Effective Inclusive Schools: Designing Successful Schoolwide Programs

By Thomas Hehir and Lauren I. Katzman

How to raise the achievement of all kids, from gifted to those with severe disabilities

This book presents lessons learned from in-depth case studies of some of our most effective inclusive public schools. The authors conclusively demonstrate that schools can educate students with mild and severe disabilities in general education classrooms by providing special education services that link to and bolster general education instruction. This goes beyond complying with Special Education law; having a truly inclusive environment raises the achievement level for all students and results in more committed and satisfied teachers.

Insights shared from teachers, school leaders, parents, and the students themselves provide a path forward for anyone striving to Improve special education services. The authors reveal what these exemplary schools do that makes them so successful, and provide advice for readers who want to incorporate these practices themselves.

• Hehir, former U.S. Office of Special Education (OSEP) Director, is a leading name in Special Education
• Highlights the important relationships between administrators, teachers, and parents to foster maximum collaboration between general and special education
• Includes information on committing to Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Positive Behavior Supports

This vital resource zeroes in on what excellent public schools do differently to ensure all students succeed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: Jan 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9781118133651

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

This book began out of our desire to show what successful inclusion really looks like. We have seen firsthand that—contrary to overwhelming evidence that paints a rather bleak picture of special education—there are individual schools across the country that have been quite successful in providing effective inclusion for kids with disabilities.

We set out to find schools that were doing inclusion right, where kids with disabilities, from mild to significant, were enjoying success in general education classrooms alongside their typically developing peers. Our goal was to find out exactly what the teachers and the leaders were doing at these exemplary schools so that we could help inform other schools that are still struggling with how best to set up their own inclusive programs.

Our goal was to find out exactly what the teachers and the leaders were doing at these exemplary schools.

The study on which this book is based examined in-depth three effective schools located in Boston, the largest urban district in Massachusetts. To understand how these schools worked, we spent one year speaking with teachers, administrators, and parents, observing classes and examining school data. Using a multiple case study design,¹ we examined the perceptions and activities of these teachers, administrators, and parents within and across the schools. In particular, we focused on the schools’ missions, their instructional practices, their leadership structures, and finally, the nature of the relationships among their faculty and staff. We wanted to identify what was behind the success of these schools through in-depth discussions with faculty, staff, and students as well as extensive observations of classrooms.

We have also included mini-cases involving two other suburban Boston schools. These schools were chosen because they exemplify the culture and practices of the three original schools in the study.

Beyond the issue of integration and its potential impact on student outcomes, in this book we view inclusion from the broader lens of societal change and civil rights for people with disabilities. We consider inclusion of children with disabilities in schooling to be an essential element in eliminating the ableism we discussed in the Preface.

We strongly support educating most students with disabilities—including those with significant disabilities—in general education settings most of the time. In our view, inclusive education is a civil rights imperative integral to the efforts of the disability community to improve the status of disabled people and an educational imperative central to improving educational outcomes for children and youth with disabilities. Research consistently shows that more time in general education classrooms is associated with better outcomes for students,² regardless of race, class, gender, and type of disability.

The News on Inclusion Is (Mostly) Promising

More integration of students with disabilities into general education classrooms is occurring, and there is some evidence that outcomes for many students with disabilities are improving. From 1993 to 2003, major improvements in school completion rates, great enrollment in postsecondary education participation, and gains in employment have occurred.³ These improvements included:

Seventy percent of the 2003 cohort youth with disabilities completed high school, an increase of 17 percentage points in graduation and a decrease of 30 percent in the dropout rate.

Youth with emotional disturbances, a group that averaged more than 65 percent dropout rate, demonstrated a substantial improvement (16 percentage points) in their school completion rate.

The rate of postsecondary education participation by youth with disabilities more than doubled over time, with 32 percent of the 2003 cohort enrolling in a two- or four-year college or postsecondary school within two years of graduation.

In 2003, 70 percent of youth with disabilities who had been out of school up to two years had worked for pay at some time since leaving high school, up from 55 percent in 1987.

Most of the gains experienced by students with disabilities are due to improvements in outcomes of children from middle-income and upper-income homes. Unfortunately, the outcomes of students with disabilities from low-income homes are largely flat.⁴ Low-income children and children of color are not enjoying the same improvement in outcomes experienced by their White and more affluent counterparts. Further, they are less apt to be integrated into general education settings.⁵ From 1987 to 2003, the following findings emerge:

Youth from households in the lowest-income group did not have a significant improvement in postsecondary education participation, continuing the gap between income groups that existed in 1987.

Youth from the lowest-income households did not share with their highest-income peers an increase in employment since leaving high school, so that they lagged significantly behind that group on that measure, as well as on their rate of current employment.

Only White youth with disabilities experienced a significant increase in postsecondary education enrollment overall and in the pursuit of both employment and postsecondary education since high school.⁶

How We Identified Successful Schools

The selection criteria were designed to identify successful schools that were inclusive of students with a range of disabilities and had strong academic outcomes for both students with and without disabilities. We selected schools based on the following criteria:

Schools had to have higher large-scale test scores for students with disabilities as well as those without disabilities than what would be predicted by socioeconomic class, race, and disability. These test scores had to have been consistently high for at least three years. We sought schools that, in the case of high schools, had low dropout rates, and for all levels, schools with low suspension and expulsion rates.

The schools had to be inclusive of students with disabilities. Our functional definition of inclusive required that schools educated children with disabilities predominately in general education classrooms, with no children placed in separate special education classrooms for the majority of the day. We also sought evidence that the schools were intentionally inclusive through school mission statements and school websites.

We sought schools that enrolled a broad range of students with disabilities. A school was considered to be enrolling a broad range of students if it enrolled students with both high-incidence disabilities, like dyslexia, and low-incidence disabilities (those that occur in less than 1 percent of the population), such as deafness, intellectual or developmental disability, or autism.

The schools had very low suspension and transfer rates.

The selection criteria were designed to identify successful schools that were inclusive of students with a range of disabilities and had strong academic outcomes for both students with and without disabilities.

Applying these criteria to a broad array of Boston schools initially yielded five schools. One was dropped as a potential site because the principal was new; another, a large comprehensive high school, was dropped because it was divided into three small schools as a part of an overall high school reform initiative in the district. The final sample included two elementary schools, the William T. Henderson⁷ (Henderson) and the Samuel Mason (Mason), and one high school, the Boston Arts Academy (BAA), all located in the city of Boston.

For more detailed information on the schools’ academic data, and on how our research study was designed and conducted, please see Appendix B.

HOW THESE SCHOOLS DIFFERED FROM THE NORM

Although these were all public schools located in one urban school district, they differed in some fundamental ways from typical schools. The Henderson was a regular public school designed since 1989 to be inclusive of students with significant disabilities and had a non-naturally occurring population of these students that exceeded 30 percent. BAA and Mason were pilot schools, charter-like schools within the school district that have autonomy over their budgets, staffing, curricula, and school calendars while adhering to all other guidelines of the school district. BAA was an arts academy that required students to audition to enroll; the auditions were based on artistic potential or ability and did not consider other criteria such as academics or disability.

Though these schools appear very different in many ways, they were similar to each other in culture, classroom practices, and administrative structures. In all three schools, the desire to provide high-quality education to all students, particularly those with complex needs, spurred innovation.

In all three schools, the desire to provide high-quality education to all students, particularly those with complex needs, spurred innovation.

As we began to discuss our finding with colleagues and students, it became clear that the findings of this study were also applicable to non-urban, non-Boston schools as well. All schools must educate students with disabilities, and the issues associated with poverty so prevalent in urban schools exist throughout the nation. We therefore chose to add mini-cases involving three other schools. One, the Tucker, is a suburban elementary school outside of Boston in Milton, Massachusetts. This racially diverse school was challenged with a significant overplacement of students of color within special education and overall poor literacy scores. The school implemented a highly effective response to intervention (RTI) program in the primary grades that not only resulted in a decrease of referrals of children of color to special education but an overall improvement in literacy. This school exemplifies the importance of establishing collaborative, problem-solving cultures, so evident in the three schools in Boston, within a suburban context.

The second mini-case is a large suburban high school, Newton North, in Newton, Massachusetts. We highlight a program within the school that educates students with significant developmental disabilities within an inclusive environment. The students in this program benefit from an inclusive individualized high school experience as well as a highly effective transition program that prepares students to live and work in the community.

HOW THIS BOOK IS ORGANIZED

We believe that these schools can offer lessons for all schools, and we have organized this book to illustrate these lessons. Part One focuses on the schools and their leaders. In Chapter One we provide in-depth descriptions of the schools. We want readers to enter into these schools, to feel their environments, and to get a sense of the adults and kids within them. We have also included in the text some links to YouTube videos to give readers a deeper understanding of what these schools are doing that contributes to their success.

We look in Chapter Two at these schools’ leaders, how they do their work, and how they change to meet the needs of their students. We discuss the importance of their leaders establishing a vision for these schools. The influence of the school leaders on the culture and effectiveness is so profound that we provide a description of each of the leaders and how they came to value a culture of inclusiveness.

In Part Two we continue the discussion of school culture in the context of organizational literature concerning school change and improvement. Though some readers might find this a bit dense, we believe this is important to a central lesson in this book. For schools to be effective for all students, including those with complex needs, they need to become collaborative problem-solving organizations, as discussed in Chapter Three. Central to this lesson may indeed be that schools may need to question some of the typical traditional practices and structures if they are going to be equitable and effective institutions for all children.

In Chapter Four we focus on how becoming collaborative problem-solving organizations has changed the relationships of the teachers and administrators within these schools. Such changes, while potentially difficult, often lead to greater job satisfaction for both teachers and school leaders. Indeed, these schools have highly stable staffs, with few teachers leaving and many outside applicants applying for vacancies when they become available. The positive relationships that exist within these schools extend to parents and the broader community as well.

Chapter Five deals with the practices these schools engage in that we believe are behind their demonstrable success. We begin with identifying those administrative actions that have laid the foundation for improved teaching and learning at the classroom level. We ground this discussion in the four frames of leadership developed by Bolman and Deal in their book Reframing Organizations.⁸ These frames look at the behavior of leaders in relationship to organizational frames concerning structure, symbols, human resources, and politics. We then move to the classroom and identify strong practices common to all these schools that likely account for their strong results. The lens through which we observed classrooms was rooted in universal design for learning or UDL.⁹ Though not all teachers explicitly acknowledged the principles of UDL, their teaching practices exemplified them. UDL is based on three compelling principles:

Material should be presented to students in multiple ways, thus allowing the greatest number of children to access the material.

Students should have multiple ways to demonstrate what they know and are able to do.

Instruction must engage students in multiple ways.

The inclusion of students with diverse needs, particularly those with significant disabilities, within these problem-solving cultures led teachers to these principles naturally.

In Part Three, Chapter Six, we discuss the external policy context that affected these schools. We were frankly surprised at how influential local, state, and federal policies and programs were on the schools we studied. The notion, often promoted by charter advocates, that schools need to become freestanding entrepreneurial entities freed of bureaucracy was not supported by this study. These schools were strongly influenced by external policy in a mostly positive manner. Strong civil rights laws laid the foundation for the inclusiveness these schools exemplified across racial, linguistic, and disability lines. The schools used local, state, and federal grant programs to expand their capacities, particularly in teacher development. This is not to say that the schools did not encounter bureaucratic barriers. They did. However, the influence of policy on these schools was significant and complex and required the significant attention of school leaders and, at times, teachers. In Chapter 8 we end by proposing ways that local, state, and federal policy might be better aligned to promote the development of more schools like the exemplary ones profiled in this book.

We hope that telling the story of these highly effective schools will encourage other teachers and school leaders to begin the difficult, rewarding work of promoting improved educational opportunity for all children. We believe there are lessons in the book for the individual teacher who, though he or she might not be working in an exemplary school, can improve his or her own classroom practice through implementing principles of universal design. Further, it is our hope that that educators might find similarly minded colleagues with whom they may work to promote more collaborative, problem-solving cultures within their schools. We also hope that school principals and district leaders will embrace the example of leadership portrayed in this book and develop schools that are accessible and effective for all children. Finally, we seek a day when district, state, and federal policy makers go beyond simply mandating adequate yearly progress to recognizing the importance of developing policies and programs that promote the difficult work of making schools accessible and effective for all students. This can be done.

Notes

1. Patton, M. Q. Qualitative Research and Evaluation Methods, 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2002.

2. Wagner, M. The Early Post-High-School Years for Youth with Disabilities. In M. Wagner, L. Newman, R. Cameto, N. Garza, and P. Levine, After High School: A First Look at the Postschool Experiences of Youth with Disabilities. A Report from the National Longitudinal Transition Study-2 (NLTS-2) (pp. 1–6). Menlo Park, CA: SRI International, 2005. Available at: http://www.nlts2.org/reports/2005_04/index.xhtml

3. Ibid.

4. National Longitudinal Transition Study-2 (NLTS-2), U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP 2001–2011) and Institute of Education Sciences (IES 2000–2011), is a follow-up of the original National Longitudinal Transition Study. The original NLTS was designed and conducted by SRI International for OSEP from 1985 through 1993. Available at: http://www.nlts2.org/

5. Wagner et al., After High School.

6. Originally named the Patrick O'Hearn Elementary, its name was changed to the William T. Henderson Elementary Inclusion School in 2009, after Bill Henderson's retirement.

7. Bolman, L., and Deal, T. Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice and Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997, pp. 3–17, 280–293, 294–317.

8. Rose, D., and Meyer, A. Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age: Universal Design for Learning. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2002; Hehir, Thomas. New Directions in Special Education: Eliminating Ableism in Policy and Practice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2005.

9. The NLTS-2 conceptual framework and research questions are designed to allow analyses of the relationships between NLTS-2 data and data generated by Office of Special Education Programs’ (OSEP) Special Education Elementary Longitudinal Study (SEELS). This six-year study, following a group of students in special education (six to twelve years old as of September 1, 1999), assessed the experiences and achievements of students as they transitioned from elementary to middle and middle to high school. The overlap of NLTS-2 and SEELS students in high school permit linkage of the early school factors measured in SEELS with postschool experiences measured in NLTS2. Available at: http://www.seels.net/grindex.xhtml

PART ONE

The Schools and Their Leaders

CHAPTER ONE

The Schools

This book began out of our desire to document successful inclusive education in urban schools. We therefore sought to look deeply at practices within highly successful inclusive schools. We chose three Boston schools that fit our criteria: the Patrick O'Hearn Elementary School (O'Hearn; later renamed the William T. Henderson Elementary Inclusion School), the Samuel Mason Elementary School, and the Boston Arts Academy (BAA), a high school. After we began this study and began presenting our findings to various groups, we were informed by many suburban and rural educators that the lessons learned from these urban schools have applicability to their schools, so we augmented our studies with two suburban schools that appeared very similar in practice to the urban schools. In this chapter we give the reader a detailed picture of the three urban schools studied. We also encourage readers to enhance their understanding of these schools by viewing the YouTube video links provided.

PATRICK O'HEARN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

A magical mix of teachers, parents, the students, and Bill Henderson was how one parent described the William T. Henderson Elementary Inclusion School. The O'Hearn was a school known for educating students so effectively that parents who were eligible to enroll their children in the city's elite exam schools chose rather to stay at the O'Hearn. It was a school known for its inclusive practices. Its principal, Dr. William Henderson, was so well respected that when he retired in 2009, the mayor of Boston proclaimed June 23 William Henderson Day and renamed the school the William T. Henderson Elementary Inclusion School.

We introduce this school by describing its 2007 annual African American history student performance, Dare to Dream: Sharing African American History Through Storytelling. The performers and the audience were a racially diverse mix of Black (likely some African American, Caribbean, and South American), Asian, and White. Among students, there was also diversity in disability; some students used wheelchairs, some had visible intellectual disabilities, some had Down syndrome, and there were many students with disabilities that were not visible. Disability at the O'Hearn was as typical an aspect of diversity as racial diversity. A parent of a student without a disability explained, The children there really end up learning about and caring for others, just the diversity of the world.

The show included students reciting a twenty-minute Langston Hughes poem, students in a traditional African drumming circle, some dancing to the drums, tap dancers, and a performance of a play based on the African folk tale Why Anansi Has Eight Thin Legs, complete with the spider, the rabbit, and the monkey. Perhaps the loudest applause came when a student with a significant intellectual disability and limited verbal skills walked across stage, and in a low guttural voice sounding like the real Cab Calloway, belted out the words Well, hello Dolly! that Calloway was famous for. Those in the audience knew what an accomplishment this was for the child, and the already enthusiastic applause intensified for him.

The celebration culminated with all students on stage singing two gospel songs, and the audience clapping along with them. In the group, there was a White student with autism, eyes half-closed, shaking her hands in the air as if she were at a traditional Black church service, surrounded by her peers, many of whom are Black. She was belting out the songs, utterly out of tune. Also on stage was another girl with autism who had her fingers in her ears, and although she was not singing, she was standing next to her peers and swaying to the music with her classmates. These children did not stand out in this environment, because students with visible disabilities participate in all school performances. This is a community that appears to know one another and is clearly comfortable across racial, class, and disability lines.

At the end of the show Dr. Henderson spoke to parents about how wonderful their children were and how proud he was of each of them, as well as his talented teachers and staff, calling them out by name. Mary, a teacher at the school, said that one of the best things about Bill is that he knows the kids that need to be known.. . .On the first day of school, when he was naming specific kids in the school that everybody on the staff has to know and has to be able to help out and be aware of, for me, as a special ed teacher who has worked in a school where the principal doesn't ever come to my classroom because I'm the special ed classroom, to have our principal talk about the kids that I will be teaching and caring about them that much, that's one of my favorite things about him and about being at this school.

To learn more about the Henderson, view the videos on YouTube, www.youtube.com, by entering William Henderson Inclusion School.

Looking Back with Pride

Dr. Henderson has reason to be proud of his students and teachers. Since 1989, when he became the school's principal, the O'Hearn had grown from an underperforming school with student vacancies to a school with a higher percentage of students with and without disabilities passing the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) in the fourth grade than the overall percentage of the Boston public schools.¹ Instead of vacancies, the school now has a waiting list of parents who want their children, those with and those without disabilities, to attend. Since 1989, the school has evolved from providing special education services in segregated settings, such as special education classes and resources rooms, to providing the overwhelming majority of their special education services in the general education classroom.

Mary, a parent of one child with a disability and one without a disability who both attended the O'Hearn, explained her appreciation for the school: The children there really end up learning about [and] caring for others, just the diversity of the world. Not everybody's on the same page and same level. And there's been times when. . .my so-called typical [daughter] has gone places and. . .people are really surprised [about] how she doesn't stare when she meets somebody. She can talk to any child, is not afraid. And they go, ‘Wow.’ And I'm like, ‘She goes to the O'Hearn.’

The O'Hearn is located in Dorchester, a section of Boston with a mix of African American, Irish, and Vietnamese residents. Most students were enrolled at the O'Hearn through a lottery process. Boston has a rather elaborate student assignment process in which parents were given a number of schools they could choose from, and each school is then subject to a lottery. The choice system gave preference to children with siblings who attended the school and whether the school was designated as the child's walk school preference.

During the 2004–2005 school year, the O'Hearn enrolled 221 students. Approximately 47 percent were African American, 28 percent White, 8 percent Asian, 6 percent multi-race, and 5 percent were Hispanic or Native American. (See Table B.5 in Appendix B.) Of this population of students, 34 percent received special education services, a percentage high above the national average of approximately 12 percent. The range of student disabilities was vast. The majority of students had milder and high-incidence disabilities, such as learning disabilities. There was also a population of students with more significant and low-incidence disabilities, such as intellectual disabilities, autism, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, and students who were medically fragile.

Each classroom at the O'Hearn had two teachers, one certified in elementary education and the other in special education. With such a high percentage of students with disabilities in the school, Henderson was able