India Greeley is about to present a lesson to her class at Silver Springs High School in the Nevada Joint Union School District in Grass Valley. “I will verbally tell the lesson. It will be written on the board. It will be on the computer. It could be a video.”

 

And when it’s time for her students in this alternative high school diploma program to demonstrate that they have learned the lesson, “Some will write on paper,” Greeley says. “Some might write on the computer or use speech-to-text on the computer. Others may verbally give me their answers. Or they could create a piece of artwork to show me that they understand what we talked about. I make sure when I am presenting that I think of the barriers to learning.”

 

This is Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in action.

 

 

UDL is a framework for creating classrooms and instruction that allow for an important reality: students learn in a variety of ways. In a UDL classroom, teachers deliver lessons in ways that are accessible to all learners, with and without disabilities. Every student then has the opportunity to engage with the curriculum, learn, and experience success in school.

 

The UDL framework and guidelines were developed by CAST, a nonprofit educational research organization based in Massachusetts. CAST uses a three-step approach to creating a successful UDL classroom:

 

 

For example, some students might prefer to work alone while others like to work with their peers. Some may prefer regular routines while others are motivated by spontaneity.

 

 

Educators offer information in ways that respond to the different learning styles of students. For example, information is delivered through visual or auditory presentations rather than, or in addition to, printed text.

 

 

Assignments offer varied ways for students to show that they have understood the lesson, including use of assistive technology.

 

What Greeley is doing in her classroom is being replicated throughout California as UDL has gained traction as a tool that aligns with the state’s goal of developing one inclusive system of education for all students. Some county offices of education (COEs) and school districts are just beginning UDL trainings while others have embedded UDL practices systemwide.

 

 

The Open Access project at the Placer County Office of Education is bringing UDL to nine COEs and Special Education Local Plan Areas (SELPAs) across the state as part of its Leading and Coaching Towards UDL project.

 

Jennifer Boettger is the project lead for Open Access. In addition to training and coaching educators, her work includes helping participating COEs and school districts build the culture and practices necessary to sustain UDL.

 

“Once a district contacts us,” Boettger says, “we meet with administrators to discuss their area of need,” It could be low math scores, for example, or attendance. “Then we customize the training for the area.“

 

“All schools come with different needs,” says Open Access Coordinator Laurie Balsano-Wright. “We meet them where they are and create a doorway into UDL for them.”

 

Then “everybody moves through the process at their own pace,” says Boettger. General and special education lead trainers, themselves trained by Open Access, support districts and schools through a two-year UDL implementation program. The objective is to create a culture where all lessons are designed for all learners from the outset.

 

“Humboldt County is moving through the process quite well,” says Boettger. Marci Zeppegno is Humboldt COE’s program manager for prevention and intervention services. When Open Access partnered with the local SELPA on UDL training, “we saw the benefits,” she says. The county is now in its second year of training and moving into coaching.

 

“At least one general education and one special education teacher at each site go through the trainings together,” Zeppegno says, “and they work together to develop lessons, too.”

 

Wendy Turk, the SELPA orthopedic education specialist, says the trainings help general education teachers “set up their classrooms with a UDL lens so lessons are more accessible. If you can get more and more teachers designing their classes this way, there may be fewer students who need assistive technology.”

 

Zeppegno says she already sees some positive outcomes of the training. “UDL helps to support a sense of belonging,” she says. “Teachers are thinking of ways to support cultural differences.” It is important that teachers provide flexibility, she says, and she cites one fourth-grade class where the students were asked to show what they had learned. In response, she says, students recorded audio and video responses, and one drew a comic strip.

 

Christine Yanone, the county’s assistive technology specialist, acknowledges that “the concepts of UDL are easy; the implementation is hard. The goal now is to create models.” Redwood Preparatory Charter School in Fortuna along the Mendocino Coast is becoming a demonstration site. “The first step,” says Zeppegno, “is to train all staff in UDL.”

Getting buy-in from staff is not always easy. As author and education activist Jonathan Mooney has said, “UDL is not a technical intervention; it’s a cultural transformation.” That transformation can be difficult, “especially for long-time teachers,” says Annie Stephanos, an instructional coach at Sutter Elementary School in the Santa Clara Unified School District. ”Equity and inclusion were not part of our education, and UDL can be looked at as just one more thing” added to their workload. There is definitely a shift from teacher-centered to student-centered education, she says. “And if we are going to promote equitable classrooms, UDL is a big part of that.”

 

The UDL practices that Greeley uses in her high school class are the same as those Stephanos uses in elementary school. “I set the table with clear expectations and the kids get a menu,” Stephanos says. “They are given a choice on how they want to learn. We’re there to present them with choices without compromising the rigor or quality of the material.”

 

Stephanos is “passionate” about UDL “both as a parent and a teacher.” She has a daughter in high school with an Individualized Education Program (IEP). UDL, Stephanos emphasizes, is not only for students with IEPs “but for all students, including those who just need a different approach to the curriculum.”

 

“A UDL environment is very supportive,” she says. “Students can do so much. They are not afraid to ask for help. They are more independent and self-reliant. And students can assess their peers; they can say what makes a good presentation. You can do this from kindergarten on.”

 

Converting all classrooms to UDL will take time, Stephanos says. “But if we put students first, UDL will come to the forefront.”

 

 

UDL already is in the forefront in Santa Clara County, and nowhere more so than in Palo Alto. Sandya Lopez is the director of the Inclusion Collaborative in the county office of education. The collaborative “supports professional learning and coaching around inclusive practices, including UDL,” she says, and connects those practices to co-teaching. “We train districts and schools on UDL practices first and then move into co-teaching.”

 

Santa Clara has a California Coalition for Inclusive Learning grant from the California Department of Education to teach and coach UDL throughout the county, Lopez says. “We offer a two-day introduction called ‘What Is UDL,’ followed by monthly implementation training, and coaching sessions if wanted. Now we are getting administrators on board to make UDL systemwide and create the structural changes needed to support UDL.”

 

All administrators, as well as all staff, in the Palo Alto Unified School District have received UDL training, says Cynthia Loleng-Perez, co-director of special education. “Staff has been working with the Inclusion Collaborative for about three years,” she says, “and we have contracted with them to provide UDL training for all secondary schools.”

 

Palo Alto is a full-inclusion district and no longer has any subject area special day classes. “Even students with moderate-to-severe disabilities are included [in general ed classes] most of the time,” Loleng-Perez says. “Our philosophy is that in order for every student to be successful, teachers have to use UDL strategies to support any struggling student with or without disabilities.”

 

That philosophy is evident at Palo Alto’s Gunn High School where “every student is in at least three general education classes a day, and usually more,” says Assistant Principal Courtney Carlomagno, who oversees co-teaching at the school. Gunn is using UDL “as a basis for implementing co-teaching,” she says.

 

Co-teaching was first piloted at Gunn in the 2012–2013 school year with one social studies class and was expanded the following year to core courses at each grade level. Ben Beresford and Tim Young have been co-teaching for the past three years. Beresford, a social studies teacher, and Young, a special educator, teach U.S. government and world history.

 

They first received UDL training “in the winter before COVID, and it blew my mind,” says Beresford. There followed a “long-running series of trainings on integrating UDL principles into the classroom.“ In the classroom now, he says, “we’re flexible; we try to give access to the course material in varied ways: hard copy, digital form, text to speech.”

 

“It’s two teachers giving access to all students,” says Young. “It’s all about accessibility.” And, following the UDL principle of multiple means of engagement, he says, “A couple of kids self-selected to work independently. “

 

The combination of full inclusion, UDL, and co-teaching is working at Gunn. Special education students are scoring better on tests and graduating at higher rates, says Loleng-Perez. And the percentage of graduates with IEPs meeting A–G requirements (meaning they qualify for college admission in California’s university system) has risen from 73.2 percent in 2017 to 83.3 percent in 2022.

 

 

All of this work across California echoes the CAST foundational premise that “Barriers to learning are in the environment, not in the student.” UDL is helping to break down barriers and create an environment that supports all students, no matter how they learn. And UDL “is growing by leaps and bounds,” says Bolsano-Wright at Open Access. “It’s becoming the thing we do.”

 

“It’s one of the best processes the state has,” says Janet Schulze, “and I’ve been in education for more than 30 years.”

 

“This has been one of the most valuable processes that I’ve participated in,” says Kim Kianidehkian, also a veteran educator in California’s public schools.

 

Schulze is the superintendent of the Pittsburg Unified School District in Contra Costa County, and Kianidehkian is the current director of educational services for the Evergreen Elementary School District in Santa Clara County. The process they’re both referring to is the Comprehensive Coordinated Early Intervening Services (CCEIS), which is federally required when a local educational agency (LEA: a school district, county office of education, or a charter school approved by the California State Board of Education to be an LEA) is found “significantly disproportionate.”

 

What exactly is this process? Why is the praise for it so high? And, most importantly, how has it helped students?

 

 

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) was amended in 2007, in part, to strengthen the equity requirements of the law by addressing disparities in the treatment of students of color within LEAs. When LEAs disproportionately identify any racial or ethnic group of students in a disability category, or when they disproportionately suspend or expel any particular student group, the LEA is designated “disproportionate” or “significantly disproportionate” if the LEA’s identification, placement, and disciplinary data reflect disproportionality for more than three years.

 

With significant disproportionality, the LEA must undergo the CCEIS process and set aside 15 percent of its IDEA money to fund these early intervention services and address the factors that contribute to the significant disproportionality, such as policies, practices, and procedures. This requirement is designed to ensure that the LEA makes a concerted effort to give all students the support they need at the first sign that they’re struggling academically or behaviorally.

 

According to the Center for IDEA Fiscal Reporting, the services that are central to CCEIS should “help children who need additional academic or behavioral support to be successful in school. They can include professional development and educational and behavioral evaluations, services, and supports.”

 

Research and data support the fact that when a child exhibits troubling behavior or performs poorly in reading or math, often the cause is not a disability. Too often, however, a referral to special education is the first line of defense in a school. CCEIS is designed to provide an option that more accurately reflects what the child needs.

 

For decades, research also has shown the benefits of early intervention (EI). When well-designed and thoughtfully provided, EI services make it possible for struggling students to catch up to and stay abreast of their classmates in reading and mathematics. These services also help students learn the social and behavioral skills they need to succeed in their schools and communities.

 

Students need EI support for a variety of reasons. Sometimes they have not had the opportunity to develop the preliteracy or math skills they need to succeed in school. Perhaps their parents couldn’t afford quality day care or preschool, which is where many children learn these skills. For other children, problems may emerge because of a disconnect: The LEA’s support for students doesn’t meet all their needs. The curriculum doesn’t reflect the lived experience of some students. The teachers and administrators have expectations that don’t align with the values of some of their families. The LEA may not have adequate supports for children experiencing trauma.

 

When these conditions exist, certain students may not feel welcomed in school. As a result, these students may act in ways that can lead to misplaced assumptions about the source of their behavior — and to an inappropriate disability label.

 

Within this context, the CCEIS work is about more than students’ academics or behavior. The central challenge of addressing disproportionality often requires systemic changes that include developing cultural and linguistic competence, identifying and rectifying implicit bias, and creating a shared understanding of the importance of facing and eradicating racism among staff members.

 

 

To support school districts in their CCEIS work, the California Department of Education created the State Performance Plan Technical Assistance Project (SPP-TAP) in 2009. The project, which is housed at the Napa County Office of Education, designed a process for reducing rates of disproportionality among LEAs in the state. More than 11 percent of school districts in California are currently designated as significantly disproportionate—103 LEAs out of 1,500. They all work with SPP-TAP to do the following:

 

These steps reflect a fairly standard systems-change protocol—nothing new to many teachers and most educational leaders. On top of this boilerplate, according to Kianidehkian, “is a lot of work—a heavy lift. And I will be frank and say I felt totally overwhelmed by it at the beginning.”

 

The prospect of conducting an in-depth analysis of an entire school system and emerging with an effective plan for improvement could overwhelm anyone. But, in Kianidehkian’s words, the process that SPP-TAP has created “is so organized… It helps you focus on exactly what you need to do.”

 

Schulze says, “That process is a gift. It’s very detailed, very thoughtful. You get an outside set of folks who look at your data, your policies, your practices, your procedures.” Schulze also talks about the value of the focus groups and interviews that are another part of the process.

 

The SPP-TAP facilitators “really push you in your thinking,” says Schulze. “In my mind, it’s something every district should go through every five years, regardless” of their disproportionality designation.

Connie Silva has led SPP-TAP since its inception. When asked why people gave the project such high marks, she first points to the quality, knowledge, and commitment of the technical assistance facilitators who have signed on to do this work, many of whom were on the receiving end of CCEIS before they retired from roles as principals, superintendents, or Special Education Local Plan Area (SELPA) directors. Each LEA that works with the project is required to create a CCEIS team. The facilitators oversee and guide these teams.

 

In addition, the process “gets very explicit around what it actually takes to do the work” of addressing disproportionality, says Silva, and it demands more than lip service. “We regularly hear the phrase, ‘we’re going to serve all students’ and the term ‘equity.’ What our project and our facilitators help districts do is really get at what those things mean” and how to act on the commitment.

 

Silva talks about the paradoxical role the COVID-19 pandemic played in the evolution of the project. “It made everybody’s job so much more challenging, but it was also a reminder of ‘why am I doing this? Why am I going to stay in education? It’s not the money. It’s not the fame or power.’” In effect, she says, the pandemic helped many educators reaffirm their reason for working in schools: “It’s our care for students,” says Silva.

 

The Black Lives Matter movement after the killing of George Floyd created another sea change in the work, says Silva. The interplay of these events with the pandemic “brought to the surface many of the underlying inequities that live within our educational systems.” People everywhere started paying more urgent attention to these inequities, says Silva, and they wanted to make corrections. “We saw a marked decrease in resistance to the CCEIS process, which requires uncovering the root causes of our inequities. Educators truly wanted to address these issues.”

 

“And then we just don’t stop,” she says, referring to the determination of the project’s staff. “We don’t go away.” SPP-TAP holds districts accountable—while helping and supporting them.

 

 

With SPP-TAP’s support, Evergreen Elementary School District has put in place strategies for addressing disproportionality that “have become very, very valuable,” says Kianidehkian. One in particular involves engaging families.

 

Evergreen identified a lack of family engagement as one of its root causes of disproportionality. Because many of the district’s families speak English as a second language (or not at all), and many were not born in the United States, the CCEIS team hired “community liaisons who have a lot in common with the families,” says Ashley Morefield, the teacher on special assignment who works with these liaisons.

 

“Most of our liaisons came to the United States as children. They experienced a new country and a new school,” says Morefield. “They are able to relate to our families, help them understand what the American school system is and how to advocate for their child.”

 

The liaisons attend professional development events to learn how to work with issues of culture and language. “We’re training them to support families. We’re also helping them become more knowledgeable about our processes, like the IEP [Individualized Education Program] and our 504 plan,” says Morefield.

 

The presence of community liaisons is new to the district. But according to Kianidehkian, in the current school year alone the liaisons have contacted families more than 600 times to discuss such issues as student attendance and the importance of family participation in school events and meetings. Parent and family attendance at the district’s English Learner Advisory Committee meetings, the CCEIS Educational Partners meetings, and the “Cafecitos” (where the school principals meet with parents over coffee) has grown significantly just within a year, says Kianidehkian.

 

The community liaisons were hired to focus on improving family engagement through in-person contacts, home visits, and phone calls. They “are armed with a whole lot of resources just to share with parents,” says Kianidehkian. But their role is already expanding. They’re currently partnering with school social workers and through this collaboration have developed a home visit protocol, “which includes tracking, monitoring, and checklists,” says Kianidehkian.

 

She calls the liaisons “first responders” and sees them as perfectly positioned to know when more intensive services are called for. As a result, the liaisons are also developing—again with school social workers and other school staff—a home visit flow chart. If they’re in the middle of a home visit and a parent or family member reveals information that suggests the need for more specialized or intensive services, this chart will help the liaison know exactly what to do and whom to call.

 

When asked why the liaisons have been so effective in such a short period of time, Morefield says, “It always comes back to relationship-building. Our liaisons are spending so much time being visible and connecting with families on campus. At drop-off and pick-up you’ll find them everywhere, chatting and connecting, making sure the community understands who they are. They quickly became very popular at their schools, and parents quickly understood that ‘this is someone who advocates for us. This is someone who supports us.’”

 

During the current 2023–2024 school year, the district has added community liaisons in schools that are not technically disproportionate—a tribute to the general effectiveness of the people in these roles and the work they are doing.

 

 

The Alameda Unified School District also has been working with SPP-TAP to address issues of disproportionality. Shamar Edwards was hired in 2019 as the Senior Director of Equity and African-American, Black, and Multiethnic Achievement. She oversees the CCEIS work with SPP-TAP, which involves providing services to students who would most benefit from targeted early interventions. These students are identified based on their scores in reading and mathematics on the STAR test and on their disciplinary histories (e.g., chronic absenteeism or the number of suspensions). They’re referred to as “focal scholars,” and they’re each given an individualized learning plan with documented goals. These goals are personalized and tracked in student data platforms.

 

The only way that a student can be technically considered a focal scholar, says Edwards, “is if the school has had a conversation with the family.” During this conversation, the family is informed of what is involved, which includes “opportunities for tutoring and other enrichment.”

 

The district’s first outreach to families in this effort was met with skepticism, Edwards says. “We needed to address the distrust and disconnect with families,” she says. “I remember one family saying, ‘You need to focus on the staff, not my kid.’”

 

Edwards met resistance with honesty. She first sent a letter out to families “essentially owning that our district has not done a good job—but that’s why we’re in this situation” of addressing disproportionality and working toward district improvement. She described to families “our strategy to start to move out of this situation.”

 

“We are inviting you,” she wrote to them. “Literally, the title of the letter was ‘An Invitation,’” she says, and she made it clear to parents that, ‘If you decline, we’re still going to do the best that we can. But we’d like to partner with you.’”

 

Staff and teachers also receive ongoing training on how to engage with families. The district provided its teachers with training on Dr. Karen Mapp’s Dual Capacity Framework, which is a roadmap for collaboration between families and schools. District leaders and staff worked directly with Tenneh Weller with High Expectations Consulting who uses Mapp’s work, and organized a Hopes and Dreams conference, which gave staff the opportunity to listen to families talk about the hopes and dreams they have for their children. “It’s that simple,” says Edwards, and it started making a difference.”

“Hopes and dreams” represent an ongoing theme in the district. They are part of each focal scholar’s plan, part of conversations with families, and a recurrent theme of professional development and outreach events. Teachers learned strategies for developing trust. These strategies included making positive phone calls home, sitting with families to discuss their hopes and dreams for their children, and sharing with family members the students’ progress and the interventions that were being used. These efforts have “been in place a solid two years,” says Edwards.

 

The district distributed a “trust survey last year, and we are starting to see improvement,” says Edwards. “With that additional outreach to families and legitimately trying to partner with families, we have noticed a difference with our families feeling more connected to the school, which was one of our metrics. It’s a partnership,” says Edwards. “They can call on me. I can call on them. They give constructive feedback. No one has personalized it. We just try to accept what they’re saying and revise our ways.”

 

When asked what she is most proud of in her work, Edwards points to the progress the district has made in building these relationships with parents and family members, “pushing through, building trust.”

 

 

“What’s pretty eye-opening here in Alameda,” says Edwards, is the rate of Black and African-American students who are identified as needing special education services under the disability category of “Other Health Impairment.” In one year, she says, “69 of 193 students were qualified [for special education] between preschool and kindergarten.” While there are legitimate needs for some special services, she says, “there is also some bias at work to generate those types of numbers, especially at such a young age.”

 

Last year Edwards started an Equity Series of meetings for the managers in the district: “principals, assistant principals, food service mangers—if you are a manager at any level, you have to come to these meetings.” The series addresses such issues as implicit bias and racism. The plan is for managers “to share what they learned with their staff to assist with capacity building,” says Edwards.

 

She acknowledges that “no one training is going to change things,” especially in the complex areas she is addressing. “It’s ongoing. And we are trying to create a new culture.”

 

Alameda is not alone in this struggle.

 

Antoine Hawkins is Evergreen’s superintendent, and he fully supports the district’s leaders — including Kianidehkian, Morefield, Deborah Ashmore who is assistant superintendent of educational services, and others—in their focus on equity.

 

“We brought in [consultant] Nicole Anderson to focus on equity training,” says Hawkins. Through this and other trainings, he is determined “to look at implicit bias, to look at all of those areas that impact student learning, to make sure that staff can understand the dynamics of the communities we’re serving.”

 

Evergreen does not have “one super-majority” in its demographics, says Hawkins. So rather than focusing on one group, the district is working to incorporate principles of cultural relevance among all of its staff so they can partner with all families and serve all students. “We know at the base level we have good staff who want to do a good job to make sure that our babies have what they need to be successful.”

Hawkins was not surprised when he received some pushback from teachers in response to these trainings and their focus. “You’re talking about cultural change,” he says. He sees one ironic stumbling block coming from the district’s previous successes. “Evergreen has been an anchor district for years in Santa Clara County,” says Hawkins. “A lot of districts would come in times past to our district to receive training on best practices, so we have embedded in our culture some belief that we don’t need help.” In effect, the district’s staff were having a difficult time accepting the fact that they now are the ones in need of training on best practices.

 

Hawkins sees this pushback as coming from their beliefs about “what success looks like. But we’re asking teachers to question their own pushback and take an inward look to see what is driving that.” With that reflective examination, he says, “we can all come together to focus on our prime directive, which is educating every student to the best of our ability.”

 

 

Pittsburg Unified is also working to address issues of cultural disconnect and implicit bias. In 2022, the district was also found to be disproportionate in the area of discipline. Tracy Catalde, a school psychologist and PUSD’s coordinator of social-emotional support and counseling, was perfectly positioned to respond.

 

Catalde joined the district in 2002. Some of his early research focused on disproportionate discipline. He had also worked with Jeff Sprague at the University of Oregon on Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS). This background has served him well.

 

“What I saw right away was an over-reliance on traditional discipline methods as opposed to prevention. Teachers didn’t know what else to do; administrators didn’t know what else to do. It took some time to change the hearts and minds. And it took some time to address the academic needs. Oftentimes there’s a nexus between behavior and academic delays. Part of what I was doing was changing their paradigm to understand that what they [the teachers] see in many cases is not a disability but a lack of skill.

 

“I’ve worked for years with teachers to understand how to improve outcomes for all of the students in the classroom, not just the ones who are complying with your every request or who sit when you tell them to sit.

 

“Students have different needs,” he says. “Some need to stand. Some need to type. Some need a pencil as opposed to a pen, a fat pen versus a small pen. Some need flexible seating.”

 

From these years of experience, Catalde has found one of his most powerful tools in empathy. “Helping teachers understand what is going on” with their students, “helping them understand what the child feels when you raise your voice, when you say you want them to respect you but you’re behaving in a profoundly disrespectful way.

 

“I’ve always said the PBIS framework of the three B’s—Be safe. Be respectful. Be responsible—is not just a framework for students. It’s also one for adults.

 

“As students receive and feel respect, they’re included fully, not just the part of them that’s compliant. As they receive that respect, you really see a transformation in the classroom. That’s been my work throughout my career. My mission has been to make things more equitable, better for all students.”

 

 

Shulze started her work a principal at PUSD in 2014, first aligning the district’s programs and making educational practices more inclusive. As part of this effort, she helped the district craft a vision statement. “And then,” she says, “we made big adjustments to how we were supporting our students with disabilities and our teachers.” Special education was underfunded and understaffed, so staffing and funding were increased. The district worked with its teachers unions to create “a behavior support aide position to provide support to students whether in special education or general education. We added behaviorists to the district.” Schulze also studied scheduling patterns, introduced restorative justice practices, hired more paraprofessionals, provided training in co-teaching techniques, examined the data for attendance patterns and time in class.

 

Then the district was found to be significantly disproportionate in “the number of African-American students in special education for ED [emotional disability] and OHI [other health impairment],” says Schulze. “We have since dropped OHI, which was great news, and we continue with disproportionately in special ed for ED.”

 

“When we got that designation,” says Schulze, “you have that moment of ‘Oh, No!’” And while there were so many reforms the district was making, she quickly realized that CCEIS was “a way to move that work faster” and help people see that “we still haven’t done enough.” She saw working with SPP-TAP as an “opportunity for us to refocus and get another set of experts”—to simply strengthen the work district staff were already doing.

 

“During these past three years,” says Schulze, “we have worked very closely with Dr. Mildred Browne, our current TA facilitator. Her expertise and guidance have been critical to our success throughout the entire CCEIS process.”

 

Schulze believes that the most critical decision in the subsequent work was placing CCEIS in education services—in effect, in general education. “When you have CCEIS, there’s a tendency to think special ed is going to do this. And I said, No.”

 

While special education staff are important and supportive members of the CCEIS team, “our ed services led the work. I knew that [if we didn’t do that] we wouldn’t get the change” the district needed to reduce instances of disproportionality. “The change has to happen in gen ed.” This change requires “shifting the culture,” says Schulze.

 

“We’re still working on that.” She continues to have conversations with her staff “where I’m saying, ‘Nope. That’s the process for all children. Nope. Special ed doesn’t have a different process’”— working to “deeply embed those practices” of inclusion and the belief that all children are general education students first. That, she says, takes time.

 

“Since the pandemic,” she says, “we’ve been having a lot of discussions about ‘challenging behavior is not a disability. The result of trauma is not a disability. Interrupted schooling is not a disability.’” She talks about the importance of constantly reinforcing those facts “so that when you receive a child in your class and there are needs, it is not that immediate, ‘Oh. There must be a disability.’” Instead, she says, “There are things we have to put in place and try and document and work on” before school staff should even consider assessing a child for a disability.

 

 

Pittsburg, Alameda, and Evergreen have done considerable work in additional areas in order to address their disproportionality. They’re creating reliable and coordinated data systems, documenting the effectiveness of interventions, building collaborative teams of general educators and special educators, designing (and insisting on) consistent and effective assessment practices among all district schools, aligning programs and services. And they’re measuring their progress.

 

“Often in education we just try the next best thing,” says Kianidehkian. “We throw it at the wall and hope it sticks.” The work with SPP-TAP, she says, “is not that.” When districts and schools keep at it, this work sticks.

 

“There’s no way to actually measure the changes in someone’s heart,” adds Catalde. “You have to look at behavior. And if we keep at it through what we do, we are headed to change a lot of hearts.”

 

 

New Wave of Evidence: The Impact of School, Family, and Community Connections on Student Achievement by Anne Henderson and Karen Mapp. https://sedl.org/connections/resources/evidence.pdf

 

Scalable Empathic-Mindset Intervention Reduces Group Disparities in School Suspensions by Jason Okonofua. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abj0691

 

Avoiding Racial Equity Detours, by Paul Gorski. http://www.edchange.org/publications/Avoiding-Racial-Equity-Detours-Gorski.pdf

 

General Education Teachers’ Use of Evidence-Based Practices: Examining the Role of Student Race and Risk Status, by Ambra Green. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0198742919883570

 

Misunderstood and Mistreated: Students of Color in Special Education, by Hani Morgan. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED610548.pdf

 

 

 

Local Educational Agencies (LEAs) are not alone in their work to serve students with disabilities. The California Department of Education (CDE)’s Compliance and Improvement Monitoring Process (CIM) helps LEAs to identify the steps needed to ensure equity in special education services.

 

Improving educational results for students with disabilities is the focus of the CDE’s monitoring framework. This framework uses a tiered system that differentiates the level of monitoring and technical assistance support for each LEA based on data analyses and the LEA’s needs.

 

At the core of the monitoring framework is the CIM process. The aim is to support LEAs as they meet program requirements under Part C and Part B of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

 

 

In 2022, the CDE released CIM, a multi-year process taking LEAs through a series of steps with targeted or intensive support based on the status (met or not met) for Annual Performance Report (APR) Indicators. LEAs that do not meet specific targets over a designated period of time can be identified as needing targeted or intensive monitoring support. These LEAs are required to participate and complete the CIM process as part of their ongoing, annual monitoring activity.

 

The CDE recognizes that meaningful improvement likely does not occur in a short period of time and requires a sustained focus on areas in need of improvement in order to lead to positive outcomes for students with disabilities. CIM takes LEAs through a series of steps designed to ask:

1. What is occurring in our system?
2. Why is this happening?
3. How can we address it?
4. And how can we efficiently monitor this plan for the best student outcomes?

 

LEAs assemble a team that is dedicated to answering these questions, and within the steps are a set of activities to guide teams through their improvement efforts.

 

 

In California, LEAs work to meet state APR indicator targets related to students with disabilities. It is the goal of the CDE to meet the statutes of the IDEA, including addressing disproportionate representation by race or ethnicity of a students with a disability. Disproportionality measures seek to ensure proportionate representation by race or ethnicity of a student with a disability by:

• Identification of a disability in general
• Identification of a specific race or ethnicity in a specific disability category
• Discipline
• Placement

 

These measures ensure that each student, regardless of identified race and ethnicity, has access to the least restrictive environment (LRE).

 

From the very first step, the CIM process guides teams as they address the indicators that have not been met. These teams are encouraged to include staff from diverse backgrounds both by race and role.

If it is determined that an LEA has identified a particular race/ethnic group at a statistically higher rate when compared with other groups, then that LEA must participate in the CIM process under the category of disproportionality.

 

Additionally, LEAs work to improve achievement outcomes for students with disabilities, LRE, and graduation rates. When an LEA has been disproportionate for three consecutive years within the same indicators, the LEA is now significantly disproportionate and will participate in a more intensive monitoring process, which includes completing a more comprehensive plan. This plan engages the LEAs in the same step process, with additional requirements such as reserving 15 percent of its 611 and 619 IDEA grant funds to provide services to the group of students being over-identified.

 

The CIM process strives to be inclusive of multiple voices and experiences as well as emphasize the use of both qualitative and quantitative data to drive decision-making. Utilizing specific tools, strategies, and activities (either recommended or required, depending on status), the entire process is designed to keep equity at the forefront of decision-making.

 

The CDE recognizes the importance of building trust and relationships with the educators doing important work with students every day. Working collaboratively in this process will help us to move toward our shared goals. To ensure that LEAs receive the support they need, the CDE has partnered with Technical Assistance (TA) providers who specialize in supporting LEAs based on their individual problems of practice identified in the developed CIM plan. TA providers range from CDE educational program consultants, resource leads from the statewide Systems of Support, and the State Performance Plan  Technical Assistance Project (SPP-TAP). These partnerships allow for a greater reach when providing multiple levels of support to improve outcomes for our students throughout the state of California.

 

 

Let’s walk through the CIM process, which utilizes a variety of methodologies including improvement science. Keep in mind that there are a variety of activities within the steps depending on what is identified. Some of the activities are required, while others are encouraged for greater impact.

 

To begin, LEAs must create a team of partners. The CIM process offers guidance to participating LEAs on how to establish teams of educational partners who will provide oversight of implementation and development. The improvements are based on the unique needs of each LEA after thorough root cause analysis with a diverse team made of both general and special administrators and educators. The teams are encouraged to include parents, teachers, and cabinet-level administrators from both general education and special education for the most comprehensive insight into the system.

Step 1: This step helps teams to discover what is happening by establishing the current reality. From the onset, creating a team of educational partners with a variety of experiences and lenses is crucial. For example, teams are encouraged to have parent voices during this time, bringing their important and unique experiences into the conversation. CIM teams, along with other TA support providers (depending on the level of support needed), collaborate on analyzing collected data so that LEAs gain a greater understanding of how their system produces its current outcomes, which in turn led to their monitoring status. During this initial step, it is crucial that not only are data outcomes assessed for areas of potential bias, but that the same is done for data collection. Addressing these potential biases in Step 1 allows for a stronger foundation during Step 2, determining the root cause.

 

Step 2: Now it is time to dig into the data. Continuing with equity in mind, Step 2 includes conducting a root cause analysis, using the data reviewed in Step 1, through the lens of improvement science methodologies. This evidence-based approach helps teams to uncover gaps in their system that result in monitoring statuses such as disproportionality. The awareness allows for creating testing cycles to drive improvement forward. Prioritizing and establishing root causes in Step 2 help to identify the complex parts of an organization and guide teams through decision-making, planning, and focusing on desired outcomes.

 

Step 3: Teams design and create a plan that they will implement and monitor over a 27-month period. The plan will identify specific measurable goals and activities to achieve the identified goals. The CDE recommends that as teams create these activities and measure them, student outcomes remain at the forefront of actions and decision-making. Honoring the time it takes to create meaningful change, the plan is expected to take several years, during which members of the team monitor their progress and measure it against their expected outcomes in Step 4.

 

Step 4: This is the implementation plan phase when LEAs continue to analyze their data to ensure that the activities outlined are moving the district toward their desired goals. The CIM team meets during this time to assess whether the activities require any adjustment based on new data and is tasked with providing progress reports that assist in ongoing communication about the plan throughout the monitoring cycle.

 

Overall, the new CIM process strives to improve outcomes for students with disabilities by providing more collaboration and support to LEAs. Support is prioritized by need while offering suggested tools to any LEA—in monitoring or not—that wants to evaluate its system. By unifying the monitoring process, the goal of the CDE is to improve equitable practice for students. Interim Associate Director of Special Education Jack Brimhall shares that the “CDE is now moving beyond chasing compliance toward utilizing best practices to improve outcomes.”

 

For more information about targeted monitoring, intensive monitoring, and significant disproportionality, go to: https://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/se/qa/sigdisp.asp.

 

Some children have complex mental health or learning challenges that require them to attend schools far from their neighborhoods—and far from their homes and families. Nonpublic schools (NPSs) are where these children often land. NPSs house, educate, and provide important therapeutic services when parents, guardians, and local schools do not have the resources these children need.

 

 

Nonpublic schools vary significantly in size, scope, and even quality. The last study conducted of these schools by California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO), Special Education: Nonpublic School and Nonpublic Agency Study (1998), raised “questions about the uniform quality of NPS programs” (page 19 of the study). Nonpublic agencies (NPAs) present other challenges. These “private, nonsectarian establishments or individuals provide related services”—speech therapy, for example, or specialized therapies for students with autism—that an Individualized Education Program (IEP) team determines are essential for students with a disability to benefit from their schooling. According to the LAO report, however, for these agencies there is an “absence of state standards regarding accepted methodologies and appropriate levels of service” (page 15).

 

Complicating this aspect of special education is the fact that little data is collected on how children are placed in NPSs, how satisfied schools and families are with the child’s experience, how beneficial the schools and services are overall, and what the long-term outcomes are.

 

Another issue that has caused concern over the years is expense. According to a 2019 study of special education in California conducted by the LAO, a school district “might spend more than $100,000 annually to house a student with severe emotional disturbance in an out-of-state nonpublic school” (page 17). The same study on page 2 reports that the average cost of educating a student with a disability is $26,000 a year. The study also reports that some of the services that nonpublic agencies provide can be intensive, time-consuming, and extremely costly—with no clear guidelines, according to the study, about when they are or are not necessary.

 

Practitioners and parents generally agree that the children served by these organizations are among the state’s most vulnerable, a fact that can make concerns about cost seem heartless. Yet the struggle among many LEAs (local educational agencies: school districts, county offices of education, and some charter schools) to pay for these placements and services is real.

 

The good news is that something is being done to explore the quality and use of nonpublic schools and agencies in an effort to identify the strengths of these organizations and the challenges they face, as well as to provide recommendations for ensuring their effectiveness and efficiency.

 

 

The California Budget Act of 2021 earmarked $500,000 of Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) money for a study of the nonpublic schools and agencies that serve the state’s students. The study is specifically charged with examining “nonpublic school placements for students with exceptional needs, ages 3 to 21. . . and shall include, but not be limited to” an analysis and exploration of the following six areas:

1. How California compares to other states in serving students with complex support needs through specialized schools and contract services, such as nonpublic schools and nonpublic agencies (NPS/As).
2. The placement in NPS/A—both in state and out of state—of California students with exceptional needs, including students’ educational placement prior to NPS/A placement and whether they were involved in the foster care and juvenile justice systems.
3. The process used and the factors considered by Individualized Educational Program (IEP) teams to determine appropriate placements, including the use of legal advocates and assessments to inform placement decisions.
4. Student outcomes in NPS/A placements, including attendance and engagement, measures of behavior and social functioning, and parent or guardian satisfaction.
5. The educational certification process for NPS/As, including monitoring and oversight activities at both the state and local levels to ensure ongoing quality services and supports for students.
6. How to improve interagency coordination between the California Department of Education (CDE) and the California Department of Social Services (CDSS) in certifying and monitoring all components (residential and educational) of NPS/As at state and local levels.

 

 

IDEA requires each local educational agency (LEA) to provide a full continuum of services for its students with disabilities when the disability compromises a child’s ability to learn.

“Few LEAs are able to provide that full continuum,” says Sara Menlove Doutre, a researcher at WestEd and the director of this NPS/As study. When trying to support a child with complicated and unique needs, she says, LEAs can find themselves challenged, especially when the LEA is small. When one of their students requires an NPS placement, school districts often rely on “the support of SELPAs [Special Education Local Plan Areas], cost-pooling, and relationships with other organizations. At some point, most states and LEAs have to use a nonpublic school or agency to provide services.”

 

On placing a student in a nonpublic school, the district pays the cost in full, including any necessary transportation, even if the school is far from the child’s home. IDEA stipulates this responsibility through its mandate for a free and appropriate public education (FAPE) for students with disabilities. When an appropriate education is not available in a student’s home school, the district still must provide it.

 

 

 

Ken Berrick is the founder and chief executive officer emeritus of the Seneca Family of Agencies, which includes a nonpublic school along with numerous other initiatives that support children “through profound difficulties.” In Berrick’s experience, the issue of nonpublic schools and agencies “is complicated.” At their best, he says, they “provide extraordinarily supportive care for students who are in need of highly individualized services. When nonpublic schools are used well and for appropriate reasons, they can be extremely helpful.” (See “They Gave Us Our Child Back.”)

 

At the same time, he says, these schools “have organically grown up to fill a hole”—that hole being the need to provide unique services for a small group of students with complex challenges. As a result, he says, “whatever has grown up has grown up without a plan.”

 

These schools and agencies have also evolved without requirements for reporting comprehensive data. This lack of data about NPS/As and the students who attend them is a major impetus for the new study. “We haven’t looked at these students as a distinct population before,” says Doutre. “We need data that tells us who these kids are, what they need, and how we can better serve them.”

 

“You hear anecdotally,” she says, “that attorneys have a huge influence” on students getting placed in these schools. “If I can afford an attorney,” she says hypothetically, “I may be able to get my child into a nonpublic school and have the school district pay for it because the child has an IEP. And another family may not.” Doutre refers to this disparity as “the equity piece.”

There’s a “mirror version of the same problem,” says Doutre, “for those parents who don’t want to have their children excluded from mainstream education, but who don’t have access to advocacy to move toward full inclusion. So there can be a discriminatory effect in the other direction.” In short, many parents don’t have money to hire lawyers to get them what they want.

 

“The question we’ll struggle with,” in conducting the study, she says, is “How do you make sure there’s access to advocacy that mitigates against both problems?” In other words, how do you make the system equitable?

 

Berrick ticks off a list of possible inappropriate uses of NPS: as an alternative to expulsion, as a way to avoid inclusion in a general education classroom, as a way to side-step costly and time-intensive behavioral support plans. On the other hand, says Berrick, “There are some districts that have virtually no nonpublic school students because their full-inclusion programs are so extraordinary that they’re able to provide most services.”

 

 

Doutre is a veteran researcher on issues related to special education. For years, she says, she has been hearing “the failure stories about NPSs. Kids are dying. Kids are getting locked up. People are hearing so many different stories,” she says, “but it’s all anecdotal. And we’re not hearing about those programs where [the NPS] is integrated, where the public schools and the private schools are working well together in partnership. We need to highlight how NPSs can work best for kids. Then we can recommend an infrastructure and guidelines that make the best use of what does work.”

 

Doutre expects the most challenging aspect of this study to be about placement decisions, which she calls the “black box of decision making. We know very, very little” about how exactly placements happen. “But even if we can interview 100 IEP teams, that is a small fraction of the students who attend nonpublic schools. And it’s really hard to generalize from that.”

 

The task of generalization itself can seem antithetical to special education programs, which are developed from a first principle: individualization. But through the study Doutre says she is hoping to navigate that “tension between the individualized nature,” of the IEP and the need to articulate and recommend effective guardrails and protocols for placement and services.

 

She speculates that one recommendation from the study might be to legislate more money for NPS/As. “But before we do that,” she says, “we need to understand more. We need data telling us about who these kids are, and what they need, and how we can better serve them.”

 

 

“We also need to better understand the role of the state and the role of the LEA in placing the child,” says Doutre. One unique aspect of NPSs in California, she says, is the oversight role the state has assumed.

 

In most states, nonpublic schools are subject to the same basic regulations as any other school—approvals from the fire marshal and from the local department of health, for example—and the LEA is responsible for ensuring appropriate placement. In its oversight responsibilities, California goes further.

 

The CDE visits these schools and decides if they’re appropriate for placement. In total, CDE certifies more than a thousand nonpublic schools and agencies that provide special education services to students with disabilities. The study will examine how placements are being coordinated across agencies and explore who should be responsible for ensuring NPS quality and effectiveness. “Should CDE take that on?” says Doutre. “Or should the LEAs take that on?”

 

 

More than 100 California students are placed in nonpublic schools in other states. This pattern of placement is yet another issue the study will explore. “If the goal is to re-integrate students into their homes and their communities,” says Doutre, “how does it help these kids to be in Kansas or Illinois?” The study will explore “what is missing from the services in California that leads school districts to send students out of state. Is it just less expensive to fly a child somewhere and fly them back than it is to place them in a California setting? Or are there not enough or varied placement options in California?”

 

 

The NPS/NPAs study has begun. Surveys are being sent “to every NPS and to every LEA and SELPA that has placed a student in an NPS,” says Doutre. “Then we will be asking them to distribute survey links to their families.” Doutre hopes to connect with “all different types of families. That’s going to be our entry point to get information.” From there, the study will conduct focus groups and school visits through the spring of 2024, with the goal of getting “as broad an engagement as possible.”

 

The study is generating some fear, admits Doutre. “School districts rely on these NPSs. And if they become less available” because of unfavorable findings, or if they become prohibitively expensive or because the study leads to increased requirements that make the schools impossibly expensive to operate, some school districts will find themselves in a bind.

 

“Everyone recognizes that we can’t serve kids with complicated issues without NPSs and agencies,” says Doutre. “They are a necessary component of our continuum of placement.”

 

 

Doutre sees community schools as one possible bright spot the study might be able to highlight as a way to improve services for the students with complex support needs. “The answer may be in public-private relationships between community schools, nonpublic schools, and agencies that can provide the needed services in a more wrap-around way when they work together,” says Doutre.

 

Berrick has for years advocated for a state-wide coordinated system of care as the best answer to serving the state’s most vulnerable students. “The current multi-system nature of public education in the state,” he says, precludes effective services. “You must have crossover with integrated behavioral health systems that can deeply support children.” But, says Doutre, “it’s hard to know how nonpublic schools fit in when we don’t have the data.”

 

Coordination among agencies, such as between California Health and Human Services and NPSs, “is working so well in some places,” says Doutre, “and not as well in others. We hope to point out the problems but then also highlight some models that are working well for kids.”

 

Doutre says she hopes the study will help all invested educational partners know what placement in a nonpublic school or services from a nonpublic agency should look like, where more work needs to be done, where the state’s oversight focus should be,” and especially, she says, around the decision-making process that IEP teams use to place students.

 

The study is scheduled to be completed in September 2024.

 

 

Imagine walking into a room filled with faces you do not recognize, engaging in conversations laden with jargon or topics foreign to you. Despite the warm welcomes, you can’t shake the feeling of alienation. You’re included, yes, but you feel like a puzzle piece forced into the wrong slot.

 

This feeling is something that many individuals experience in various settings, and parallels can be drawn to the experiences of students with disabilities in inclusive classrooms. The intention behind inclusion, promoting equality and access to quality education for all students, is noble and necessary. However, physical presence in a classroom does not automatically equate to emotional and social belonging.

Inclusion is the starting line, the necessary foundation upon which we build. It ensures that students with disabilities have access to the same educational opportunities. Yet inclusion does not automatically dissolve the invisible barriers that create feelings of isolation despite being surrounded by peers.

 

Belonging transcends the act of inclusion. It fosters an emotional connection, a feeling that one is not just merely present but is a valued member of the school community. Belonging is characterized by mutual respect, meaningful involvement, and the recognition of everyone’s intrinsic value and potential. It’s an environment where differences are not just accommodated but celebrated.

 

Abraham Maslow, in his well-known hierarchy of human needs[1], identified “belonging” as part of the third level of need, just after physiological and safety needs.

 

The SWIFT Education Center has highlighted a profound concept that prompts a reevaluation of our strategies: the idea of “Rightful Presence.” This principle asserts that a culture of true belonging is rooted in the recognition that every individual has a legitimate place in schools. It is this rightful presence that dismantles the traditional guest/host power dynamic inherent in many inclusion efforts.

 

According to SWIFT, an inclusion policy maintains the outdated dichotomy between those who are “invited” to participate (i.e., included) and those who hold the power to extend the invitation. In this dynamic, students with disabilities may be granted access to general education settings, but this access does not necessarily involve deep connections and status within the school community. The students remain guests, subject to the terms and conditions set by their hosts. Such a scenario can hardly be the bedrock for substantial change.

 

True belonging, on the other hand, dismisses the notion that some are inherently more entitled to occupy a space than others. It recognizes the inherent value of the disenfranchised, asserting that their presence is as rightful as that of any other student. It is a fundamental shift from viewing students with disabilities as outsiders who need to be integrated into the mainstream, to seeing them as integral members of the educational community whose contributions are expected and valued.

 

Both special and general educators can cultivate a culture of rightful presence by reshaping the ethos and practices of their classrooms and schools. This begins with a presumption that students with disabilities are core members of the classroom whose experiences and perspectives are vital to the richness of the learning environment.

 

Educators must actively challenge the guest/host dynamic. This involves questioning practices that might inadvertently uphold the idea that students with disabilities need to earn their place or that their inclusion is conditional upon adapting to pre-existing norms. It’s about ensuring that all students feel they are a natural part of the school community, not because they have been allowed entry, but because it is their rightful place.

 

As we reflect on our practices and beliefs, it’s crucial to consider how we might be perpetuating the guest/host dynamic, even unintentionally. Are we truly treating all students as if they have a rightful place in our classrooms? Do our actions and words communicate that every student’s presence is valued and essential to the community?

 

By embracing the concept of rightful presence, we move beyond the limitations of inclusion towards a more profound sense of belonging. This transition requires a concerted effort to redefine our perceptions of normalcy and success in the classroom. It’s about creating a new norm that celebrates diversity, values all contributions, and views the participation of students with disabilities as an essential part of the classroom.

 

For information about the California Advisory Commission on Special Education, go to https://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/se/as/acse.asp

 

 

[1] Maslow, A. (1970). Motivation and Personality. New York: Harper & Row.