Chicago Public School Launches ActiveMind Pilot
Friday, November 4, 2016 -- Chicago Public School (CPS) launched a new pilot program for special education in partnership with Fun and Function. Three hundred therapists from the Speech, Occupational Therapy and Physical Therapy departments attended the opening presentation for the ActiveMind Partnership, a sensory-based behavioral RTI program, led by Dov Daniel and Laura Scanlon at Fun and Function.
“We are so excited about our collaboration with Chicago Public School,” said Dov Daniel, Vice President of Educational Programming at Fun and Function. “Our objective is to provide a broadly applicable framework that is cost effective on a large scale yet deeply meaningful for thousands of individual students.”
The presentation served to initiate the Active Mind Partnership Program in CPS by delineating the fundamentals of the sensory based behavioral RTI program and its large scale applications in general education as well as special education settings. Therapists will have the opportunity to conduct their own pilot programs in conjunction with Fun and Function. By June 2017, the data will be collected and analyzed, shaping the next phase of initiatives.
Noting that special education is the largest and fastest growing expense for many school districts across the United States, Mr. Daniel said, “We’re creating programs that build infrastructure and significantly reduce the cost. Increasing the long-term effectiveness of educational services is of national importance.
“It is gratifying to see that our goals are aligned with some of the largest school districts in the country,” Mr. Daniel said. “Of course the effectiveness of any program is predicated on solid design and implementation, which is why we are so excited to have such wonderful partners at CPS. They bring both the vision and the institutional knowledge to develop and implement programs in a goal oriented, measured and thoughtful manner.”