Search

TA Requests

You are here

Home

The NDTAC TA Team often consults with our Expert Panel to answer your TA requests. Below are some of their answers to your most compelling questions.

Do you have any suggestions on how our coordinators and the programs they administer might develop partnerships with local institutions of higher education, especially as they consider program evaluation support?

    • David Houchins (Associate Professor, Georgia State University): The institution (university) can create publications from the program data. Potentially another option would be the development or partnership as a TA center. It has to be a give and take of providing services and meeting the requests of the higher education personnel to promote their work. It is doable. It just requires being honest on both sides of your needs.
    • Heather Griller Clark (Principal Research Specialist, Mary Lou Fulton Institute and Graduate School of Education, Arizona State University): We have a lot of different projects going on at ASU. The Service Learning department has provided a class that was a grant. We have grants and cooperative programs. We’ve had student-teachers out in our facilities.
    • Dottie: One way we’ve involved universities is as members of an advisory council. We simply asked universities to be a part of it.

What has been your experience in how education is handled for youth in adult correctional facilities? Is it guaranteed by law? Who typically delivers it? How is it impacted by the presence of adult inmates and staff supervising adults?

    • Dorothy “Dottie” Wodraska (Director of Juvenile Transition, Maricopa County Education Service Agency): In Arizona it is guaranteed by law that juveniles will receive education in the adult jails. Our agency is the LEA. The topic of juveniles in adult facilities has not been an issue for us.
      • NDTAC: For those youth 16–18, do they receive a full day of school? Or is it a half day like a lot of adult facilities?
        • Dottie: 240 minutes by law, the State minimum. Will be a 5-hour program this year, with a goal to make it a 6-hour program in the near future.
    • Thomas O'Rourke (Educational Consultant, Former Superintendent of Schools, Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice): In Georgia, it is 240 minutes, but ages go all the way up to 25 years of age.