDAR team is a collaboration, often working closely together with each other and the states involved. Graduate assistants and professors alike are assigned to different states but come together to talk, Myers, 33, said.
It’s a passion they all have, and that passion fills that room, Myers said. They call it the CEEDAR village sometimes, he said, because it’s like a family.
The CEEDAR center takes on a universal approach to teaching, making sure that every child could have the same opportunities.
[A version of this story ran on page 8 on 6/16/15]
