Reimagining Special Education

Using Inclusion as a Framework to Build Equity and Support All Students

by Jenna Mancini Rufo, Ed.D. empowerED School Solutions Collegeville, Pennsylvania

and Julie Causton, Ph.D. Inclusive Schooling Manilus, New York

Baltimore • London • Sydney

Excerpt from Reimagining Special Education Using Inclusion as a Framework to Build Equity and Support All Students by Jenna Mancini Rufo, Ed.D. & Julie Causton, Ph.D.

About the Authors

Jenna Mancini Rufo, Ed.D.

Dr. Jenna Mancini Rufo is an experienced public school leader turned inclusive education consultant. She has practical experience in leading systems change for inclusion and is passionate about providing quality programs for all students.

Julie Causton, Ph.D.

Dr. Julie Causton is the founder and CEO of Inclusive Schooling. She has spent 20 years studying best practices for inclusive education and works with educators across the United States to promote and improve inclusive practices.

Resetting School

Lessons Learned From COVID-19 Remote Instruction

We have a unique opportunity before us to press pause and reset school. What has always worked well in school? Did it work well for all students? What hasn’t worked well? Now more than ever, we can take a close look at the old routines of schools and classrooms and keep the most effective pieces, let go of the practices that don’t serve students, and create new, unimagined routines and environments. This chapter begins by briefly reviewing our educational system, highlighting the key moments where calls for change have occurred over the years.

A SYSTEM LONG OVERDUE FOR CHANGE

For just about as long as schools have existed, there have been debates about how to improve education. Over the past century, particularly, we have seen calls to move beyond what has been criticized as a factory model of education—a system characterized by uniformity and rigidity. This system was designed to prepare students for an industrial age that was governed by hard work, schedules, and factory whistles.

Nearly 20 years after Brown v. Board of Education (1954) found that separate or segregated education was inherently unequal, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 required that students with disabilities receive a free appropriate public education.

Yet, despite nearly 50 years of legislation aimed at improving educational outcomes for students with disabilities through increased access and inclusion, only 63.4% of students with disabilities in the United States spent the majority of their day in general education classrooms during the 2017–2018 school year.

How to Reimagine Special Education

Readers will discover how to:

• Re-story students by focusing on their gifts and strengths rather than their deficits.
• Redesign instruction and assessment to be more flexible and better meet students’ unique needs.
• Restructure intervention frameworks to move away from sorting and labeling students.
• Revitalize co-teaching with tools and strategies for serving students with and without disabilities.
• Realign service delivery through inclusion facilitation and consultative supports.
• Rethink equity by creating a culture of belonging, dismantling exclusionary programs, and tackling individual and institutional biases.

This guide aims to provide essential reading for administrators, classroom teachers, and other education professionals to support authentic inclusion and help learners with and without disabilities.