Comprehensive System of Personnel Development (CSPD)

Lisa Andrew Tel: (602) 542-4466 Email: lisa.andrew@azed.gov

The Comprehensive System of Personnel Development (CSPD) Unit provides professional development for staff working with students with disabilities and assists Arizona schools with recruitment, preparation, and retention of highly qualified special education personnel.

Personnel Development

To enhance personnel development, CSPD provides varied training opportunities for educators/schools working with students with disabilities. Trainings include professional development models that achieve high results for implementation. School teams for our trainings must include the building administrator, a special education teacher, and a general education teacher. Other team members are selected based on the needs of the school or the specific training. CSPD designs their trainings to follow the National Staff Development Council www.nsdc.org Guidelines.

Recruitment

CSPD works to bring qualified applicants to Arizona. We sponsor the Arizona Education Employment Board (AEEB) a website that brings districts/charters and applicants together. It lists the positions available statewide. Weekly updates are sent to everyone who registers on the site. We sponsor the annual Great Arizona Teach-In, a job fair for all districts/charters in Arizona. Our marketing brings over a thousand applicants from around the country. We are involved in numerous ongoing recruitment efforts and designs for increasing the number of qualified candidates to fit the needs of Arizona.

State Personnel Development Grant (SPDG)

The State Personnel Development Grant is a federal grant awarded to Arizona to accomplish two goals: Goal 1: To recruit, prepare, and retain sufficient numbers of ethnically diverse, fully-certified special education teachers and SLPs (including those individuals who are Hispanic, Native American, African American, of another minority, or who have a disability) to meet the needs of a rapidly growing population of students with disabilities. Goal 2: Students with disabilities or at-risk for having a disability within participating schools will receive scientifically-based research reading and math strategies to attain significant reading and math gains over baseline levels. Referrals to special education will be reduced and accuracy of appropriate identification of students for special education services will improve.