How can research guide policymakers in selecting effective models of service delivery in early intervention? How can essential special education knowledge and best practices be integrated into juvenile court systems? And how can we better support the educational and developmental experiences of children and youth in foster care as they move across home, school, healthcare and community contexts? Addressing these questions requires more than generating evidence. Moving expert knowledge into medical and clinical practice, homes, schools, child welfare systems, and community and justice settings requires researchers to understand and speak the language of the systems they hope to influence.
Jason Chow, associate professor of special education at Vanderbilt Peabody College of education and human development, plans to bridge that divide between evidence-based and real-world practices by training four Peabody special education and early intervention scholars in the many languages of leadership. With a new, five-year $3.75 million U.S. Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) training grant, LEAD: Preparing school leaders to implement effective special education systems that improve student outcomes, he will teach them how to bring science-backed practices into communities.
In partnership with the University of Maryland and the University of Texas, Austin, a cohort of scholars at each location will receive intensive training that incorporates coursework, research apprenticeships, teaching experiences, field-based leadership internships and professional development seminars. They will develop expertise in rigorous research methods, working to translate science into meaningful improvements for children and their families in special education settings.
"We're really getting students to think about what it takes to get organizations, communities and schools in the real world to engage with all this great research that places like Vanderbilt produce," said Chow.
Building on earlier training grants
Chow is building on a legacy of game-changing OSEP leadership grants. As a former Peabody doctoral student, he was the beneficiary of one himself. He also serves as primary investigator for Project SUSTAIN, a leadership grant launched in 2024 to train future education leaders to implement and sustain evidence-based practices in schools and communities, and he co-leads Project INTERSECT, which is geared toward speech-language pathology training. Project INTERSECT researchers estimate that one million lives could be impacted within a decade of students graduating from the program and taking on effective leadership roles.
"The support we receive for these leadership and training projects is deeply impactful to entire communities," noted Chow.
The new LEAD grant expands upon Project SUSTAIN to grow training across fields and into a wide range of systems, with a focus on three core areas: implementation science (research-to-practice); special education policy; and centering families and communities.
As a result, scholars will gain a deep understanding of how to lead not only in K-12 education, but also in early intervention systems, government agencies, special education law and policy, community and family partnerships, professional development, and science communication and knowledge dissemination.
Alongside a core group of faculty at UMD and UT Austin, Chow begins work with the new cohort in October. "I'm excited about having students, in a structured and mentored context, think about what it would be like to build partnerships, to engage with community members, to talk across systems," he shared. "I hope they'll learn not to see community engagement and investment, relationship-building and collective efficacy as a means to an end-but that they'll see those things as the goal."
Jason Chow earned his doctorate at Vanderbilt Peabody College in 2016, joining Peabody College's Department of Special Education in 2023. He also serves as an associate professor at Vanderbilt Health's Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences, as a faculty member of Peabody's Early Childhood Research Collaborative, and as a member of the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center. Learn more about his implementation work on the Vanderbilt Implementation Research Lab's podcast, "Research in Reality: A VIRL Ed Podcast."
