Alsde Rfp 2025-1 Educational Resources Platform

Purpose: The Alabama State Department of Education (ALSDE), Special Education Services (SES) section, seeks the submission of proposals from vendors that can provide a platform with an expansive collection of educational resources for teachers who work with students with the most significant cognitive disabilities. The population of students that would benefit from this educational platform are the students with extensive support needs identified in Alabama as the students with the most significant cognitive disability (IQ score typically 55 and below) with concurrent adaptive behavior deficits. Sometimes due to the nature of their disability, these students require specialized strategies to help them show progress in the educational setting. The platform must provide resources in the areas of English language arts, reading, math, science, social studies, and writing. The ALSDE is requesting a vendor(s) with established and diverse clients and proven experience in providing educational resources.
Background: Students with the most significant cognitive disability struggle with acquiring learning ideas, skills, or concepts with degrees of accuracy. Through repetition and engaging activities, the students show motivation and interest when interactive methods are incorporated into learning. Student learning thrives when there is continuous reinforcement. These students also react well to embedded rewards or positive reinforcement in learning. Students with the most significant cognitive disability struggle with the fluency stage of learning. In the fluency stage, the emphasis is on enhancing efficiency by honing precision and achieving the right pace in execution. Teachers individualize lessons with this in mind for each student and having a platform to pull resources (e.g., activities, games, songs) is an invaluable tool. By providing educational resources on varying grade levels teachers can find the zone of proximal development for the student while minimizing the need for prompts and aiding in accuracy for the student in completion of learning tasks. Students with the most significant cognitive disability struggle with the maintenance of skills, ideas, or concepts. Teachers can promote skill maintenance by reassigning individualized content for the student and checking specific skills identified as a target for the student. The student can show this third step in the learning process if the new skill can be done without reteaching. In other words, the individual's performance is reliable, although it may not yet be adaptable. Students with the most significant cognitive disability struggle with the final stage in the learning process, generalization. Generalization involves applying a skill across various environments, to diverse individuals, or using different resources.