Designing for Inclusion: Universal Design for Learning as a Catalyst in the IEP Process

By Robin Cunconan-Lahr, Barb Gentille Green and Lindsay E Jones

In Designing for Inclusion, Robin Cunconan-Lahr and Barb Gentille Green offer Individualized Education Programs (IEP) team members-including educators, school administrators, caregivers and families, and students themselves

• Language: English
• Publisher: CAST, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 12, 2024
• ISBN: 9781943085231

Robin Cunconan-Lahr

Robin is an attorney and educator focusing her work in on disability rights advocacy. She has spent most of her legal career assisting families and students with disabilities in matters of special education law ensuring their rights under the IDEA. She also works to effectuate disability policy that impacts laws, attitudes, and systems change in order to create and sustain equitable and inclusive practices. Robin's work in higher education concentrates on preparing students who are on a career pathway to becoming educators. Through teaching and consulting, she informs and models the UDL framework to both current and future practitioners in the field, including those working in early childhood or school- age classrooms. Connect with Robin at innovatingforjusticelegal.com, on LinkedIn, or follow her on X at @RCunconanLahr.

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© 2024 CAST, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the Publisher.

ISBN (paperback) 978-1-943085-22-4

ISBN (e-book) 978-1-943085-23-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023948223

Cover, Design, Illustrations, and Composition by Endpaper Studio. www.endpaperstudio.com

Cover Photo: © Used with permission. All rights reserved.

Editorial production by Christine Marra, Marrathon Production Services. www.marrathoneditorial.org

Legal Disclaimer: This book provides a general discussion of the law and is not intended to constitute legal advice. Application and interpretation of the legal content contained herein differ. If, after reading this publication, you have questions about how the law applies to your particular situation and circumstances, contact someone of your choice who is qualified to provide legal advice.

Published by CAST Professional Publishing, an imprint of CAST, Inc., Lynnfield, Massachusetts, USA

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please email [e-mail] or visit publishing.cast.org

CONTENTS

Foreword

Introduction

PART A | The Educational Right to Inclusion

CHAPTER 1

History and Overview of Special Education Law

CHAPTER 2

Unpacking Key Concepts from the IDEA

CHAPTER 3

Significant Court Cases and How They Impact IEP Team Practices.

PART B | Inclusive Practices: UDL Premises and Principles

CHAPTER 4

Introducing Universal Design for Learning

CHAPTER 5

UDL Implications for IEP Teams: The Inclusive Mindset

PART C | Inclusion: Action Through UDL

CHAPTER 6

UDL Solutions to Support Inclusive Practices

CHAPTER 7

Making an Inclusive Community by Honoring Voice

Afterword: A Final Gathering

Acknowledgments

References

Index

About the Authors

FOREWORD

Lindsay Jones, Esq.

Chief Executive Officer, CAST

If you are reading this, it’s because you want to improve the learning experience for a student (or students) with disabilities. You may be an educator or a caregiver or an advocate. Maybe you’re the student! You want to know what rights are promised to all public school students. And you want some tools and strategies to help you participate in the process of designing and carrying out an Individualized Education Program (IEP).

I’ve got good news for you. You’re in good hands with these two authors, Robin Cunconan-Lahr and Barb Gentille Green. In this first-of-its-kind book, Robin and Barb share their wisdom and expertise in both the IEP process and Universal Design for Learning (UDL), a research-based framework for ensuring inclusive and effective educational experiences. Robin is a disability-rights attorney and special education professor in Pennsylvania. Barb is a special education expert working in Ohio schools. Both are active participants in the growing community of UDL practitioners and advocates.

You know the history. Prior to 1975, children with disabilities were routinely denied entrance to school. Those who did attend often had few genuine learning opportunities. In 1970, just one out of five children with disabilities received an education in the United States, according to the US Department of Education. Nearly two million were shut out.

That changed in 1975 when the United States Congress passed the law now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which guaranteed children with disabilities the right to a free and appropriate public education. As part of that effort, each student was given the right to an IEP. The IEP would be codesigned by schools and families to ensure that students’ particular needs were taken into consideration.

Educators and families alike soon realized, of course, that simply providing access to school buildings and classrooms did not guarantee access to learning, nor did the writing of an IEP. Making education truly appropriate would require a rethinking of how learning goals, methods, materials, and assessments were designed and delivered to students with disabilities.

At CAST—an education nonprofit created in 1984 to explore ways of using what were then new technologies, such as the personal computer, to make learning environments more accessible—researchers and clinicians began crafting a framework called Universal Design for Learning (UDL). The fundamental idea behind UDL is to design learning experiences that are flexible enough to meet the needs of the many different learners that come to a typical classroom, including students with disabilities.

In this book, Robin and Barb offer a crisply written overview of the law, an introduction to UDL’s principles and Guidelines, and a rich discussion of how both can inform the codesign of IEPs. Throughout the book, they lead readers to a Gathering Room, where together IEP team members ask probing questions, shore up their understanding, and make commitments to act on what they are learning. In an engaging and conversational way, Robin and Barb have done more than write a book: They have made a safe and welcoming experience for IEP team members to explore together the many ways to provide access not only to school settings but to deep learning itself. They offer team members a common vocabulary so that everyone can, quite literally, get on the same page.

Most of all, they elevate the role of honoring the voices of everyone involved in the IEP process. Writing an IEP is much more than a bureaucratic or administrative task. It is even more than an educational one. Writing an IEP is a process that is suffused with the dreams and hopes of students, who want to learn; of caregivers and families, who want to create a bright future for their loved ones; and of teachers and administrators, who genuinely want all the learners entrusted to them to succeed. As Robin and Barb write:

Honoring voice is about designing for a full and valued presence . . . a presence that affirms learner variability. It is a designed presence that erases any doubts of belonging because it shows what belonging looks like through the voice of families and students.

Designing for Inclusion is a timely and welcome resource to help everyone involved in IEP design navigate important discussions about inclusive learning and find a common path to support students in pursuit of their dreams.

INTRODUCTION

When Robin’s family tried to enroll her in public school in 1960, she was denied access. So that she could attend school, her parents, along with four other families, advocated for the development of a school program through a county board of mental retardation, and Robin graduated from that separate educational program. She never attended the public school that her siblings did.

Before the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) secured educational rights for students with disabilities, Robin, like many others, was denied access to a free public school education. If Robin were born today, she would have the right to be educated in a public school and very possibly in her neighborhood school. Today, many students with disabilities are in their neighborhood schools. But are they receiving the support and services to be educated alongside their peers? In ways that respond to their unique ways of learning? With high expectations? And do they experience a full and valued presence?

Unfortunately, we hear families and educators alike answer these questions with a definitive no. The IDEA, through its IEP (Individualized Education Program) process, offers a strategic and collaborative way to develop education programs that are uniquely designed to meet student needs within inclusive learning spaces. This process is the legal mechanism for families, educators, and learners to collectively create an IEP. The IEP is a written contract that lays out the instruction, support, and services necessary for students to achieve success in school. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is an inclusive framework. As such, it provides a structure with which IEP teams can equitably design an inclusive educational community as part of the IEP process.

The purpose of this book is to empower IEP teams by providing background knowledge of the landmark special education law and showing how the use of UDL can remove or minimize barriers so that every learner experiences a full and valued presence.

Barb’s cousin, Robin—artist, writer, and dedicated employee. Photo courtesy of Jill Morrow

Why This Book and Why Now?

Despite the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act’s (IDEA’s) legal requirement that students with and without disabilities are to be educated together, this is not the reality for many families. Too many students with Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) either remain excluded from general education or experience exclusion within general education classrooms. Numerous barriers to inclusive community continue to exist in school districts and in school systems across the United States. Although the need and desire for change and creative solutions are recognized by families and educators alike, change is slow and comes at the expense of our learners. We have asked ourselves: Is it possible that a lack of an intentional plan or framework to implement the IDEA has impacted the slow pace of change?

In this book we will demonstrate how Universal Design for Learning (UDL) can honor family and learner voice to impact change through the IEP process as a way to build inclusive community. We will demonstrate ways in which UDL offers a proactive solution to jumpstart the inclusive practices that Congress envisioned with the passage of the IDEA. Through examples and scenarios, we will examine how UDL identifies and proactively minimizes barriers to inclusion. We will highlight how, through application of the UDL framework to IEP processes, we can break down the silos of general education and special education—paving the way to inclusive learning communities where every learner experiences a full and valued presence.

This book will also explore the impact that mindset has on implementation of the IDEA through the design of educational environments as well as the impact on IEP team decisions. Although the IEP process is designed to address the unique needs of learners with disabilities, it often leads to the unintended consequence of viewing the learner primarily through a deficit lens—what the learner can’t do or has difficulty doing. As a result, educational planning and programs are initially driven through the lens of deficit. Moreover, traditional special education service delivery models were developed based on that deficit lens. Those models are still common today, supporting a status quo that is outdated and that presents barriers to inclusive practices. We will offer actions, informed by UDL, that lead to changes in mindset, IEP practices, and ultimately in the development of authentic inclusive educational communities.

We purposefully wrote this book for IEP teams, which collectively include families, students, and educators. Each participant maintains a specific role and unique perspective, yet collectively they are given the opportunity to collaborate to reach their common goal: positive educational experiences and outcomes. Therefore, we believe it is important that conversations intended to challenge IEP teams to think and act differently must come together in one space rather than remain separate from one another. We believe this is especially important so that students, who are the recipients of special education services, can see themselves and their voice represented throughout the IEP process.

Last, we remind ourselves and our readers that although this book is written primarily through a