Introduction:
Inclusive Practices: What Special Education Has to
Offer Whole-School Reform
Disability
is a design flaw in the environment.
—Ellen Wahl, EDC researcher and mother of a daughter
with
Down syndrome
From
the perspective of people with disabilities and their parents,
the world needs to change quite a bit.
—Dr. Thomas Hehir, EDC consultant
 One
of the ironies—and challenges—of effective
education is that in order to engage individual learners you have
to look at the whole environment. The evolution of special education
is a case in point. For several decades, the American educational
system has taken a narrow view of special education, treating it
as a mini-school within the school where teachers, largely cut
off from the rest of the staff, faced a group of students with
an incredibly wide range of abilities and disabilities and made
the best of it.
Today, that view of special education is giving way to a broader,
more philosophical approach—an approach designed to weave
inclusive practices into the fabric of the whole-school environment.
Much of that evolution has been driven by the 1997 amendments to
the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA '97), which
was explicitly designed to merge special education with whole-school
reform. Among other things, the amendments mandate that all students
have access to the general curriculum and that schools be accountable
for the educational outcomes of every student.
On a macro level, the merging of this new approach to special
education with whole-school reform makes good sense. The philosophy
of inclusive practices is perfectly compatible with current models
of whole-school reform. Both sets of ideas embrace staff collaboration,
shared decision making, a focus on student outcomes, and community
outreach as central tenets.
On a micro level, however, the challenge can seem overwhelming
to schools. Changing a school's environment is a huge undertaking;
remaking special education in the process can seem to some administrators
like one task too many.
EDC researchers and our partners are optimistic about meeting
the challenge because we've seen it work in schools across the
country. We've identified and developed a collection of inclusive
practices that serve the cause of whole-school reform and serve
the needs of all students, with and without disabilities—such
as flexible curricula, adaptive technologies, early childhood interventions,
and prevention strategies. Many of these practices build from the
idea of universal design, as defined by the Center for Applied
Special Technologies (CAST):
The basic premise of universal design for learning
is that a curriculum should include alternatives to make it accessible
and applicable to students, teachers, and parents with different
backgrounds, learning styles, abilities, and disabilities in
widely varied learning contexts. The "universal" in
universal design does not imply one optimal solution for everyone,
but rather it underscores the need for inherently flexible,
customizable content, assignments, and activities.¹
Creating "inherently flexible, customizable content" demands
extensive thought and hard work. In the stories that follow, we
explore the philosophy and policies that help create the environment
for inclusive practices to take hold. We begin with an interview
with Thomas Hehir and Judith Zorfass. (Hehir, the former director
of the Office of Special Education Programs in the U.S. Department
of Education, is currently a consultant to EDC. Zorfass is the
associate director of EDC's Center for Family, School, and Community.)
From there we take a micro-level look at schools and programs where
inclusive practices are helping all students succeed.
For questions or comments, contact mosaic@edc.org.
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Education Development Center, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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