General Education Has to Be for Everyone ~ 1307

Jen Newton Every student is a gen ed student first. Every student is capable of learning and every student has a right to be taught.

Tim Villegas General education—we’re really not talking about a classroom. We’re talking about the default setting for all learners under IDEA.

Jen Newton Safety comes from community and safety comes from belonging and safety comes from being known and valued and appreciated as a member of your community.

Tim Villegas Hello friends. Welcome back to Think Inclusive. Real conversations about building schools where every learner belongs. I am your host, Tim Villegas. Today’s episode is about reimagining general education, not as a classroom, but as the default setting for all learners. Under IDEA we’re unpacking what inclusion really means, why least restrictive environment is often misunderstood, and how we can move beyond the where to focus on the how and why of inclusive education.

Our guest is Dr. Jen Newton, an associate professor of special education at Ohio University, and founder of Teaching is Intellectual. We talk about how inclusion goes beyond the classroom, why every student is a general education student first, and how ableism shows up in our systems and practices. Jen shares powerful stories and insights about belonging, curriculum access, and the urgent need for federal oversight in special education.

This conversation took place live on Facebook and Instagram, and we thought it was so important that we are publishing it for you here on the podcast. Before we get into the conversation, I want to tell you about our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by IXL. IXL is an all-in-one platform for K-12 that helps boost student achievement, empowers teachers and tracks progress in one place.

As students practice, IXL adapts to their individual needs so that every learner gets just right support and challenge, and each student gets a personalized learning plan to close gaps. Check it out at ixl.com/inclusive. Again, that’s ixl.com/inclusive.

All right, after a quick break, it’s time to think inclusive with Dr. Jen Newton. Catch you on the other side.

Tim Villegas Everyone, thank you so much for being here. I think technically we call these Think Inclusive Lives, but today I have Dr. Jen Newton with us from Teaching is Intellectual and I’m Tim Villegas. I’m the director of communications for the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education. And so happy that you’re here today.

Jen, would you mind introducing yourself if people don’t know you?

Jen Newton Sure. Hi, I am Jen Newton. I am an associate professor of special education at Ohio University, and you can find me on socials at Teaching is Intellectual. I’m back. I took a long hiatus, but I’m back on the socials so you can find me there.

Tim Villegas Awesome, awesome. And today we are talking about what we mean when we talk about general education anyways. Today we’re unpacking what general education means, why inclusion matters, and why LRE or least restrictive environment can be super confusing. I think all of these terms are really confusing.

I had a realization over the last few days, weeks that I already knew that when I say inclusion, people have a very specific idea of what that means in their mind, for lots of different reasons. But what I did not realize and what I’m becoming—what I am realizing is that when I say general education, people have a very specific idea of what that means. And then even going further, Jen, least restrictive environment. So I don’t know how many people are out there right now, watching or listening to us, but I would love to know, we would love to know, what is confusing about any of those terms: inclusion, general education, least restrictive environment.

What’s confusing about that to you or what do you think is the most confusing? Put that in the chat or the comments wherever you are listening to this or watching this. Even if you are watching this after it airs, we’d still love to know. So why don’t we start with this idea of general education and what I think is the most confusing is we’re really not talking about a classroom.

We’re talking about the default setting for all learners under IDEA. Do you want—do you have thoughts or should I—do you want me to go first? Either one is fine.

Jen Newton Why don’t you go first?

Tim Villegas Okay. Here is what we’ve really been talking about at MCIE: when we’re talking about general education, we’re really talking about the thing that everyone gets in a school, right?

So we’re talking about yes, it’s setting, but yes, it’s curriculum. Yes, it’s school-wide events and community, right? It’s extracurricular activities. It’s everything that everyone gets. And when I say general education, I mean when I say that students are general education students, all students are general education students.

I mean that all students in a school should have access to and participate in everything that the school has to offer. I don’t know how many times, Jen, because both you and I are former educators—when I was a special educator, how many times that I had to fight for access for the students there in my segregated special education, self-contained classroom.

Sometimes the students that are in these rooms are not even thought of or counted. I had a parent tell me, this was a couple years ago, that—you know how they have field days at school? Everyone goes outside and participates in games and stuff like that. The parent had asked the teacher, “Okay, so where’s my kid’s t-shirt for field day?” And they’re like, “Oh, well, you actually—your kid, or our students have a special field day and there’s a special field day at another school that they don’t go to. All of the students from all of the surrounding special education programs, they all get bused to this special place.”

Students are then—they participate in a, like an adapted or special needs, quote unquote special needs field day. She was just saying how angry that made her, because she’s like, “This is my kid’s school. This is my kid’s school.” And it wasn’t even an option

Jen Newton To participate.

Tim Villegas To participate. It wasn’t even like it was an afterthought.

Like I don’t exactly remember the end of the story whether she advocated for her child to participate in field day, which is very possible, but they weren’t on the same day. No, no, no, it’s not on the same day. So the kids

Jen Newton That were in the self-contained classroom were gonna stay in school that day while the rest of the school was outside.

Tim Villegas Possibly, possibly. Again, this was a couple years ago, so I don’t remember all the details, but I do remember that it’s separate and I do—in fact, and again, I’m not trying to call anyone out. I will say that I just saw a news story of a particular school district having a special needs adapted field day. That’s not out of the ordinary, right? It happens all the time.

So that kind of jogged my memory.

Jen Newton But if we can create adaptive opportunities for kids to engage in field day, why can’t we do that in the school that the kids are members of the community in?

Tim Villegas Right. It’s just another example, right?

It’s another example of how we create special places. And I don’t think these are—these are well-intentioned folks. Special education teachers, district administrators, they’re well-intentioned. They want to provide a space, right? For students to feel safe and belong, I think.

Yes,

Speaker 3 Absolutely. I think what we are saying,

Tim Villegas What we are saying and what sometimes gets misinterpreted is that those spaces can exist in general education. Right. And that’s why I’m using that term general education.

Jen Newton Yeah.

Tim Villegas What everyone gets, right? Everyone gets in a school, in a district, because they are a member, they’re a community member of that district.

Although a lot of people don’t feel that way, that they are included in that way.

Jen Newton Yeah, I think that’s a really good example of the extras of being in school in the ways in which we have to be thinking about inclusion beyond the classroom. But I’m gonna sort of focus a little bit on curriculum, like the curriculum component.

Because again, setting aside the idea of where—we spend a lot of time in special education talking about where kids are served, like so much time talking about that and disagreeing about it, but it’s not a meaningful conversation because there’s assumptions there about what we think is happening in these spaces when we call them certain things.

So I think it’s more important to talk about what is happening and the separate space or in a Gen Ed space itself is not an intervention.

Tim Villegas Exactly.

Jen Newton Right? Yes. More importantly is what is happening in that space? Listen, every kid—I’m telling you, I know I say this all the time, but over 50% of kids are not benefiting from tier one general education instruction right now.

You can just talk to teachers to get that vibe and they’ll tell you it’s rough out here right now. These kids are different. The times are different, parents are different. All of the things are feeling very different. We have to acknowledge that. I’m also gonna say I am still an educator.

I teach, I teach—shout out to any of my students who are popping on today to listen. But the focus of thinking about how do we shift this thinking around what does it mean to have access to the general education curriculum because where your body is is one thing, but the second piece is how are we teaching you? What is the thing, what is the access? What are the entry points? What are the ways in which we’re giving you the support you need so that you can access the general education curriculum? Because that’s what IDEA asks of us. That is not to take away from the small percentage of kids who are doing extended standards, alternative assessment.

I feel as strongly for those students and their right to learn and be taught as I do any student in a typical gen ed space, right? Every single student has access to the general education curriculum, modified, adapted, supported, but they should be being taught. So when I think about every student is a gen ed student first, I’m thinking about how every student is an academic, has a right to academic access, right?

Yes.

Tim Villegas And,

Jen Newton And I think that’s controversial. I think that’s a hot take in some spaces. But when I think about every student is a gen ed student first I am saying every student is capable of learning and every student has a right to be taught.

Tim Villegas I think that is a hot take.

I also think when I was in schools supporting schools, I think another hot take, which was surprising, was that even in these special places, even in these self-contained settings, for students who have particular disabilities like intellectual disability, it’s a hot take for them to be learning grade level standards.

Yeah. You would not believe how many times I had the conversation with educators and they’re looking at me going, “Why do they need to know about physics, algebra?” And these were learners who took alternate assessment.

The standards were modified, but the mindset was even at these entry points, like they need to learn how to fold their clothes, they need to learn how to brush their teeth, they need to know how to ride the bus. Those are things that everyone needs, right? But learners are only in school for a finite amount of time.

This is the only time they’re going to have access to—if we’re thinking inclusively—highly qualified, hopefully educators teaching these standards, but also access to peers. That was always something that I thought about a lot when I was serving learners in these spaces. Great that we’re teaching or we are giving access to grade level standards.

I commend those teachers who continue to do that every single day. But where is the access to peers and rich communication environments? As you know, and a lot of people know, a special education classroom often has students who have the same learning profile and maybe are working on communication and they being together is not—they’re not able to access a rich communication environment like they would be in a general education classroom or setting.

Yeah. So I wonder about that. There’s a lot of things I wonder about with regard to special education classrooms like that.

Jen Newton I do too, as you know, and we spend hours talking about it. I also think that there’s a set idea about what a general education classroom looks like and how it operates and what the expectations are. I have a good friend who talks about and thinks about the general education classroom as the most restrictive environment because it’s the least flexible, it’s the least accommodating, it’s the least nimble, right? You kind of have to comply with very specific routines in order to be successful there.

I wonder about if general education doesn’t have to look like it looks right. It doesn’t. There’s—and people are like, you’re talking about a whole revi—no, I’m not. I’m talking about reallocating resources that we already have in our schools and thinking about how people can work differently together and how we can move kids differently.

I like the idea of—I’m telling you, every kid would benefit from being in a class of 15, but that in and of itself isn’t an intervention.

Tim Villegas Just like a one-on-one is an intervention or one-on-one teaching.

Jen Newton One-on-one is not an intervention. That’s probably a heartbreaking thing for a lot of schools and families to learn. I actually just recently pulled a bunch of literature about this for a friend who was doing a master’s thesis on it. A one-on-one is actually almost a barrier to kids’ outcomes, success, and inclusion, like social inclusion.

So I think we could think a little bit about how we use our teachers and our support staff and our intervention specialists in different ways because—oh, in Ohio, a special educator is called an intervention specialist, and I’m in Ohio, so I have that language.

The ways in which we use folks to do flexible grouping and to move students around so that lots of people are getting the supports they need rather than the one way of delivery. A lot of that happens in schools, but I think if we moved our resources around a little bit, we could probably do that in a more effective manner.

I also think that as much as when we say all students are gen ed students first, and people are like, “No, my special needs kids need certain things, my sped babies need,” a lot of that is rooted in a construct of saviorism and an idea that being separate is better, safer.

But safety comes from community and safety comes from belonging and safety comes from being known and valued and appreciated as a member of your community. So I think a lot differently, I think about the ways in which we set high expectations and honor multiple ways of being in the world and knowing that the social component, the language exposure, the content exposure—I think we’ve seen this over and over and over again with so many different kids that maybe are non-speaking and we often internalize that as non-thinking.

Tim Villegas Mm-hmm.

Jen Newton Or non-verbal, like there’s—they don’t have words and so they’re not internalizing, but then kids get access to a communications system that works for them and all of a sudden they’re like, “I would like to tell you about the things that I think about, all the things I’ve been hearing you say all of these years,” right?

Because the language has been—the verbal is coming in receptively. Once we give them the expressive means, then we can better understand. I say that to mean you don’t know what anyone is learning. You don’t know what they’re capable of, you don’t know what they’re internalizing.

So when we do have this idea that a child who is non-speaking or doesn’t have a lot of joint attention for math can’t access algebraic content, we’re assuming that they’re not capable of things that we have no idea what they might know and be able to do. Why not let them listen in on algebra lessons and see that in practice and give them that support?

Because there’s lots and lots of ways of—and learning isn’t linear, even though our curriculum is linear and our grade level standards are linear, but learning itself is not linear. So general education to me is that robust environment where lots of instruction and engagement and conversation and routines are happening and everybody can benefit from that and being a part of that.

Tim Villegas Yeah. I just want to say, well, thank you, Jen. Why we’re thinking about this right now. My experience and a lot of my story—you know, I taught in segregated spaces for many years, 13 years in the classroom, and then three years as a supporting learners in schools, whether they were included in general education classrooms or not.

I think starting out early in my career, I had a sense that there was something better, right? I was in a classroom with eight to nine to ten kids, depending on what year it was, across grade levels from kindergarten to fifth grade. Later on, for third, fourth, and fifth grade. I just knew that there was a better way to structure how we educate learners with disabilities, particularly those with extensive support needs. When I say extensive support needs, what I’m really saying is learners on the autism spectrum, those with intellectual disability, and emotional and/or behavioral challenges.

Because those are the students that typically get separated into programs or classrooms. As I was learning about inclusive practices, I went to a college, Cal State University, Fullerton in California, that already gave me a great foundation for thinking inclusively about how we structure support and structure special education services.

But I didn’t realize going into school districts that they weren’t already providing these services inclusively. When I got my first job and I was in a special education classroom for students with quote unquote moderate to severe autism, they were like, “Thank goodness you’re here. Here are—here’s your classroom and we love your kids and good luck.”

Speaker 3 We love your kids.

Tim Villegas Yeah. You know, like a hundred percent it was a lot of like, oh, I really have to advocate for attention for my students. As I’m learning all of these wonderful things by the giants who have written so many books and papers about inclusive practices—Cheryl Jorgensen, Julie Causton, Carol Quirk, our former CEO at MCIE, Jack Pearpoint—all of these just wonderful people saying there is a better way, there is a better way to educate learners with extensive support needs.

It wasn’t until I started to dip my toe into, okay, what does that look like for my students? How do I plan and how do I—and that is when my experience, that is when I changed and started moving down this road. At the very beginning I was like, there’s no way my students would ever survive in general education classrooms. Here’s the thing, Jen, we put stuff out and we talk about this all the time in a very public space. The same arguments that people are making are the arguments that I was making.

Jen Newton Absolutely. Yep. I had a little bit of a different trajectory because I didn’t want to be a teacher. I came up with—I had a deaf and blind uncle who went to the school for the deaf in my state. I had a very, very strong interest in deaf education and I started off in speech language therapy.

As I was working my way through that program and really looking at what was available in terms

Jen Newton In speech language therapy, and then, you know, as I was working my way through that program and really looking at what was available in terms of a hearing person in a deaf kind of role and all of those complexities that came with it, I ended up, for my master’s, instead of going to get my C’s in speech therapy, doing an early childhood special ed degree.

So my first job was infants and toddlers, doing intervention with families in their homes, doing home-based service and casework. It was really amazing, and I’m sure I learned more than I taught at that point. Then I moved into a state-funded, what was called an inclusive preschool setting. So I always have had this idea that people should be in community. I think it’s because of the experience I had very young. My uncle absolutely thrived in his school for the deaf, and it was so powerful and meaningful. I also experienced the separation because he went to school seven hours away from his family. All of those things had a big impact on me, so I’ve thought a lot about where people belong and who decides who’s normal and who’s disabled, and how all of these things work together.

I had an inclusive preschool classroom in a public school, in an elementary school, and I had eight kids who were identified with support needs and had IEPs and eight kids who were considered at risk by the state for school failure. That’s not inclusive, right? Because that’s not a natural percentage of students who have support needs and students who don’t. It wasn’t inclusive, but it was the idea of inclusion. At the time, I had a grant from a local university that was working with me on making a more literacy-rich environment. I had other teachers who were in the same state-funded program coming to my school to observe my classroom and to talk about how we create more inclusive environments.

Same thing you experienced, right? We were preschool, so it was even more easy to leave us out of the opportunities that were presented for the whole school to attend. If they had—this was early or mid-2000s—if they had a juggler coming in for a program, my kids didn’t get invited or my class didn’t get invited, or just different things like that. I was constantly advocating for us to be a part of the school community, for my kids to be acknowledged in that broader scheme.

I think that was when, talking to other teachers around the state and starting to recognize that we were all sort of looking for, okay, we’re trying to do all of this inclusion work in preschool, but then when they go to transition to kindergarten, they’re asking us where should they be? Should they be in a gen ed classroom or should they be in a separate classroom? The where was the focus, and the where immediately was off-putting to me because I wanted us to talk about the how and the why and the what—like what’s going to happen in that space and how can we meet their needs and what are those supports that we can put in place.

All of those conversations were secondary or tertiary even to where. What’s where. That was my entree into inclusive education, and I worked with teachers and families and was working on my own professional development, and then I had the opportunity to get a PhD. All I wanted to know was how do we prepare teachers to be inclusive educators? That was my research as a doc student. I just wanted to know more about how do we take this bifurcated system that shows these kids are special and these kids are normal, and how do we bridge the gap so that we’re thinking more about the ways in which lots of kids need lots of different supports and all kids need friends and all kids need access to education and supports.

How do we make sure that nobody is getting left behind, ostracized, or pushed out or othered? I’ve been doing that since, just trying to figure out, and I don’t have the answers, but I do think that our language has a huge effect. I’m seeing this in the discourse since the cuts have come down about OSEP and about OSERS, that a lot of people are like, SPED kids are going to get left behind.

I think what we need to recognize is that, one, kids with the highest support needs have long been left behind. Two, more kids than just what you would consider a SPED kid are going to get left behind. There are lots and lots of kids in lots of different settings who are receiving supports. When we think that there’s a line between who’s a SPED kid and who’s a gen ed kid, we are misunderstanding the gray areas because not every kid fits into those buckets. Very few do. I think that’s kind of a moment that I’m in as I sit in this place of—I’ve advocated for inclusive education, inclusive practices forever.

Now it’s like, well, we’re reverting back to protect SPED kids. That’s too shortsighted. There are tons of kids with support needs whose needs are already not getting met, who already are being failed by their schools—not their teachers, but by the systems, by the funneling of money, by the administrative decisions about planning time, about bell schedules, about where kids spend their day, about curriculum, about testing, all of these things that are pushing kids out.

Tim Villegas Yeah, you are so right about the discourse of having, you know, protect the special needs babies, right? Don’t misunderstand me here, because what I want to say is not that what is happening in ed right now is awful and atrocious—it absolutely is. But to Jen’s point, things have not been working well for learners with disabilities, and everyone, partially because we have this siloed system.

One of the things that I noticed when I was supporting learners—and this could be a misinterpretation or miscommunication by states or districts—but you have certain teachers that can only work with certain students. This is a big barrier in the state of Georgia where I live, even though I work for the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education. Georgia is one of them, I think South Carolina is one of them, I know that there’s other states, but particular teachers who have particular credentials that are like adapted curriculum credentials or have particular names on their credentials, they are only supposed to work with students who have a particular label.

That ends up being a problem because even if a school or district wants to implement inclusive practices, then the discourse at the IEP meeting or even just in the policy and planning of the district as well, someone else is going to need to teach that student because, or a school can say, “Well, there’s nobody at this school that can teach your student who has an intellectual disability.” That is why you, family member, learner, have to go to another school where there is a teacher that has that particular credential.

We saw this in the story, the episode one of Inclusion Stories, which is the narrative podcast that I produced with MCIE. A learner here in Georgia was not able to go to their neighborhood school—a learner with Down syndrome—wasn’t able to go to their neighborhood school with her siblings because the school district said, “Sorry, there’s nobody here that can teach your child.” That family ended up revoking special education services, enrolled the child anyway, and the only thing that really made it work was the willingness of the principal and the general ed teacher saying, “Welcome in. We are going to serve your child because your child is part of our community.” Once that happened and they saw it was successful, then only then did the district say, “Okay, well, fine, now you can go ahead and go along with this.” But that story happens so many different places all around the country,

Jen Newton Which kind of leads us to where we are in the conversation related to policy changes and where we are with IDEA and where we are with OSEP and OSERS and the funding and the Department of Ed and OCR, right? Because that’s illegal. It’s not permitted under IDEA to say we can’t meet your needs here as a public school. But if there is no oversight, if the state has created a policy or a licensure track that prohibits certain students from receiving certain curriculum at certain schools and there is no oversight because we don’t have an Office of Civil Rights anymore that is in charge of implementing and ensuring and overseeing that IDEA is upholding the rights of the children and families in our schools, then families don’t have any options but to then go to the other school or to find a private school or a charter school or somebody that’s going to be willing to support their learner.

We know that it hasn’t been working for a long time. We know that IDEA has not been implemented in the vast majority of states in the civil rights and justice-oriented framework that it’s intended, and all of that is going to get worse without oversight.

Tim Villegas After the break, Jen and I dig deeper into what least restrictive environment really means and why it’s not just a place. We talk about how school systems often misinterpret LRE, the barriers families face when trying to access inclusive settings, and how federal oversight plays a critical role in protecting the rights of students with disabilities.

Plus, we share practical ideas for educators and families to take action in their own communities and why reimagining general education isn’t just possible—it’s already happening. This show is produced by the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education, MCIE. Partners with educators and school systems to promote authentic inclusion, foster change, and support the implementation of inclusive practices.

Whether it’s district-wide transformation, customized learner planning, or professional learning and coaching, MCIE walks along educators every step of the way. And here’s the best part. Our work begins with a conversation. So if you’re ready to create schools where every learner belongs, visit mcie.org and get in touch and start that conversation today.

Right, right. How do you feel about—do you want to talk about LRE?

Jen Newton It’s not a place.

Tim Villegas It’s—okay. So here’s what I—

Speaker 3 I say it’s not a place, and Tim’s like, okay,

Tim Villegas Here’s what I want to say. I think that—okay, here’s my experience with LRE because, you know, I’m not a lawyer. I have a lot of friends that are lawyers. Does that count? No, I’m just kidding. No. Here’s my experience with LRE. When I was on IEP teams, the experience for a family was so vastly different based on the school, based on the staff,

Jen Newton Administration.

Tim Villegas Administration, right? Everyone says a student should be educated, quote unquote, in the least restrictive environment. A lot of times that’s applied to, “Okay, the LRE for this particular student is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” You could argue that’s actually a kind of misinterpretation of LRE and also the continuum of alternate placements in IDEA.

What often ends up happening is that the student gets placed in the least restrictive environment for the school, not for—

Jen Newton Hundred percent,

Tim Villegas Not for the actual student,

Jen Newton Because the school doesn’t have a continuum of placements. They have two or three,

Tim Villegas Right?

Jen Newton That’s it.

Tim Villegas That’s it.

Jen Newton And we don’t want to talk about supplementary aids and services.

We just want to talk about where, so LRE gets usurped to being just a place and not a meaningful, uniquely designed, specially designed plan considering what are the supplementary aids and services that this child will benefit from that gives this child access to that general education curriculum.

Right. It’s just in or out?

Tim Villegas Yes. Something—oh, wait, no, go ahead. Go ahead. You were—I’m trying to flip back and forth so that everyone can see. Everyone can see you hard,

Speaker 3 But I also was just like, but also,

Tim Villegas Go ahead.

Speaker 3 Back to your idea that it’s like

Jen Newton The LRE for the adults or the LRE for the school or the LRE for the team.

Tim Villegas Right. We often make these decisions based on where there’s space and so the scheduling idea of it, right? If we have this many minutes of intervention time, do we have the personnel to be able to push those interventions into the classroom and to meet with the classroom teacher or to team with the staff, you know, the teaching staff, or is it easier to just get those intervention moments in the resource room and schedule the child to be out of a class for half the day or whatever.

But we don’t think then about how do I loop the classroom teacher in to what are the things that are happening when we’re in the resource room and what is happening in the classroom while we’re out of the classroom? Because the child is missing instruction too. Often the intervention minutes that are happening in the resource room are not connected with the curriculum or what the student is missing.

Right. So then we’re creating this further behindness in terms of accessing the general education curriculum. Whereas what if—and I’m not saying this isn’t happening, again, none of this is a critique. It’s just a reflection of the varying realities that are taking place across this country. It might not apply to you. It might be very, very different in your district. It might be running so smoothly and you’re really integrating kids and making sure they’re uniquely designed and instruction is being implemented at an individual level. I would love to hear about it. Kudos. I think that’s amazing. I’m just saying that we have a lot of districts in this country and we have lots and lots of different things that are happening.

So it’s okay if what we’re saying isn’t you, but it is happening in a lot of places. This isn’t meant to be a critique, but the correction is what if we were able to give the kids the supports in the classroom so that they’re not missing that instruction, but they’re able to access it in a way that they can.

One of the biggest things we have to hear a lot about and we’re dealing with on a national level is the lack of reading comprehension and decoding skills for so many kids. If they’re going to miss content because they can’t do the reading at grade level, then is it possible that we can give them the content in an audio fashion or some other way so that they can then participate in a learning part? And we work on the reading part separately.

I mean, that’s just a very simple example, but—

Tim Villegas You said that our discussion may not apply to everyone that is listening or watching, in the sense that there’s a lot of challenges that are happening in schools.

But I also want to mention that there are a lot of schools doing this, right? Sometimes the discourse is this would never work for my child or my school or my district. Yes. But the thing that keeps me going is that all the places that I have seen it work, not only on paper, but personally, viewing and getting to know the educators that are implementing these inclusive practices, and seeing that it takes a long time to get where we want to go and no place is perfect.

Also, this misconception—this is what I wanted to bring up, I’m finally getting around to it—that when we say in general education, the misconception is that students are in general education 100% of the time no matter what.

Like, without support.

Jen Newton Without support.

Tim Villegas Exactly. That we’re just talking about putting every kid in one room with 25 to 35 students and one teacher.

Jen Newton Right, exactly. We are not saying that. The most inclusive schools that we see respond to the learners they have.

I’m going to bring up Ruby Bridges because I know they get a lot of attention, but they are one of the schools that are on top of mind because they have designed the school in a particular way to welcome all learners. Ruby Bridges is in North Shore District in the state of Washington, led by our friend Cathi Davis as principal. I know that they’re a part of the inclusive schools network—I know that’s not the technical term—in the state of Washington, that have demonstration sites all across the state of Washington that are moving towards inclusive practices through the Swift

Tim Villegas Center. Is that through—

Jen Newton It’s

Tim Villegas Actually through the University of Washington, the Haring Center.

Oh. It’s a state initiative through the Office of Superintendent Public Instruction in Washington State. The reason why I’m bringing that up is because their attitude is all students are our students, and the services are portable, so special education services are portable. We’re bringing those services to the student wherever they’re at. All spaces are for all students. When Cathi likes to tell the story, and I’ll repeat it, that when they were constructing the building, they originally had put classrooms for—they built classrooms as self-contained special education classrooms like a typical school would have.

But the school made the decision: we are not using them for self-contained, we’re using them for all-purpose spaces. If students need a smaller environment to access something, then that is available to not just students with IEPs or who receive special education services, but it is a space for all students. That is the thing that I think we need to really do is reimagine what general education can and should be. When we are saying all students belong in general education, we are really saying that we need to reimagine school for everyone because this cannot be—school transformation cannot be a special education only initiative.

It has to be school-wide and district-wide with district leadership fully committed to moving towards inclusive practices. There are instances all around the country where there are schools who have a lot of autonomy that have changed practices for all learners, but that does not mean that their district has followed suit moving towards inclusive practices.

Jen Newton By doing that, we are elevating the educational opportunities and experiences for all the kids in the school and in the district, because we are communicating to students across their spectrums of needs that we expect that people have varying needs, and that we are committed to meeting those needs for the purposes of kids learning and belonging. I think that’s where sometimes we struggle in these conversations because some of us really can only picture school one way. I think about the ways in which families kind of accept how they’re going to have to fight to get their kids the services and supports that they need to be successful.

The law is in place for a reason. The reason is that schools won’t typically—haven’t historically—been willing to meet kids’ diverse needs without being forced by law. Even when we have IEPs and 504 plans in place, we know that implementation is still very low in terms of implementations of supports and interventions. When we’re in this moment, thinking about funding, teacher prep, research, all of the things that factor in to why we have this law and why we have whole federal departments that are committed to implementation of this law, I think about how many kids’ rights will be not even violated, but just not acknowledged. When there’s less funding, less oversight, there’s less initiative to try to provide additional supports because that’s harder to do.

So I feel like in some ways I’m worried because the conversation and the discourse that I’m seeing is very bifurcated, right? It’s like my classroom, my disabled child, and we’re kind of looking at it from this one perspective because families have been so accustomed to fighting for everything that they get from schools that maybe it’s harder to see the ways in which the whole school structure will be impacted and not for the better.

How many more kids will struggle to be successful and to access their education? How much harder it will be for teachers

Jen Newton How much harder it will be for teachers to try to get the knowledge and skills that they need when there’s no professional development around diversity and equity and inclusion. So I think that this should be a galvanizing issue, right? This should be something that we can all come together on, because states—no, I mean, it sounds like Washington’s doing great. I think that there are, I can think of maybe three other states that are really, really aware of the fact that the system of special education isn’t working for all of their students or teachers or admin, and really trying to reflect on how do we do this better.

But the rest of the states, I’m not convinced that they’re going to take the onus on themselves to improve educational outcomes for kids with disabilities without federal oversight.

Tim Villegas So Jen, why don’t we end with some calls to action. What are some things that people can do in this moment of uncertainty? You know, funding uncertainty, but also this extra attention on IDEA and special education. Do you have—I, go ahead.

Jen Newton I have so many things that I think would be awesome. One is, and I talk about this a lot when I talk about reimagining special ed, but I would definitely encourage everyone to start following disabled people. Read books by disabled authors, learn from disabled people on social media. Watch—I think it’s no longer free on PBS—but watch The Ride Ahead with Dan Habib and Samuel Habib. Get knowledgeable about all of the ways in which ableism, the idea that disabled people are broken or need fixing or are somehow less than, is known as ableism, but learn about how the system works and learn about how entrenched it is and the ways in which we individually have to unlearn our own ableism to really think about what does it mean to have high expectations for kids in school settings and what does it mean to have high expectations for ourselves as members of a society and including all people as having value and worth and can contribute beyond the ways in which we produce or contribute to an economy, but the ways in which we can be meaningfully present.

So follow disabled people, read books by—I have tons and tons and tons of options for you and I’m happy, just reach out to me and I’m happy to share the slide deck that I use full of books by disabled authors that I use in my class. That’s one. Another thing I would really highly encourage, and I think we’ll share this link, but read or at least skim the federal government’s guidance on LRE and implementation of IDEA for inclusive practices. The IDEA is actually written as a civil rights law. It is intended to bring kids with disabilities into our school communities as rightful presence and meaningful contributors to our community.

So I think the language in there really helps us to better understand LRE beyond a place, but more about the consensus of how someone contributes to our community as schools. What about you? What do you think we should be doing? Oh, and also write your senators. Call your senators, call your representatives, get in touch with them.

I have—I’ve been doing that every morning. I live in Ohio, so it feels kind of hopeless, but I am going to continue to ask for meetings. I want to have a meeting with the representatives for my state, and I want them to hear me talk to them about what it means to cut this type of funding when I’m in a teacher preparation position. I was an OSEP-funded PhD, so all of these things are—there’s multi-layers to who’s impacted.

Tim Villegas Those are all great examples. So I have two—one is outward, kind of outward or outreach focused and one is inward focused. The first thing is there’s a lot of attention on special education, what it means, what it is, and I think this is a great opportunity for you to reach out to your friends and neighbors and colleagues who have no experience with the special education system or framework, what services are, what IDEA is, and engage in a conversation with them. You don’t have to be an expert in it, but I think having a conversation about what it means and what it means for funding to change or for priorities to change at the federal level, I think that’s a worthy discussion.

I’m sure that we—you’ve put out stuff, Jen, about what that means, and there’s a lot of really great content creators that are putting out stuff. So there’s a lot of discussion points. So that’s number one, and that’s outward focus, but inward focus, and something very, very practical for any educator to do is to really look at their own practices.

Whether that is you’re a teacher in a special education classroom that is designated for students with autism, or whether you are in a special school or whether you are a co-teacher or whether you’re a principal. It doesn’t matter where you are. But really think about who is missing from this environment of my school, and who perhaps is feeling excluded.

How do we bridge that gap from moving maybe your students or students that are across the hall in that special education classroom, or maybe it is that regionally placed unit in your school and your principal. Let’s start thinking about where is everyone and does everyone have access to everything?

Does everyone have access to general education? Is everyone in general education? I’m going to bring it all the way back to our beginning question.

Speaker 3 Perfect. Yeah.

Tim Villegas And we spent a lot of time talking about it, but it does not mean the classroom. It does not only mean the classroom, right? It is not about we’re just going to throw kids all together in classrooms and just hope for the best, right?

We’re reimagining general education. And it’s not just you and me, Jen, thinking that this is a good idea, right? There’s so many books and literature articles and people actually doing this work. So we are not just coming up with it.

Jen Newton And it’s not the theoretical and it’s not abstract, right?

Tim Villegas Yes, yes. It’s real life. It’s happening and we need to move it to happening on scale. That is on all of us. So, yes, but let’s keep talking about this because these are such important conversations to have and we don’t have all the answers and neither does anyone else who’s claiming that they do.

So find community to really get into the details of how this looks and what it means, and how do we work toward bringing a vision forward that we know can be true and equitable and inclusive and meaningful with high expectations for all learners. What do we need to make that happen?

Then let’s get together in community and build it. Because there are places and pockets where it’s happening and the outcomes are significant. We cannot underestimate the power of bringing the community together around educating everyone in an impactful and equitable way. That is gen ed. Gen ed has to be for everyone.

Tim Villegas Dr. Jen Newton, thank you so much for being on Think Inclusive Live. Now, something—

Jen Newton It’ll be somewhere at some point. It’ll—

Tim Villegas Be somewhere. Thank you. And I’m sure we’ll clip all of this up and put it on social, but thank you so much for being here.

Jen Newton Yes, thank you for talking. I appreciate it so much. See you soon.

Tim Villegas That was Dr. Jen Newton. Here is what I’m taking with me. Inclusion isn’t just about where students are placed. It’s about how we teach, how we support, and how we build community. Jen reminded us that general education should be the default setting for all learners, and that safety and belonging come from being known and valued in your school.

Here’s one practical step for educators. Start following disabled people. Read books by disabled authors. Listen to disabled voices on social media and in your professional development, as Jen said. We all have ableism to unlearn, and that starts with centering the lived experiences of disabled people in our work.

Share this episode with a colleague who’s building Inclusive Schools. Rate and review us on Apple Podcast or Spotify and follow Think Inclusive wherever you get your podcasts. Shout out to our listener from California, jm. He wrote to us and said, greetings from California. I have been listening to your podcast for a little over a year now, and it has been a beacon of light in what can definitely feel like a series of never-ending storms in our school experience thus far.

Our non-speaking autistic son is in general ed full-time this year, thanks largely to our persistence and our district’s director of special education going to bat for us. Needless to say, gen ed is not a common placement for someone like him, and it continues to be tough. I understand why so many families supporting non-speakers, doing things like spelled communication and teaching grade level curriculum, eventually opt for homeschool. Nevertheless, for now, we are keeping at it. It is good to know that there are folks like you advocating for systemic change. We just all need more of us. Thanks again for the work and the podcast.

Jm, your message got to me right on time. I really needed to hear it. Messages like yours help me to keep going, so thank you. If you have something to share, you can always email me at tvillegas@mcie.org. Okay, let’s roll the credits. Think Inclusive is brought to you by me, Tim Villegas. I write, edit, mix, master. I basically wear all the podcast hats and baseball caps.

This show is a proud production of the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education, scheduling and extra production help from Jill Wagoner. Our original music is by Miles Kredich with extra vibes from Melod.ie. Big thanks to our sponsor, IXL. Visit ixl.com/inclusive. Fun fact, 13 years ago I launched Think Inclusive because I believe students with disabilities belonged in general education.

Since then, this community has shared classroom stories and changed how I see the world. So it’s time for a celebration. Join us on Tuesday, December 2nd from seven to 8:30 PM Eastern for a birthday party on Zoom. We’ll have a game show, special guests including Keith Jones, Jenna Rufo, Mark Crenshaw, and Diana Pastora Carson, plus some interactive fun.

Our birthday goal is to raise $1,300 and welcome 130 new donors to MCIE. Every gift supports inclusive education. If a podcast story has moved you, this is your chance to pay it forward. Secure your ticket to the party. I’ll put the link for tickets in the show notes. Find us on socials almost everywhere at Think Inclusive.

Thanks for hanging out and remember, inclusion always works.