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Theory Into Practice

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Leading Inclusive Reform for Students

With Disabilities: A School- and

Systemwide Approach

George Theoharis

& Julie Causton

Associate Dean in the School of Education, Syracuse University

Department of Teaching and Leadership, Syracuse University

Published online: 04 Apr 2014.

To cite this article: George Theoharis & Julie Causton (2014) Leading Inclusive Reform for Students

With Disabilities: A School- and Systemwide Approach, Theory Into Practice, 53:2, 82-97, DOI:

10.1080/00405841.2014.885808

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Theory Into Practice, 53:82–97, 2014

ISSN: 004 0-5841 print/1543-0421 online

DOI: 10.1080/00405841.2014.885808

George Theoharis

Julie Causton

Leading Inclusive Reform for

Students With Disabilities: A

School- and Systemwide Approach

It is of great importance to maximize access to

general education for all stu dents with disabil-

ities. This arti cl e focuses on how leaders cre-

ate inclusive schools for all students—inclusive

school reform. Inclusi ve school reform can result

in all students with disabilities being placed into

general education settings (including students

with signiﬁcant disabilities, students with mild

disab ilities, students with emotional disabilit ies,

student s with autism : : : all students) and provid-

George Theoharis, Ph.D. is an Associate Dea n in the

School of Education, Chair and associate professor

in the Department of Teaching and Leadership at

Syracuse University and Julie Causton, Ph.D. is an as-

sociate professor, Department of Teac hing and Le ader-

ship in the School of Education at Syracuse University.

Correspondence should be addressed to George

Theoharis, Associate Professor, De partment of Teach-

ing and Lea dership, Scho ol of Education, Syracuse

University, 153 Huntington Hall, Syracuse, New York,

NY 13244. E-mail: gthe ohar@syr.edu.

Color versions of one or more of the ﬁg ures in the

article can be found online at www.tandfonline.com/

htip.

ing inclusive services to meet their needs while

eliminating pul lout or self-contained sp ecial ed-

ucation programs. In this article, we outline a 7-

part process, as well as a set of tools for schools

to use to create authentically inclusive schools.

CHOOL LEADERS ARE instrumental ﬁgures

in creating and carrying out a vision for

inclusive schools. Each year since 1974, when

student s with disabilities were guaranteed the

right to a free and appropriate public education,

more students with disabilities have been, and are

continuing t o be, educated in general edu cati on

schools and classrooms. Inclusion has evolved

over time and, increasingly, schools are giving

student s with disabiliti es access to rich academic

instruction, connection to their peers, and full

membership in their schools and commun ities.

This, in conjun ct ion with the new era of stan-

dards where schools and districts are being held

increasingly accountable for the achievement of

student s with disabil ities, has created the need

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Theoharis and Causton Inclusive Reform for Students With Disabilities

to focus on inclusive leadership with regard to

special education.

In this era of standards and accountability, a

key aspect in thinking abou t the achievement of

student s with d isabiliti es is the idea of access—

access to general education curriculum (which

directly relates to the content of standardized

tests), access to high quality instruction, and

access to peers (the social and emotional aspects

of schooling). Since students with disabilities

gained the right to public education, schol ars

have developed a compelling body of literature

documenting the impact of inclusive services for

student s with disabilities (see Peterson & Hittie,

2003, for a listing of many of these studies).

Most recent ly, Cosier (2010) examined a national

database and found that for every additional

hour students with disabilities spend in general

education, there is a signiﬁcant gain of achieve-

ment across all disabilities categories. Thus, it

is of great import ance to maximize all students

with d isabiliti es access t o general education. For

the purposes of this article, we deﬁne inclusion

as students with disabilities being educated in

the general education classroom and having f ull

access to the general education curriculum, in-

struction, and peers with needed supports. This

article focuses on how leaders create i nclusive

schools for all students—inclusive school reform.

To do this, we rely on the literature examining

the role that leaders play in creating inclusive

schools for students with disabi lities (see Capper

& Frattura, 2008; Capper, Fraturra & Keyes,

2000; McLesky & Waldron, 2002; Reih l, 2000;

Theoharis, 2009). In looking across this wo rk, a

number of key id eas emerge that inform moving

from this literature to the practice of leading

schools to be inclusive. School leaders successful

at creating inclusive schools t ake on a variety of

strategies in this work. These include (a) setting

a vision, (b) developing democratic implemen-

tation plans, (c) using staff members (teachers

and paraprofessionals) in systematic ways to

create inclusive service delivery, (d) creating and

developing teams who work collaborativel y to

meet the range of student needs, (e) providing

ongoing learning o pportunities for staff mem-

bers, (f) monitoring and adjusting the service

delivery each year, and (g) pur posefull y work ing

to develop a climate of belo nging for students

and staff members. The framework for inclusive

reform presented in this article is built upon this

foundational l iterature.

Inclusive School Reform

Inclusive school reform has resulted in all

student s with disabiliti es being placed into gen-

eral education settings (including students with

signiﬁcant disabi lities, students wi th mild dis-

abilities, students with emotional disabilities, stu-

dents with autism : : : all students) and providing

inclusive services t o meet th ei r needs while elimi-

nating pullout or self-contained special education

programs. We outline a 7-part process. This

process is adapted from th e Planning Alternate

Tomorrows with Hope planning process (Pear-

point, O’Brien, & Forest, 1993). See Figure 1

for the Inclusive Reform Planning Tool. It is

important that the steps outlined in the i nclusive

reform process are carried out in a democratic

and transparent manner and that this engages

the entire staff and school community. To make

the nuts and bolts of this work more efﬁciently,

we recommend that a representative leadership

team consisti ng of schoo l administrators, general

education teachers, special education teachers,

and other st aff members go through this process

together. However, it is important for this team to

check in and involve the entire staff throughout

the process and to develop a communication plan

for keeping families engaged in this process.

Step 1—Setting a Vision

First, the team sets a vision for the school

reform initiative (number 1 on In cl usive School

Reform Planning tool) around three areas: (a)

school structure—how one arranges adults and

student s, (b) meeting the needs of all in general

education, and (c) school climate. Many schools

have gone through this process already. The

following is an example of goals that a K–8

school created during the inclusive school reform

work. They include:

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Inclusive Schooling an d Lead ership for Social Justice

Figure 1. Inclusive School Reform P lanning Tool. Note. This ﬁgure references Pearpoint, O’Brien, & Forest

(1993).

Structure Goals (How one arranges adu lts and

students)



Place students in balanced classrooms with

positive role models.



Designate person to facilitate efﬁcient

monthly communication meetings for staff

members to discuss various topics surround-

ing inclusion.

School Clima te Goals



Examine the physical structure to determine

locations conducive to planning, supporting,

and implementing inclusion at each grade

level.



Create a schedule that promotes consistent

and common planning time for ongoing com-

munication and dialog ue.



Develop and implemen t approaches and pro-

cedures that promote a professional learning

community (collaboration, consensus, agree

to disagree respectfully).



Purposefully build classroom and school cli-

mate that is warm and welcoming for ch ildren

and staff and fosters active/engaging learning.

Meeting the Needs of all in the General Ed uca-

tion Clas sroom Goals



Have planned opportunitie s for vertical co m-

munication to provide continuity between

grade levels.



Provide child-centered, differentiated, re-

search based instruction that challenges chil-

dren of all abilities, supported by targeted

staff developmen t.

Step 2—What is Happening Now?

Creating Service Delivery Maps

Second, teams examine the existing way ser-

vices are provided, human resources are used,

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Theoharis and Causton Inclusive Reform for Students With Disabilities

and other i mportant data. This process requires

school teams to map out their current service de-

livery and the way they use their human resources

in efforts to meet the range of student needs. This

involves creating a visual representation of the

classrooms, special education service provision,

general education classrooms, and how students

receive their related services. An essential part of

creating service maps is to i ndicate which staff

members pull students from which classrooms,

which students learn i n self-contained spaces,

which paraprofessionals are used where—a com-

plete picture of how and where all staff at the

school work.

Figur e 2 provides an example of this kind

of visual map of the service delivery model

before inclusive school reform. The rectangles

around the edge represent the general education

classrooms. The ovals in the middle, labeled

resource, represent resource special education

teachers who worked with students with dis-

abilities in many classrooms (as indicated by

the lines) through a pull out model. The circles

labeled self-contai ned had a multiaged group of

student s with disabilities who spent the entire

day together, separate from general educat ion

peers. There is one oval marked wi th inclu-

sion 20C8. This represents what was previously

called an inclusive classroom. This room had

about 20 general education students wi th an

additional 8 students with disabilities. This old

service delivery plan concentrated or overloaded

intense needs into certain classrooms and other

classrooms lacked both student s with disabilities

and additional adult support. As this shows, in

this old model some students were excluded and

removed from the general education curriculum,

instruction, and social interaction with general

education peers for some or all of each school

day.

Step 3—Align School Structures

This step involves rethinking structures and

the use of st aff members to create teams of

profession al s to serve all students inclusively,

in other words, creating a new service delivery

map. After creating a map of the current service

delivery, the staff looks to create a new inclusive

service delivery plan by redeploying st aff mem-

bers to make balanced and heterogeneous class-

rooms where all students are included, to enhance

inclusion and belonging. Figure 3 provides an

example of inclusive service delivery. Teachers

and administrators recon ﬁgured the current use

of staff members to form t eams of speci al ists

and general education teachers to create inclu-

sive teams that collaboratively plan and deliver

instruction to heterogeneous student groups. In

this example, the school cho ose to pair special

education teachers as part of inclusive teams with

two to three general education classrooms and

teachers.

Step 4—Rethink Stafﬁng: Creat ing

Instructional Teams

The fourth st ep in the process is to rethink

the u se of staff members. This involves creating

teams of general education teachers, special-

ists (i.e., special education teachers, English-

language learner [ELL] teachers, etc.), and para-

profession al s to serve all students inclusively.

In the example in Figur es 2 and 3, the special

education teacher, who was formerly a teacher

in the self-contain ed classroom (Figure 2), now

is coteaching and coplanning with two general

education teachers (Figure 3) and a p arapro-

fessional. An essential component of this step

is placing students into classrooms using the

school’s natural proportion s of students with

special education needs or other needs (like

ELL) as a gui de. This means that if 13% of

the students at the school have disabilities, then

the student placement process should mirror that

density of students with special needs in each

classroom, and not create classroom with high

percentages of students with special n eeds. Part

of creating classes, whether at the elementary,

middle, or high school level, is to not overload

or clu ster many students with special education

needs into one room or section. Using natural

proporti ons as a guide, it is impo rtant to strive

for balanced, heterogeneous classes th at mix abil-

ities, achievement, behavior, and other learning

needs.

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Inclusive Schooling an d Lead ership for Social Justice

Figure 2. Special Education Service Delivery Prior to Inclusive Restructuring. Note. Rectangles D eleme ntary

gen eral education classrooms K–5. Circles/ovals D special education teachers. Resource D special education

teachers who pull students from their general education cla ssroom. Inclusion 20C10 D a classroom where a

gen eral education teacher is team teaching with a special education te acher where there are 20 general education

students and 10 special edu cation students. Self-contained: K–5 signiﬁcant disabilities D a special education

classroom where all students who have s igniﬁcan t d isabilities receive their instruction and spend the majority of

their s chool day.

Figure 3. Inclusive Service Delivery—Post Reform. Note. Rectangles D elementary general education class-

rooms. Circles/ovals D special educ ation te achers. Inclusive teaming D a special education teacher teaming with

2–3 regular education tea chers to meet the range of student needs within the classroom. Each team h as one

paraprofessional assigned as well.

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Theoharis and Causton Inclusive Reform for Students With Disabilities

Step 5—Impacting Classroom Practices

Fifth, it is important to impact the daily

classroom p ractices that these teaching teams

will use. This involves creating and carrying out

a professional development plan for teachers,

paraprofessionals, and administrators. We rec-

ommend that schools con sider topics such as

collaboration, coteaching, differentiated instr uc-

tion, working with challenging behavior, inquiry-

based instruction, ELL methods, literacy, etc. In

our experience, all the schools that have become

more inclusive through this process have spent

signiﬁcant profession al development time and

energy learning about collaboration, coteaching,

and differentiation.

One important component of impacting class-

room practices and the professional development

required to do so involves schoo ls leaders setting

expectations and providing feedback to their

staff. We have created a number of tools to assist

school leaders with providing this feedback.

Figur e 4, the coteaching feedback form, is a

tool for observations and providing feedback to

teams for when a special educator and a general

educator are working together in one classroom.

These teachers may work together in the same

room for part or al l of the day, but provid ing feed-

back about a number of compon ents that are im-

portant for coteaching can help the team improve.

Figur es 5 and 6 are additional feedback fo rms

to be used during classroom walkt hroughs and

observations—focusing on classroom environ-

ment and behavior respectively. These tools p ro-

vide a framework for leaders to use when in

classrooms to address key components of good

inclusive classrooms.

Step 6—Ongoing Monitoring, Adjusting,

and Celebrating

The sixth component of the inclusive reform

process is t o monitor and adjust the plan with

attention t o getting feedback from all staff mem-

bers, students, and families, but withou t aban-

doning the plan at the ﬁrst moment of struggle

or resist ance. During the summer and into the

ﬁrst few weeks of the year, it is important to

iron out logi stics and adjust teaching schedules as

needed. Part of monitoring and adjusting means

that the leadership team begins to plan for the

following year midway through each school year.

Additionally, this component involves making

time to honor th e hard wo rk of school reform—

speciﬁcally the new roles and responsibili ties that

teaching teams have had to adopt and celebrating

successes along the way. Schools going through

this process have done a variety of things to this

end: mid-fall celebratio ns for staff members to

keep momentum, banner-raising celebrations to

declare a commitment to this effort while invi ting

local ofﬁcials and the press, and end-of-th e-year

celebrations to end the year on a positive note.

Step 7—Ongoing: Create a Climate of

Belonging

An o ngoing part of inclusive reform needs to

be creating a climate of belonging. A component

of this necessitates involvin g all staff members

in the planning and implementation of a more

authentically inclusive school. Also, creating a

climate of belonging means working with all

stakeholders in the school to assume competence

and to value all students, purposeful ly building

community in each classroom throughout the

year, adopting a school wide community building

approach, and enhancing the sense of belonging

for all students, staff members, and famil ies.

Figur e 7 is a tool for school leaders to use

during walk-throughs and observations to provide

feedback to teams around issues of belonging.

It is important to note that the literature and

our experience with this process suggest that all

seven aspects of the model are needed. We rec-

ommend that school implement the new inclusive

service delivery between steps 4 and 5 of the

process.

Implications for Districts

The p reviously described steps describe how

to create inclusive schooling at the school-

building level; however, many district adminis-

trators inquire about how to create an entirely

inclusive district. Some district administrators

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Inclusive Schooling an d Lead ership for Social Justice

Figure 4. Coteaching Feedback Form.

follow the outlined process on a school-by-school

basis; others un dergo a l arge-scale approach. Fig-

ure 8 outlines some guidelines and helps to avoid

common pitfalls. See Figure 8 for a detailed

account of the necessary guid elines when moving

an entire district to become more inclusive.

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Theoharis and Causton Inclusive Reform for Students With Disabilities

Figure 4. (Continued).

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Inclusive Schooling an d Lead ership for Social Justice

Figure 5. Classroom Environment Fe edback.

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Theoharis and Causton Inclusive Reform for Students With Disabilities

Figure 5. (Continued).

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Inclusive Schooling an d Lead ership for Social Justice

Figure 6. Supporting Behavior Feedback Form.

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Theoharis and Causton Inclusive Reform for Students With Disabilities

Figure 6. (Continued).

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Inclusive Schooling an d Lead ership for Social Justice

Figure 7. Belonging Feedback Form.

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Theoharis and Causton Inclusive Reform for Students With Disabilities

Figure 7. (Continued).

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Inclusive Schooling an d Lead ership for Social Justice

The following guidelines are for administrators to use when making student placement decisions and policies. While

not exhaustive, they represent a range of key decisions that can foster inclusion, belonging and learning.

These guidelines can be used to avoid common adm inistrative pitfalls that se t up structures impeding achievement and

creating seclusion . They are not meant to be a recip e, but are intended to help put structures and policies in place to

create truly inclusive schools.

Home District: All students are educated within their school district.

No students (including students with signiﬁcant disabilities, students with challenging behaviors, students with autism,

etc.) are sent to other districts or cooperative programs outside of the home school district.

Home School: All students attend the schools and classrooms they would attend regardless of ability/disability or native

language.

There are no schools within the district set aside for students with disabilities.

General Education Member: All students are placed in chron ologica lly age-appropriate general education clas srooms.

This is a legal entitlement, not based on staff pre ference or comfort level. Each classroom represents a heterogeneous

group of students. Special education is a service, not a plac e. No programs, schools-within-a-school or clas srooms are

set aside for students with disa bilities. Students with disabilities are not slotted in to predetermined programs, schools,

or classrooms. Particular classrooms are not designated, as inclusive c la ssrooms while others are not.

Density Check: Strive for classroom s ections that represent natural proportions of the school building.

Natural proportions refer to the percen tage of stu dents with disabilities as co mpared to the entire student body. If you

have 10 students with disabilities and 100 students in the school, that natural proportion is 10 percent. The national

average o f students with disabilities is 12 percent.

Special Education Teacher’s Ca seloads: Assignment of students with disabilities balanc es the intens ity of student need

and case-managemen t responsibility.

This moves away from certain special educators being the “inclusive,” “re source,” “se lf-contained” or “emotionally

disturbed” to all special educators having similar roles and caseloads. Stu dents with disabilities with similar labels are

not clu stered together.

Team Arrangements: All teachers (general education, special education, ELL, reading, etc.) are assigned to instructional

teams on the basis of shared stu dents.

Special education teachers are assigned to collaborate with 2-3 classroom sections or teachers to promote collaboration,

communication and co-planning. Creating effective teams of adults who work with the same students is essential;

con sider gro uping compatible adult te am members as well as building capacity in all staff members to work with all

students. Professional development is needed for adu lts to embrace these new roles, collab orate well and effectively use

meeting time.

Related Services: Related services are portable services that come to the student.

Therefore, related service teachers con sult with classroom teams, demonstrate skills and techniques and provide

instruction/support within the context of general education. Related service providers need to be a part of th e placement

of stud ents into general education classrooms process and the daily general education planning and program .

Daily Schedule: Use the schedule to support instructional blocks, time fo r collaborative planning and problem solving

and daily direction and training for paraprofessionals.

The master schedule is used as a tool to leverage the vision of collaborative inclusion. Creating sacred planning time

for teams of general educators and special educators is essential.

Service Delivery Teams: District and school-level team s meet regularly to reconﬁgure resources and to revise service

delivery on an annual basis.

Schools engage in a n ongoing process to plan for the speciﬁc needs of their students. This involves re-examining the

current way staff are used, how teams are created, the class placement process and the master schedule.

Figure 8. District/Schoo l Guidelines for Inclusive Student Placement.

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Theoharis and Causton Inclusive Reform for Students With Disabilities

Conclusion

In this article, we presented information about

how to create inclusive schools f ocused primarily

on students with disabilities, but it is i mportant

to note th at students with disabilit ies histori-

cally and currently are not the only subset of

student s who have been systematically denied

access to the general education classroom. Stu-

dents of color and low-income students (d ue

to overrepresentation in special education and a

reliance on more restrictive placements), students

learning English as a second language, students

who receive related services, and students who

have behavioral issues are much more likely to

experience exclusion from the general education

curriculum, instruction, and peers. The most i m-

portant thi ng to note here is that access to the

general education core curriculum is paramount.

When students are removed fr om the general

education classroom for any typ e of service,

there is a trade-off and cost to that. Students

miss important content and fall furth er behind.

Inclusive school reform, when done correctly,

looks not only at stud ents with disabilities, but

at all other subsets of marginalized students, and

prioritizes full time access to the general edu-

cation curriculum, in structi on and peer gr oups.

The focus is on seamlessly providing students

the services and supports that they need with in

the context of general education in order for

all st udents to reach their social and academic

potential thro ugh developing a school culture in

which school staff members embrace a collective

ethos that al l students are their students and

work together to kn ow and respond to st udents

collaboratively. We know this is good not only

for students with disabilit ies, but all students.

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