Bridges to Success was developed by the Teaching Research Institute at Western Oregon University, under a Project of National Significance, funded through the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education. It was funded for a three-year period from January 2002 - December 2005. The overarching mission of the Bridges to Success project was to provide a high quality, multi-dimensional induction model to assist rural early career educators in becoming qualified, competent, and confident professionals who remain in the field of special education.
The project developed, implemented, evaluated and disseminated a model induction program with three core components: local induction, mentoring and ongoing professional development. The framework of the Bridges to Success model is based on three guiding principles:
- high quality induction programs require ongoing support, including local induction activities and mentor partnerships;
- professional development activities should meet the developmental needs of early career educators and mentors;
- a collaborative statewide effort is necessary to build on the coordination of local, regional, and statewide efforts.
Bridges to Success built upon existing strategies and incorporated new ones to develop an innovative model addressing the needs of early career special educators in rural areas. Formal induction programs with strong mentoring components and ongoing professional development have been found effective in addressing many of the attrition factors related to early career special educators. The annual "Quality Counts" report by Education Week (2000) reports that beginning teachers who participate in such induction programs are twice as likely to continue in teaching. This is consistent with other national research concluding that induction activities have a profound impact on both teacher quality and satisfaction.
High attrition rates of rural special educators bring significant financial costs to educational agencies and can lead to significant challenges in implementing the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1997 (IDEA). Increasing the retention of rural early career special educators to become confident and competent professionals is of no small import. Well over half of all U.S. school districts are rural, and fully one forth of all U.S. school children attend rural or small town schools. An innovative, developmental induction model designed to reduce the attrition of early career special educators in rural settings would also be of great significance at the national level.