Count Us In

Inclusion of Students with Disabilities

in Urban General Education Classrooms

John Venn, Ph.D.

Division of Special Education

Charter College of Education

California State University , Los Angeles

May 20, 2004 

This symposium is very special for me as a presenter, and I hope it will be a special evening for all of you as well. Since joining the Division of Special Education at CSULA last July, I have grown to understand what unique and excellent programs are offered by the Charter College. As a faculty member in Special Education, I have had the opportunity to learn many impressive things about the programs for preparing teachers of students with disabilities. I especially want to thank the faculty and the students for having been so open and welcoming to me this year.

Recognition of the Panelists

I want to recognize the other presenters who all graciously volunteered to serve as panelists. The panelists are

Dr. Diane Klein, professor in the Division of Special Education and coordinator of credential and M.A. programs in Early Childhood Special Education (ECSE),

Dr. Randy Campbell, chair of the Division of Administration and Counseling,

Dr. Fred Uy, assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, and

Dr. Dave Palmer, psychologist with the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The Symposium Format

The format for the symposium is as follows. I am going to begin with remarks about including students with disabilities. Following my remarks, each panelist will have an opportunity to make comments. After we hear from the panelists, we will open the session up for discussion and questions.

Count Us In – The Symposium Title

The title of our symposium, Count Us In, captures a many aspects of what including students with disabilities in urban general education classrooms is all about for me. The title is from an issue of the journal Education Week called Quality Counts 2004 , Count Me In: Special Education in a World of Standards. Nancy Hunt, a professor in special education, first shared information about this issue with me in an email. When I clicked on the email link, I immediately decided this was an excellent source of information for the symposium. The issue contains articles about inclusion, valuable information about changes in high stakes tests for students with disabilities, and excellent discussion of the issues surrounding standards-based education. The articles point out that that as educators we are torn between wanting to raise expectations for students with special needs to meet high standards, and concerns about harsh and unintended consequences as a result. This is the theme for my remarks this evening. As educators we want students counted in as part of general education but we sometimes struggle because of the controversies surrounding inclusion and the fact that we are still in the process of developing the optimal inclusion strategies. It is important that as educators we all work together to help teachers help all students. This has been my prayer throughout my career. To help teachers so they can help students. For me this is the bottom line of inclusion. I am going to refer back to this theme throughout my remarks, but first I want to give you an overview of what I am going to talk about.

I am going to begin by sharing some of my experiences in inclusion to give you an idea of where I am coming from with respect to including students with special needs. Next I want to tell you about just a few of what I call “my inclusion champions.” These are the colleagues who have most influenced my work in inclusion. Finally, I am excited about having this opportunity to tell you about my work in assessment and how assessment relates to inclusion.

My Experiences in Inclusion

Let me begin by telling you a story about including students with severe disabilities from my first teaching assignment. I have been in education for such a long time that my experiences in inclusion began before inclusion or even mainstreaming were terms we used to describe the participation of students with disabilities in general education. One of my fond memories from my first years as a teacher in the very early 1970s (I was 13 years old at the time) is how we included my students who were deaf-blind and multi-handicapped in general education. At the time I was a teacher in a special education wing at an elementary school. My class was the first class of students with severe and profound disabilities in the district. This was before the IDEA legislation which mandated services for all students regardless of the severity of their disabilities.

This particular elementary school had a long standing tradition of mainstreaming students with disabilities, especially students with physical impairments. Therefore, it had a structure in place for working together with the school principal and the regular teachers to include my students in the lunchroom, and, for a few of my students, in general education class activities. With a smile, I remember the arrangements we made together as a school team to include Chipper in a regular class. Chipper's disabilities include a severe hearing loss, severe cerebral palsy, and mild mental retardation. As a youngster, Chipper also had many behavior problems. However, Chip enjoyed movies, films, and TV, and he was on his best behavior when watching a movie or cartoon. Therefore, we arranged for Chip to participate in the regular class when they showed movies. We were all super pleased when Chip did very well in the regular class, and our success with Chip lead to mainstreaming for other students as well.

The Florida Inclusion Network

More recently, I have had the opportunity to serve for the past five years as the principal investigator of the Florida Inclusion Network grant project. The Florida Inclusion Network or FIN is a group of regional projects providing inclusion support services to teachers and districts. The FIN I work with serves 19 medium and small districts in northeast and north central Florida , it is centered at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville , and we have $550,000 annual budget. Much of our work focuses on in-service training for teachers. When FIN was first established, we offered many one-time workshops and training sessions at individual schools without a lot of systematic follow-up services. As we have developed our services, we began to focus on providing in-depth services with planned follow-up and support. For example, two years ago we were invited to help a brand new middle school implement full-inclusion. Instead of conducting a single workshop at the school, we planned a yearlong series of support activities. These included workshops, consultations with teams of teachers, and frequent communication with administrators. I believe we are definitely heading in the right direction with this more comprehensive, long-term approach.

Like all projects, we have had our share of speed bumps. For example, our FIN network helps by invitation only, and at first a few districts in our region were reluctant to invite us in because of all the controversies surrounding inclusion. At this point, we are pleased to have been invited into every district except one, and we have some positive strategies in place for gaining entry into the final system.

The University of North Florida Inclusion Seminar Series

Another experience that has been exciting for me is a series of annual inclusion events I have organized in the College of Education at University of North Florida . I have been organizing these events for almost ten years. The events have been different each year: we have held symposia, seminars, and workshops. One year, we had more than three hundred participants in a seminar with a format much like this. Another year, we held a half-day in-service for university faculty. More than 25 faculty members participated in this event. These events were not part of my formal work assignment at UNF. Instead I volunteered my time because of my commitment to inclusion.

Inclusion Support Volunteer

Perhaps the most meaningful experience so far in my career was my work as an inclusion support volunteer at an elementary school. I spent three years visiting the school, Hendricks Avenue Elementary, on a regular basis, and I teamed together with a regular educator who is a university colleague of mine and a reading professor. Most of our work at the school was with a fifth grade teacher who initiated the first formal inclusion program with co-teaching in the history of the school. The program was a success, and the school now offers inclusion as a regular component of their services. Following these three years at the school, I spent an additional three years as a volunteer supporting the school as they implemented standards based education. I tried to visit the school at least once a month during this six year period, and it was an awesome experience. From this work I learned first hand how inclusion can be successful in an elementary school, and I had the opportunity to see implementation of a standards based educational program first hand.

Assessment in Inclusive Settings   

Those of you who know me, know I am committed to assisting teachers with student assessment, especially assessing students with special needs. In fact, I spend as much teaching, research, and service time as possible working in assessment. Over the last five years or so, I have become increasingly interested in assessing students in inclusive settings. Thankfully, much of the assessment that takes place in general education is similar for all students. However, there are accommodations, modifications, and strategies that we need to provide for students with disabilities. Later in my remarks, I am going to share practical about information inclusive assessment, but first I want to tell you about my inclusion champions.

My “Count Us In” Champions

I am sure all of us have colleagues who have inspired us and helped us with inclusion. I know I do, and I want to tell you about three of them. These are my inclusion champions: those colleagues who have helped me the most to make sure students with disabilities count in general education.

Bill

I want to begin by telling you about Bill. Bill is Dr. William Herrold. Bill was actually born in Southern California, and he was both a teacher and school principal in the Los Angeles area before moving to Florida many years ago. Bill recently retired from the University of North Florida in Jacksonville , where he had worked as a reading professor, Bill is the colleague and friend I teamed with for six years at the elementary school. When Bill first spoke with me about going out to the school, I thought he was doing this to conduct research for the purpose of publishing it, but I soon realized that even though we did conduct action research and we published two articles with our colleagues from the school, the real reason for our presence was to help the school and to learn about inclusion first hand. Bill is one of my inclusion champions because throughout his career he volunteered his time in ways like this. I learned from Bill that those of us in education who do not have a direct teaching assignment should make the time to participate directly in classroom activities so that we can remain grounded in the real world of teachers and students. This is especially important for those of us who are professors and administrators. Further, I think it is important for those of us who are special educators to link up with regular educators since inclusion occurs in the general education classroom.

Michael

Now let me tell you about Michael. Michael Federico is the fifth grade teacher at the elementary school where we volunteered. Through Michael I had the opportunity to see inclusion through the eyes of a regular teacher. What a different viewpoint! As I began to work together with Michael and Bill, I quickly learned that I had to avoid using the special education jargon I was so comfortable with. Michael did not care about the special education labels such as learning disabilities and emotional disturbance. He wanted to know how he could help the included students learn as part of the class. I had to view inclusion from Michael's point of view. Michael kept a daily journal about his inclusion experiences for three years. As we read and analyzed his journal later, we discovered many things about what is important in setting up a successful inclusion program for the first time. Michael is one of my inclusion champions because he gave me the opportunity to learn about inclusion from a new perspective. He taught me that in many situations regular educators need to take the lead in inclusion, and special educators like myself need to provide support.

Pam

Before I move on to inclusive assessment, I want to tell you about one more of my inclusion champions: Pamela Deloach. Pam is a teacher of students with severe disabilities in Florida who has won numerous teaching awards. Pam is also a leader in service to the profession as President of the exciting new Educators with Disabilities Caucus in the Council for Exceptional Children. She was also recently elected president of the CEC Division for Physical and Health Disabilities. Her work in the Caucus includes spearheading a mentoring program for educators with disabilities across the country. I have worked together extensively with Pam for the past decade on several different service activities. For example, we co-chaired the Severe and Multiple Disabilities Committee of the CEC Division of Physical and Health Disabilities for several years.

Pam's successes as a teacher and a leader in service to the profession are only part of the story. You see Pam is disabled herself due to severe cerebral palsy. Pam recently wrote a story about her life, and I want to share part of her story with you.

As a youngster, Pam was tested and placed in a special class for what she calls “slow students” Although Pam wanted to go to college, her teachers told her she did not have the ability. After graduating high school she was placed in a supported employment program at Goodwill and trained to sort clothes. Pam was so unhappy in this program that she frequently ran away to spend time at the college with her friends. In Pam's story she describes herself as a “runner.” Because Pam ran away so much she was dismissed from Goodwill for behavior problems.

Fortunately for Pam, soon after being dismissed from Goodwill she moved with her family to Florida . In Florida she told her new Vocational Rehabilitation counselor she wanted to go college and learn to drive. With assistance from her counselor she accomplished both of these goals. Junior College was a quite a challenge for Pam, but as a college student she felt like a normal person for the first time. After junior college Pam enrolled in a teacher education program and eventually graduated. This was after she took speech therapy and tutoring in writing in order to continue her education. All of this was before formal services for students with disabilities mandated. So Pam had to arrange her own accommodations and supports with her professors. Fortunately, most of her professors were willing to work with her when she needed to arrange for assistance. Pam first worked a as substitute teacher until a permanent position became available. As I mentioned Pam is now a highly successful teacher, and I am pleased to have had the opportunity to help support Pam and serve as one of her mentors.

Pam is one of my inclusion champions because her life is a testimony to the benefits of inclusion as well as the problems and difficulties we face in including people not only in general education

but in higher education, the workplace, and the community.

Inclusive Assessment - From Counted Out to Counted In

Now I get to talk about the subject for which I am most committed: assessment. I have been studying assessment strategies for years, and I am most interested in how teachers can use assessment to best help students with special needs. Assessment is especially important in the inclusive classroom because it helps teachers evaluate students on an equal plane. Both regular education and special education teachers need to know more about the variety of available assessment strategies; however, assessment is getting a bad name in education these days, and this in large part has been caused by the emphasis on “high stakes tests.” Because of the controversy surrounding high stakes testing and inclusion, I want to a few comments on this aspect of the issue.

High Stakes Testing and Inclusion

We all know what “high stakes tests” are – the group achievement tests given near the end of the school year that carry serious consequences for students, schools, and educators. The stakes in high stakes testing have been increasing over the years as we have learned how to use the results to measure student achievement and to increase accountability for schools and students. Above average school scores on the high stakes test may bring public praise, but low scores definitely bring public embarrassment. For individual students, low scores may result in grade retention or denial of a high school diploma.

I have a practical example of the difficulties with high stakes tests in the form of a quote from Eliana, a teacher who like most teachers of students with special needs is struggling with this. I had the opportunity to observe Eliana give a portion of the CAT6 the other day. The CAT6 is the high stakes group achievement test used in Los Angeles Unified School District .

What a day! I realized I had to re-shuffle my whole schedule for the next two weeks because the CAT-6 starts next week. In order to help prepare my students we started the practice test. It was extremely difficult. My students cannot read fourth grade material in English! They are two years behind in their own language, how can we put them through this! Just by the way they looked at the test, I saw the frustration. Some got nervous and tried, others gave up right away! I really question this testing program. The students with disabilities are practically doomed for failure. What are we doing!!!! I can only hope for the best.

When I observed Eliana, it appeared to me that she provided her students with appropriate accommodations, but even with accommodations they struggled. As you may know, accommodations are changes in test materials, procedures, or settings designed to eliminate barriers to performance related to a student's disability. Unfortunately, even with accommodations no one seems to have any simple answers to the complex problems surrounding this type of testing. As you are probably aware federal mandates now require inclusion of students with disabilities in high stakes testing. This makes sense to me in that including all students in general education should extend to inclusion in high stakes testing programs and excluding students from testing programs on the basis of disabilities seems unfair. I believe this even though taking high stakes tests is very difficult for many students with disabilities. For me the problem is not with the decision to include all students. The problem is how to do this fairly and accurately. For me the issues surrounding high stakes testing are the most pressing measurement problems we face in education.

For those of you who are in the classroom I would encourage you to provide appropriate accommodations and modifications, to continue to teach test taking skills, but most of all make sure to use test results cautiously, especially with students who are English language learners.

Classroom-Based Assessment and Inclusion

Now that I have discussed issues surrounding high stakes testing and inclusion, I would like to turn our attention to the positive effects of assessment in inclusive settings. I think teachers are doing an excellent job of developing classroom-based instructional and teaming strategies for inclusion. I am not so sure, however, that we are doing as well in developing classroom-based assessment strategies for inclusion. This bothers me because classroom assessment is a part of every classroom regardless of whether it is in general or special education. For students to be as successful as possible in the mainstream, general and special education teachers must work together to individualize grading procedures within the group thereby accommodating all students. For example, if I am a student with a moderate disability in a regular class, I am going to need to be taught and graded differently but at the same time I have to fit into the class. Fortunately, more and more teachers are embracing alternative grading practices and strategies, and this is really making a difference for students. The most widely used alternative grading strategies include multiple grading, grading for effort, IEP grading, portfolio grading, descriptive grading, and shared grading.

In Florida I have been conducting workshops for regular and special education teachers on quick, easy, and accurate assessment for all students. The teachers are really interested in this material because it is practical and it can be adapted to all levels of instruction. If you are interested in learning more about this I invite you to surf to my website at www.johnvenn.com . My site is dedicated to assisting teachers with student assessment. At the site you will find many assessment strategies and you can download a free guide to classroom assessment designed for teachers.

I would like to close by sharing a practical example of classroom based assessment. I learned about it from Joseph Staub a middle school teacher in Los Angeles . In fact, Joseph recently shared his assessment ideas in a faculty inclusion workshop at his school. Let me give you an example of how it works. The idea is to make a test of 15 questions, for example, that goes from easy to difficult. The strategy involves dividing the 15 questions into three groups of five using Blooms' taxonomy. The first five items should be relatively easy factual level questions. The next five questions should be more difficult, mostly at the factual and application levels. The last group contains the most difficult items at the highest taxonomy levels: evaluation, analysis, and synthesis. A test like this can be used for differentiated or adaptive assessment. Students can opt to take the test at any one of the three difficulty levels depending on how comfortable they feel with the material. It is one way to include all students in classroom testing without putting too much pressure on those who are not quite ready to answer the most difficult questions. This test takes some pressure off teachers by giving them a strategy to develop one test that meets diverse learning needs. I applaud teachers like Joseph who are creating new strategies like this one to help include all students in general education classrooms.

Conclusion

I have shared with you my thoughts on how we can count students in. I began by showing how I have grown in inclusion. I shared my experience as a new teacher working to include students in regular education, and I shared my recent participation as a volunteer in a standards based inclusion class. From these experiences I have learned that inclusion helps us help students with disabilities, but it is often difficult to implement. I have also talked with you about my colleagues who helped me learn about inclusion. To me Bill, Michael, and Pam are my “Count Us In” champions because they showed me how inclusion can work and how we can overcome many of the speed bumps associated with the process. Finally, I shared with you my views on assessment and inclusion, and how we need to do more in this important area because with high stakes testing the challenges are great.

I believe in the future of inclusion. It seems to me we are still developing the optimal strategies and systems for supporting the participation of students with disabilities in regular education settings. While I recognize that there are many problems with inclusion, we all need to continue to do everything we can as educators to ensure that all students are “counted in.” Now, it is time to hear from our distinguished panelists.