Sustainability: Implementing Programs that Survive 100 Years

The Third Annual Summit on Evidence-based Education was held on April 24, 2008 at the Berkeley City Club in Berkeley California.  Its purpose was to bring together leaders from a wide range of professions and organizations to identify the obstacles to, and opportunities for, promoting evidence-based decision making in special education. 

Each Summit is designed to be a working session with representatives from various disciplines, service and research areas as well as consumers.  Participants are asked to review certain resource materials prior to the Summit and complete a survey about evidence-based education in their area of interest.  They received materials from the presentations, a copy of the Summit Report, and ongoing membership in the Wing Institute Knowledge Network.

Our 2006 and 2007 Summits were a tremendous success, with participants representing over 50 different organizations across 18 different professions. The presentations and proceedings from these Summits are available here.

The theme of the 2008 Summit was:Sustainability:  Implementing Programs that Survive 100 Years.  As evidence-based education advances, little attention has been paid to the science of “implementation and sustainability”.  As a result, many research validated interventions fail when implemented in community settings.  Those that don’t fail immediately, often fail to “sustain” over time.  The Wing Institute has brought together three individuals whose accomplishments have significantly advanced our knowledge of implementing sustainable programs.

The 2008 Summit examined Sustainabilityin the context of the Wing Institute’s Evidence-Based Education Roadmap:

• Efficacy (What Works?)
• Effectiveness (When Does It Work?)
• Implementation (How Do We Make It Work?)
• Monitoring (Is It Working?)

2008 Summit participants included over sixty representatives from private and public agencies, state and local school agencies, health and community services, advocacy and parents.  Click here to view the participant demographics.  The day included presentations from leading experts in evidence-based special education, participant working sessions, and discussions of follow-up action plans.