SERC is Connecticut’s primary source for educators, families, and others responsible for the education of children and youth with a range of abilities and disabilities. We provide technical assistance, professional learning opportunities, and resources to support inclusion and access for all students to the general education curriculum. In particular, SERC has worked closely with the CT State Department of Education to support schools in meeting state indicators for success for students with disabilities.

SERC was founded specifically to support Connecticut’s pioneering work in special education. When Connecticut established the Special Education Resource Center in 1969, just one in five children with disabilities nationwide was provided an education in public schools. [1] While many other states actually had laws excluding children with disabilities, the Bureau of Pupil Personnel/Special Educational Services in the Connecticut State Department of Education (CSDE) celebrated SERC in a Bureau newsletter as “a potential new source of help and energy for special education in Connecticut.” [2] SERC would “offer greater opportunities for special educators from throughout the state to become directly involved in producing and introducing innovative ideas.”

In the ensuing decades, SERC has helped build many practices that have come to benefit the entire education community and children’s diverse needs. By 2005, the Connecticut General Assembly amended the SERC statute to rename it the State Education Resource Center, signifying a meaningful integration of special education and general education into a single system. Implicit in SERC’s evolution is our obligation to an educational system of excellence that serves the needs of all children.

Footnotes:

1. U.S. Department of Education. (2000). History: Twenty-five years of progress in educating children with disabilities through IDEA. U.S. Office of Special Education Programs. Accessed from http://www2.ed.gov/policy/speced/leg/idea/history.pdf.
2. Connecticut State Department of Education: Bureau of Pupil Personnel and Special Educational Services. (1969). SERC starts work as new ‘nerve center’ for special education research, development. Dialogue, 1(1). Hartford, CT.