The Story of Accessible Hope

Peter entered Middlebury with aspirations to become a writer. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English with a concentration in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama, as well as a teaching license from the State of Vermont.

During the summers, Peter worked as a head counselor at the Chautauqua Boys & Girls Club, leading games and activities while the childrens' parents attended classes, workshops, and lectures. His love of teaching children was solidified at Chautauqua.

As the culmination of his teaching practicum work, Peter taught in an alternative program called the Addison Repertory Theater (ART), for students who were unsuccessful in a traditional high school environment. Students received all of their core curriculum in the context of a fully-functioning theater company, producing and acting in productions for the community every quarter. Many ART students, including those with a history of academic failure, found careers in acting and stage production following high school.

Peter's first position after graduation was teaching 7th-grade language and literature and elective drama at an urban Los Angeles County school district. The student population consisted mostly of struggling readers who were behind in most core academic areas. Many of them spoke English as a second language, were children of single mothers or families with little formal education. Many of the students were exposed to gang activity, drugs, and other troublesome influences outside school. Peter developed tremendous relationships with these students and created an exciting classroom where learning happened.

As a favor to a colleague at Santa Fe, Peter taught Special Education as a substitute on occasion. It was at this time he began to discover his penchant for working with children with special needs.

Peter led a classroom at a residential school in Los Angeles County called Five Acres from 2000-2005. The students at Five Acres were wards-of-the-court of the State of California, most having been removed from their homes because of abuse or neglect. All were unable to attend traditional public school due to serious emotional and behavior problems. It was at Five Acres that Peter found his calling. He has worked with children with behavior challenges ever since.

Peter received his Master of Arts in Special Education from California State University, Los Angeles, in 2003. His advisor, Dr. Diane Haager, encouraged him to pursue his doctorate, and specifically recommended he consider Vanderbilt University for his doctoral studies.

In 2005, Peter enrolled in Peabody College of Vanderbilt University and began his coursework toward his doctorate in Special Education.

Peter's major area advisor and the chair of his dissertation committee was an educational psychologist named Dr. Steve Elliott. During the years Peter worked under him as a key member of his small team of assessment researchers, Steve became a close colleague and mentor. Together with colleagues Alexander Kurz (currently research professor at Arizona State University) and Ryan Kettler (currently professor at Rutgers State University), the team led several multi-state, federally-funded research projects to investigate alternate assessments for students identified with disabilities, with the purpose of ensuring tests are accessible for students with a broad range of abilities and needs. The team worked with, and trained, the assessment teams from several state departments of education, including those in Arizona, Indiana, Hawaii, and Mississippi. During this time, Peter began to conceptualize Accessibility Theory, which became the basis of his dissertation and several other publications and projects. Their work has been presented at several national and international conferences and has influenced the field of student assessment in the United States and beyond.

In 2010, Springer Publishing released the Handbook of Accessible Tests for All Students, which was co-edited by Beddow, Elliott, Kettler, and Kurz. The book included Beddow's first chapter on Accessibility Theory, which formed the basis of his dissertation.

In 2011, Peter earned a PhD from the department of Special Education with the publication of his dissertation entitled "Effects of Testing Accommodations and Item Modifications on Students' Performance: An Experimental Investigation of Test Accessibility Strategies."

Following graduation from Vanderbilt, Dr. Beddow began working as a behaviorist for families and schools in Middle Tennessee. He completed his certification as a Board Certified Behavior Analyst - Doctoral in 2012.

As an adjunct professor in Lipscomb University's graduate program in Applied Behavior Analysis, Dr. Beddow taught Master's-level students the knowledge and skills that would enable them to sit for the Behavior Analyst Certification Board examination to become BCBAs. Many of his former students have become professional educators and behavior analysts in Middle Tennessee and across the United States.

As the program director of a small Autism organization in Nashville, Dr. Beddow developed a passion for working with children with Autism and their families. Although the Brown Center is no longer in operation, the work they did for the Autism community in Middle Tennessee has lived on in the many families who experienced growth and change under the guidance of the caring therapists who served there.

In 2014, Dr. Beddow founded Accessible Behavior. Through this company, Beddow continued working with children and adolescents and their families and consulting with schools in Tennessee and, through online courses and training, trained parents, educators, and behavior analysts around the world.

In 2015, Dr. Beddow was featured as an Autism expert in a major documentary entitled "Autism in America." View the trailer for the film here. 

In 2017, Dr. Beddow was recommended by the Governor to sit on the Applied Behavior Analysis Licensure Committee of the State of Tennessee. The committee meets quarterly to ensure the public safety as it relates to the practice of ABA in the state.

In 2017, a French organization for the treatment of children and adolescents with Autism called OVA reached out to Dr. Beddow to request his help with a challenging case. The resulting collaboration led to a relationship between OVA and Accessible Behavior that culminated in a trip to Annecy, France, where Dr. Beddow led a week-long series of training seminars for the OVA team. The trainings were followed by a public conference on Autism and Problem Behavior that was attended by over 250 therapists, psychologists, teachers, and parents.

In 2018, Springer published the Handbook of Accessible Instruction and Testing Practices, the follow-up to the first publication, in 2018. The book is an edited volume consisting of chapters by an international group of education and assessment scholars. The book contains two chapters by Dr. Beddow: "Cognitive Load Theory for Test Design," and "Assessing Students with Autism."

In late 2017, Dr. Beddow, along with his wife, Christie, began to expand their vision of the treatment of children with special needs to include not only ABA therapy, but also speech therapy and a range of other therapy modalities and services as well. In January, 2018, the pair opened the doors of the Accessible Hope Therapy Center in Antioch, Tennessee. Shortly afterward, the name of the company was legally changed to Accessible Hope, LLC.