ATSTAR Project,
Austin Independent School District:
Austin, Texas

ATSTAR Project, Austin Independent School District: Austin, Texas

The Austin Independent School District (AISD) comprises 12 high schools, 18 middle and junior high schools, and 74 elementary schools, serving a total of 78,490 students. In the 2002–03 school year, the ethnic mix in those schools was as follows: 51.7 percent Hispanic, 31 percent white, 14.4 percent African American, 2.7 percent Asian, and 0.3 percent Native America. Throughout the school district, there are about 12,000 students who are legally eligible for assistive technology services under IDEA or Section 504. At the district level, there are currently four assistive technology specialists working full time.

Recognizing that the integration of assistive technology into instructional programs can support many students who would otherwise be unable to benefit from educational opportunities, AISD decided to seek grant funds in the spring of 2000 to develop a campus-based assistive technology service delivery model. The goal was to broaden the district's base of assistive technology expertise and streamline student access to technology solutions to allow students to achieve at their greatest potential. The district also sought to develop a tool that would provide ongoing training and technical assistance to parents, teachers, and other educational staff members.

With this goal in mind, the district submitted a grant to the Texas Education Agency (TEA) requesting funds to establish ATSTAR (Assistive Technology: Strategies, Tools, Accommodations, and Resources), a Web-based curriculum and set of resources, available at http://www.atstar.org. In June 2000, the district was awarded a $2,269,239 grant to develop ATSTAR as an effective, research-based system for delivering assistive technology services at the campus level. In less than a year, grant objectives have been set. Grant participants included the following key players: 56 educators from 14 AISD district campuses and 2 private school campuses, parent volunteers, educational support staff, and administrators. Campus-based professionals received 66 hours of training on assistive technology theory and implementation, while others received training specifically pertaining to their needs.

In order to identify the core elements of assistive technology that educators and parents need to know, the grant participants gathered data through presentations and case studies on targeted students, and sought collaboration from national consultants to develop a training tool that would accomplish the following:

• Address the core elements identified by the grant participants.
  
  
• Integrate the national quality indicators of assistive technology.
  
  
• Provide just-in-time training and resources to parents, educational professionals, and administrators.
  
  
• Foster team collaboration through leadership and mentorship programs.
  
  
• Empower family members and consumers to participate in the team process.
  
  
• Embed technology into major curricular subject areas.
  
  
• Target members of the student support team to increase the impact of assistive technology services.
  
  
• Promote community involvement.
  
  
• Build a replicable training model that could be deployed nationally.
  
  

• Gayl Bowser, coordinator of the Oregon Technology Access Program (OTAP)
  
  
• Diana Carl, director of Assistive Technology and Preview Services at Region IV Education Service Center (ESC) in Houston, Texas
  
  
• Kelly Fonner, M.S., an independent consultant in educational and assistive technology from Wisconsin
  
  
• Terry Lankutis, an independent consultant in educational and assistive technology
  
  
• Penny Reed, Ph.D., former director of the Wisconsin Assistive Technology Initiative, now working as an independent consultant in educational and assistive technology
  
  
• Joy Zabala, a professional developer and consultant who provides assistive technology and leadership support to school communities, professional associations, departments of education, individuals, and companies across the nation
  
  

After nine months of writing and revising the curriculum, the team drafted a six-step framework of the ATSTAR assessment process to guide parents, students, and educators through the assistive technology assessment process. The framework is a circular, rather than a linear process, which emphasizes that each of the six steps is equally significant and critical when assessing the student's need for assistive technology in his or her IEP. The steps are as follows: building the student team, framing the question, collecting information, analyzing information, generating solutions, selecting resources. A visual representation of the framework and its thorough description is available at http://www.atstar.org/info_implement.html.

The ATSTAR curriculum consists of eight lessons that teams of educators complete. ATSTAR is self-paced, and the estimated amount of time for teams to complete the curriculum is approximately 30 hours. There is also a separate lesson for school- and district-level administrators. The ATSTAR curriculum is revolutionary in that it brings assistive technology expertise directly onto the campus and into the classroom of individual students. ATSTAR prepares instructional staff at the campus level to conduct assessments, collect data, and integrate assistive technology into the educational process.

AISD is currently piloting ATSTAR at its middle schools and high schools. The project has grown out of its original scope, and now ATSTAR has become a potential national model for assistive technology training and implementation. The grant participants at AISD have delivered assistive technology training to about 640 educators and have impacted 1,708 public school students and 18 private school students. ATSTAR pilot participants include preservice teachers and public- and private-school personnel on campuses throughout Texas, Montana, and Georgia. School districts who would like to pilot ATSTAR on their campuses may contact the project codirectors Carye Abete or Jan McSorley or jmsorle@austin.isd.tenet.edu.