In 2014, the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) instituted the Statewide Systemic Improvement Plan (SSIP) reporting requirement. The SSIP was designed as a comprehensive multi-year plan for improving results for infants and toddlers with disabilities and their families through system strengthening efforts. States/entities work to improve their infrastructure, implement evidence-based practices, and measure their progress. Since SSIP's inception, the Early Childhood Technical Assistance (ECTA) Center at the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute and the Center for IDEA Early Childhood Data Systems (DaSy) have collaborated to provide technical assistance (TA) to support states with the SSIP requirements.

This impact story spotlights how two states used TA to scale implementation of their SSIP practices statewide, making noteworthy progress in their systems to improve child outcomes.

Since the implementation of SSIP, ECTA and DaSy have tailored TA to meet the specific needs of each state. At a minimum, this involved TA specialists reviewing and providing input on states' yearly SSIP documentation before submission to OSEP.

For many states, TA included deeper engagement, such as supporting states to:

• Acquire and use information and resources
• Select and use data collection tools in evaluating infrastructure improvements and practice change
• Build data analysis competencies and support analysis of evaluation data
• Manage, organize, implement activities and track implementation progress
• Use evaluation data to revise logic models, improvement activities and evaluation plans
• Engage state partners in planning, implementation and evaluation
• Create high-quality products such as guides, policies and standards

Using targeted TA from ECTA and DaSy, Idaho and Washington have achieved state-wide SSIP implementation, built systems to support the early intervention workforce, and improved the quality and use of their data. TA providers facilitated the states' use of the System Framework and ECTA's Statewide Implementation Guide to support design and scale-up of SSIP activities. The states developed action plans and evaluation methodologies, trained practitioners, and launched evidence-based practices in pilot implementation sites, which later served as demonstration sites for expansion and scale-up.

Read the full report to learn exactly how TA supported Idaho and Washington with their SSIPs.