The Superintendent's Role in CREATING INCLUSIVE SCHOOLS.

Inclusion has swept across the country over the past several years, meaning that supeintendents increasingly are being asked to create inclusive schools.

Inclusion means that students with disabilities attend their neighborhood school with their age and grade peers. It requires that the proportion of students labeled for special services is relatively uniform for all of the schools within a particular district and that that ratio reflects the proportion of people with disabilities in society at large. Included students are not isolated into special classes or wings within the school. To the maximum extent possible, included students receive their in-school educational services in the general education classroom with appropriate in-class support.

Inclusion is a philosophy of supporting children in their learning that undergirds the entire system--not simply a place or method of delivering instruction. Inclusion is part of the culture of a school district and defines how students, teachers, administrators, and others view the potential of children. Inclusion is truly grounded in the phrase, "all children can learn."

Inclusion has implications for how schools are organized and restructured, curriculum, instruction, teacher training, and the types of materials and instructional technology used in the school. Many schools have become inclusive when they restructured under current school reform efforts.

Planning Process

Once a district decides to move toward inclusion, the planning process begins. Most districts find that creating an opportunity for staff and community dialogue is critical in the planning stages. Districts create this dialogue through public forums, task forces, educational sessions, and individual meetings with parents and students.

Many districts begin this process by sponsoring forums to discuss the issues. Separate forums typically are held for parents and community members, teachers, and district administrators. The districts begin by discussing inclusion at the superintendent and central-office level, then discuss inclusion during the principals' meeting. Next, the district sponsors a series of meetings for teachers and the public about inclusion. Teachers' meetings can be school-by-school or districtwide, usually with district representatives present.

These forums allow parents, teachers, and other stakeholders to ask questions and discuss their concerns, interests, and vision for inclusion in the district. Successful forums are organized as an open dialogue, rather than a district briefing session. These sessions are not framed as "Can we have an inclusive district?" but rather "How can we have an inclusive district?" to ensure that participants may air all concerns and have them addressed. The district goes to great lengths to ensure that large numbers of teachers and parents-both from special education and general education--attend these sessions.

One district administrator commented: "I went to a lot of meetings; they provide you an opportunity to get the message out and dispel the myths. In fact, the more vocal the opposition to inclusion, the more successful we were in selling the idea. Strong opponents to inclusion generally make exaggerated claims that really play into the hands of people promoting inclusion. Our message was simple: students with disabilities have an absolute right to education in their neighborhood school with their peers. During our forums, the general public came to recognize how shut out students with disabilities were from the general education system. Frankly, opponents came off looking like bigots."

Some school districts appoint inclusion task forces to study the issue, create public dialogue, and develop a plan for implementation. Sometimes these task forces are composed of parents, teachers, administrators, students, and other stakeholders. In other instances, these task forces have been composed entirely of teachers connected with the local bargaining unit. Regardless of the composition, typically the superintendent heads the task force. Inclusion is not seen as a special education program, but rather a districtwide initiative for all children.

Early Implementation

Inclusion spreads through districts at varying rates. Some move incrementally; others achieve total district conversion within a few years. Some districts use an "evolutionary" process--as individual parents request that their children be included in their neighborhood school, the district accommodates the request. Other districts implement inclusion on a districtwide basis, making the complete change in one or two school years.

Many districts phase in inclusion in a comprehensive but gradual manner, with the clear understanding by all district personnel that within a certain period, all students will be offered age-appropriate inclusive classrooms in the school they would attend if they were not labeled for special education.

Districts start inclusive classrooms in various ways. In some districts, the central administration asks principals to volunteer to be district leaders in creating inclusive classrooms. These principals usually work with their staffs to determine which teachers in their buildings would like to be the first to include children with disabilities in their classrooms. Volunteer teachers are offered joint planning time with the specialists with whom they will work, and in some instances, innovative principals garner special project funds to enhance the classroom program of participating teachers.

Such positive reinforcement encourages other teachers to participate in future years. Alternatively, some school districts offer any staff member not ready to create an inclusive classroom the opportunity to transfer to another school without penalty.

This approach has been particularly successful in districts where a superintendent who initiates inclusion then leaves the district and is followed by a superintendent who is less supportive. In these districts, supportive principals work to maintain inclusion in their individual buildings, even if district-level support evaporates.

In many districts, inclusion is phased in grade by grade, usually starting with pre-kindergarten and kindergarten and adding the next one to two grades each year. In these districts, all students start school in classrooms of diverse learners and continue in inclusive environments as they progress through school.

Teachers and administrators report that in this type of implementation, general education students themselves become key elements in training teachers as they advance through the grades; they often know about characteristics and behaviors of students with disabilities that they share with teachers.

Some school districts combine one of these methods with a district policy that any new school in the system is opened as an inclusive school. Principals who have opened inclusive schools report great success in building a cohesive staff and school culture supportive of inclusion from the school's inception.

Regardless of the process that districts use to move from the drawing board to the classroom, several superintendents report that inclusion spreads throughout the district faster than they anticipated. As teachers and principals experiment with inclusion in their buildings, they see positive gains for all students in the building. Teachers are reinvigorated in their work, and as the district supports and rewards the efforts of staff in inclusive schools, more teachers and principals opt to create inclusive environments.

Involving Parents

Involving parents and other community members in planning and implementing inclusion is essential. Districts report two primary "tracks" of communication with parents--with special education parents and with general education parents.

Districts provide information and training to parents of students with disabilities in various ways, including special information forums and the traditional parent training sessions provided to parents of students in special education.

In instances where parents fear placing their child in an inclusive setting, especially when their child has been educated for years in a segregated facility, the school district often encourages parent-to-parent exchanges with parents of students served in inclusive schools. In addition to discussing placement issues, district officials must meet with parents to plan carefully their student's individual education program and adaptations that might be made in goals and objectives, based on a regular school and class placement.

In a few instances, when districts have created a unitary system by substantially restructuring the central-office staff to disband dual bureaucracies of special and general education, officials meet resistance from special education parent advocacy groups. These groups fear the loss of "their" supervisor or coordinator or "their" classroom or "their" facility.

School district administrators point out that these complaints generally focus on the artifacts of special education, rather than on the substance of classroom instruction and learning. By and large, parents do not object to the education that their child is receiving in the inclusive environment or their student's progress. Rather, they are concerned about dismantling the special education system per se--separate teachers, separate facilities, separate supervisors.

As schools gear up for inclusion, parents of students with disabilities have been a valuable resource for teachers and principals. Parents of students with disabilities have been involved at the building level in planning for inclusion by providing staff briefings about their children and, in some instances, serving on hiring panels for new teachers joining the school staff. In some districts, parents sit with staff committees to determine the best classroom placement for their child as they move through the grades.

Educating parents of students without disabilities is somewhat different. Even in the early planning stages, parents of students not labeled for special education should be kept informed and be able to ask questions and plan for inclusion. Parents of non-disabled students are primarily interested in how the inclusion of students with disabilities into the regular class will affect their child's learning.

In response, district administrators and building principals cite the research on favorable outcomes for non-disabled students in inclusive classrooms. Parents also respond favorably to new staffing patterns for inclusion that often call for special education personnel to follow students with disabilities into the regular classroom to work with all children. This can mean two teachers or additional aides available in the classroom to help all children. Hence, inclusion benefits all students.

A Board Perspective

Although local boards of education often are not the impetus behind a district's move toward inclusion, it is difficult to maintain a strong philosophy and program of inclusion in a district without board support.

Local boards of education do not typically push for change toward inclusion. As one local board member said, "For the vast majority of board members, inclusion is simply not a burning issue." Board members report they spend the bulk of their time "putting out fires" in relation to dwindling budgets, state mandates, and parent and staff complaints. They rarely have an opportunity to discuss the direction the district should go in, let alone discuss inclusion.

Although local school boards do not generally initiate the move toward inclusion, they can halt a district's inclusion initiative. Thus it is essential in the planning process that the superintendent discuss fully with the board the philosophy and implementation of inclusion. If the board is solidly behind inclusion, it will have a point of reference when issues associated with bargaining, budgeting, or advocacy come before the board. Without a firm vision for the district, the board--and school district--will be buffeted by advocacy groups on all sides of the issue.

Half-hearted board support or incomplete understanding also can lead to confusion. In one district, the superintendent thought that the only way the board of education would support inclusion was on the basis of cost savings. Therefore, rather than having a thorough discussion about inclusion, the superintendent recommended that the board support a districtwide emphasis on inclusion as a cheaper method of providing special education services. When the special education portion of the district budget was not reduced over a three-year period, board members began looking for "another way to deliver special education cheaper."

Boards of education can be truly supportive of inclusion if they understand and are involved in the issue. Superintendents and other district administrators who do not keep the board fully informed and involved in the district's plans for inclusion leave themselves vulnerable to having their plans reversed by a board that does not understand what the administration is doing or why.

Furthermore, boards that do not take the time to develop their stance on inclusion fully can unwittingly sabotage inclusion by the decisions that the board makes in relation to other issues such as curriculum development, school construction, assessment, budgeting, and bargaining.

Teacher Training

As with the board of education, parents, and other community members, teachers must be involved in planning and preparing for inclusion from its very inception. The training opportunities should continue year to year, even after the initial move toward inclusion. Administrators want teachers to buy into the concept, but they also want the teachers to understand that inclusion, as one administrator noted, "is the law, not a privilege that kids earn."

Districts described several approaches to training. For instance, some districts contracted with their regional special education cooperatives to provide teacher training. In some districts, the administrators brought in consultants to discuss a particular facet of classroom management, such as behavior modification or cooperative learning, in the context of teaching diverse learners. Some schools appoint a task force composed of general and special education teachers whose responsibility it is to determine what training teachers want and need in the school.

In addition to group training sessions, principals also provide training opportunities to individual teachers. In some schools, principals pair teachers new to inclusive classrooms with teachers who are experienced with inclusion. In other schools, principals send interested teachers individually or in small groups to special training seminars sponsored by colleges and universities, the school district, or the state department of education.

Some teachers are offered in-class support and training by a teacher consultant who works in the classroom with the teacher on a day-to-day basis for a short period of time. One district is experimenting with including teacher in-service training as a support service on the child's individual education plan to ensure the needed training is provided to the teacher.

Budget Implications

Districts that have moved toward inclusion work to ensure the funds that previously supported students with disabilities in separate placements are carried with the student back into the general education classroom. In this way, the money also improves the regular classroom setting, rendering better value for the special education dollar.

Districts report savings in transportation, reduced administrative costs, fewer out-of-district tuitions for other public and private school placements, and savings in space and facility allocations. These costs are plowed back directly into personnel and programming in the inclusive environment. Many inclusive districts have increased the number of classroom aides in general education classes. Savings reaped by eliminating dual systems also have been used to evaluate the efficacy of inclusion programs.

As district administrators project budgetary implications of inclusion, they do so with the understanding that their overall district budget is unlikely to increase significantly in the next several years. Despite this, administrators hope to attain greater value for money spent on special services than in the past.

By reallocating district dollars toward the classroom and direct service and away from supporting two parallel systems, administrators hope that all students will reap greater benefits. By using pre-referral options and student assistance teams to support teachers and students in the general program, administrators avoid many referrals that have been made in the past of students who are "borderline" special education. Districts that have used prereferral, in-class interventions have been able to reduce substantially the number of children referred to special education and costly assessment procedures by providing support without the special education label.

Some districts report that one unfortunate negative consequence of creating an inclusive school is they have actually lost substantial amounts of state funding. This seems to be the case particularly in states when students in out of-state residential placements are brought back to their home district, or when students are not labeled "severe/profound" for services.

In addition, districts that have received substantial reimbursements from the state for transportation costs now save money in transportation when returning to a neighborhood school, inclusive model. Yet school districts often are not able to recoup the transportation reimbursement from the state to use for other instructional purposes. These issues must be addressed by state policymakers for inclusion truly to be part of systemic reform Overall, inclusion is not a cost-saving device. However, districts do report better value for money spent. District administrators also emphasize they have created inclusive schools because "it's the right thing to do, and it's the law."

Handling Opposition

Any innovation in schools and districts creates opposition, and inclusion is no exception. Because inclusion is change and is visible, district administrators warn that anything that goes wrong in a school or district may automatically be ascribed to the inclusion initiative by those who resist change. In one school where the community was concerned about several student outbursts that the school seemed unable to control, members of the community ascribed the problem to the fact that the district had included in the school that year a child labeled severely emotionally disturbed. However, an investigation found that most of these outbursts stemmed from students not in special education.

Administrators emphasize that a strong start ensures that inclusion does not become the scapegoat for everything that goes wrong throughout the school year. Administrators also emphasize that parent, teacher, principal, and community concerns about inclusion must be addressed.

Administrators report that those in vocal opposition to inclusion are the people that the district asks to be put on inclusion task forces and other planning and implementation committees.

As districts move toward inclusion, they must remember that inclusion is not a place. It is a way of looking at education that encompasses curriculum and instructional practices, the school culture and the organization, and staffing patterns of schools. An inclusive school is a reformed school that focuses on the strengths, talents, and interests of all students.

Superintendents should never make a promise to parents, principals, or teachers that they cannot keep. The success of inclusion is based on the integrity of the district.

Virginia Roach is the author of NASBE's Winners All: A Call for Inclusive Schools and Winning Ways: Creating Inclusive Schools, Classrooms and Communities, which was released this fall.

Inclusion By Pilot Programs

Some school districts move to inclusion by initiating pilot programs that usually are funded through special project grants.

The benefit of this approach, district officials explain, is that the pilot program usually provides district administrators with evaluation data that can be used to sell inclusion to the board of education and other stakeholders. In addition, pilot sites then can serve as models for district personnel to visit as part of the education and communication stages of the planning process.

Initiating inclusion via specially funded pilot projects has some drawbacks:

* First, specially funded projects typically are initiated by the district special education director and are seen as a special education initiative. This may make it difficult to expand the project into a systemwide initiative that would benefit all children.

* Second, many school districts suffer from "projectitis." The district is accustomed to bringing in many special projects and grants for new initiatives, only to see the initiative abandoned as the special funding runs out. This seems to be particularly true of large, urban districts.

* Third, many superintendents have short stays in their districts. The average tenure of an urban superintendent today is about three years. Leaders who have initiated special pilot programs with the intent of gradually expanding into districtwide, systemic change are likely to leave the district before such expansion gets under way.

Virginia Roach

Six Considerations for Initiating Inclusion

Here are several critical issues for school administrators to consider as they implement an inclusive approach in classrooms. These are based on interviews, surveys, and focus groups of educators, advocates, parents, and students across the country.

* Superintendents lay the foundation for inclusion in the school district.

Superintendents can establish a climate of inclusion in the district while giving individual schools the flexibility they need to create inclusive classrooms. Superintendents can further promote inclusion by making sure all new district personnel--principals, central-office staff, teachers, and support and maintenance personnel--support inclusion and by ensuring that existing personnel are well trained in creating inclusive schools.

* Principals are key in creating inclusive schools.

In some districts, principals have become the new special education supervisors. Successful inclusion principals are also the instructional leaders for programs where the school routinely applies cutting-edge models of instruction and curricular adaptation.

* Site-based management provides a window of opportunity for principals to create inclusive schools.

This allows the principal to hire a cohesive staff and use flexible staffing patterns to structure the school. It also encourages parents and teachers to be involved and invested in the school's success.

* Planning is critical in moving a district toward inclusion, and administrators advise against moving too fast.

Administrators says that planning too quickly or in a slipshod fashion can destroy inclusion in a district before it gets off the ground. However, the district message must be clear: It is not "Can we implement inclusion?" but "How will we implement inclusion?"

* Clear, strong lines of communication are essential in supporting the ongoing success of inclusion, districtwide and in individual school buildings.

This type of collaboration takes energy and resources to sustain, but district administrators stress the necessity of keeping open the lines of communication among all partners.

* Local boards of education can be key actors in creating a districtwide vision for inclusion.

This includes creating district goals for all students, dismantling dual policies for general education and special education students and teachers, and creating an accountability system that includes all students.

Virginia Roach

Inclusion Resources

A rapidly growing body of research and literature exists to support administrators, teachers, and parents as they include students with disabilities into the regular classroom.

For research on positive outcomes associated with inclusion for students (with and without disabilities), teachers (special and general education), parents, and the overall school environment consult:

* Schooling Without Labels: Parents, Educators, and Inclusive Education by Doug Biklen, available through Temple University Press, Broad and Oxford Streets, Philadelphia, Pa. 19122, 215-204-8787.

* "Inclusion: An Annotated Bibliography," available from Western Regional Resource Center, Clinical Services Building, University of Oregon, Eugene, Ore. 97403-1215, 503-346-5641.

* "Social Interaction and Severe Disabilities: A Longitudinal Analysis of Child Outcomes," in Journal of Special Education Vol. 25, No. 3, pp. 160-169.

For additional suggestions about creating inclusive schools, consult:

* "Some Answers for Implementers to the Most Commonly Asked Questions Regarding the Inclusion of Children with Disabilities in General Education," available from the Illinois Planning Council on Developmental Disabilities, 830 S. Spring St., Springfield, Ill. 62704, 217-782-9696.

* Winners All: A Call for Inclusive Schools and Winning Ways: Creating Inclusive Schools, Classrooms and Communities, available from the National Association of State Boards of Education, 1012 Cameron St., Alexandria, Va. 22314, 800-220-5183.

* Issues and Options: Restructuring Schools and Special Education Programs, developed by the Center for Policy Options in Special Education at University of Maryland, available from the National Association of State Boards of Education, 1012 Cameron St., Alexandria, Va. 22314, 800-220-5183.