Shifting Focus from Compliance to Outcomes in Education with Glenna Wright-Gallo ~ 1336

Glenna Wright-Gallo: I talk about this so frequently, and I still feel like I can’t say it enough: we have to shift from compliance-focused to outcomes-focused. And this I think is a fascinating concept, because we need to look at the intent of the IDEA, and I’m not saying that people should not comply with it. But when you look at the intent and you design systems around the intent, that compliance piece is much easier.

I have hope that even during the high velocity of change that we’re seeing with federal policy, with funding, with technology, all of the changes that are going on in the world, we can really pivot to what matters to us and identify that we need to put these systems in place.

Tim Villegas: Hey, friends. Welcome back to Think Inclusive: Real Conversations About Building Schools Where Every Learner Belongs. I’m your host, Tim Villegas. Today’s episode is about the gap between what we say and what we actually build. You know that poster, “Every classroom is for every learner”? Glenna Wright-Gallo would ask, “Is it actually happening? And if not, why not?”

Glenna is vice president of the Office of Strategic Research and Policy at Everway, a global neurotechnology software company. Before that, she served as Assistant Secretary for Special Education and Rehabilitative Services at the US Department of Education. She’s also a person with a disability, a parent, and a former state director of special education. She’s been inside this system at every level.

We get into the structural barriers that block even the most well-meaning districts—schedules, co-planning time, siloed professional learning—and what it would actually take to shift from compliance-focused to outcomes-focused. There’s also a concept Glenna brings up called glue employees: the people behind the scenes quietly fixing problems no one else even knows exist. It’s from the business world, but one she applies to schools, and you won’t stop seeing it.

Before we meet our guest, I wanna 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 Glenna Wright-Gallo. Catch you on the other side.

Glenna Wright-Gallo, welcome back to the Think Inclusive podcast.

Glenna Wright-Gallo: Thank you so much, Tim. I’m excited to be back. This is one of my favorite podcasts, so I appreciate the opportunity.

Tim Villegas: Wow, that’s high praise, so I appreciate that. I wanna talk about inclusion, of course, but there’s a lot of listeners and viewers who are in the camp of, they’re an educator who works in maybe a not-as-inclusive district as they would hope or want it to be. And so I’m wondering, with all your vast experience and then your current role, when you look across districts, what gets in the way of educators who genuinely want to be inclusive, but the system is somehow constraining?

Glenna Wright-Gallo: So we’re gonna start off strong right out of the gate.

Tim Villegas: Oh, yeah. Let’s do it. You’re going right for it.

Glenna Wright-Gallo: So I think that one of the things we have to recognize is that IDEA is 50, right? So we’re 50 years into the civil rights promise, and we’re still seeing it evolve. We’ve come a great deal in 50 years, and we’re still nowhere close to where we want to be or where people deserve us to be with accessibility in inclusive settings.

I’m gonna tell you, I have a couple assumptions that I come at this work from. One, I’m a person with a disability. Two, I’m a parent. Three, I’m a former educator, and as I like to say, once an educator, always an educator. And then four, I’ve held educational leadership roles at district levels, at state levels across multiple states, and then as Assistant Secretary of Education for the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, or OSERS, at the U.S. Department of Ed under President Biden. My most recent job, what I’m in currently right now, is I’m the vice president of the Office of Strategic Research and Policy for Everway, which is a neuro-inclusive educational technology company that really focuses on removing barriers to accessibility in education, learning, and the workplace.

All of that is a lot to say that I really believe that we all have some common assumptions. One is that all students can learn and deserve to have the opportunity of learning. Two, that educators and parents and leaders—that we all want students to be successful, and that we understand that the problem does not lie within a student or a group of students. It is not the fault of parents. It is not the fault of teachers. This is a systems-level problem, and it requires systems-level solutions. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work on an ad hoc basis to advocate for one child or one group of children. It means, though, to make the changes that we believe need to happen—for systems to truly be built born accessible, born universal, to be designed using the principles of universal design for learning—we have to approach it at a systems level and build all of those structures in.

So I think that we’ve been grappling with the problems of trying to take a one-off, right? Saying it takes a really heroic teacher who beats the odds and works 20 hours a day to make it happen. Or it takes this one principal to put in a system that is designed to meet the needs of all students. We always have those great inspirational stories, and it’s great that people are doing that, but it doesn’t solve the underlying issue, which is those systems, structures, and barriers.

So a couple of the big barriers that I see are schedules. We’re not providing instruction and support to school leaders and district leaders about designing school schedules that don’t isolate students with disabilities and that provide opportunities to roll out tiered levels of supports, additional tutoring, things like that.

Another thing is, we all recognize the importance of collaboration between general ed and special ed teachers, right? That’s a huge goal of the IEP meeting and developing an IEP, and yet we don’t actually properly train or support them with co-planning time to be able to do that in a meaningful way. So it becomes a check-the-box issue, when really that’s the strength of the entire system that specially designed instruction is built around.

And then third—and I’ve probably talked about this with you and anyone who’s ever heard me talk about this—is we can’t train people in isolation and expect them to deploy things in uniformity and in collaboration. One of my frustrations is that we train our general ed and our special ed teachers separately. When we do train them together, we typically train them on legal aspects under IDEA. And that’s the same thing that we do with our school leaders. When they get instruction or training in their leadership prep programs, it has to do with the legal and compliance issues of IDEA, not: how do we make this work? How do we build a system and support a system that improves and increases accessibility and inclusive practices?

You can tell this is something I’m incredibly passionate about. And I don’t want to say that people shouldn’t take steps on their own, but we have to go beyond that.

Tim Villegas: Oh my gosh, I love that you started with schedule, because I think that is one piece where districts have a really hard time imagining anything different than what they are currently doing. And so when they are thinking about moving forward with inclusive practices, they tend toward more low-hanging fruit of, let’s focus on co-teaching models, right? Or let’s talk about making curriculum accessible. And all those things are important and need to happen, right?

But I just remember having a conversation—this is when I was in a district—with some curriculum folks that were still in the special education department, but their focus was curriculum. And I was always trying to advocate for a better system. And they’re like, “If we could just get the curriculum accessible, and if we could just have high expectations for all learners, then that would help change the system.” And it certainly would. We absolutely should do that.

But I think one of the big missing pieces is we actually have to rearrange how educators are serving students. And that actually means scheduling a special education teacher not to be in one classroom all day, every day, but that they are serving students in different locations, because we actually are placing students across grade levels, students with and without disabilities. And that is really tough to reimagine if you haven’t already done it.

I’m picking on schedule right now, but I’m wondering, do you have an example or a place to start with schedule? Because you talked about collaboration, which is key, and you talked about professional learning, and I think that both of those things are probably a little bit more attainable for a district to try and move forward with. But schedule is a little different, so I’m just curious.

Glenna Wright-Gallo: Yeah. No, I think there’s some really great research out there around how to design school schedules, and I’ve seen some consultancy groups that have come out with tools that help. But basically what it comes down to is designing a school schedule that starts with your tier three supports first, and then builds backwards through tier one. So starting with: What do our students with disabilities need? What are the IEPs requiring? What do our English language learners need? What do our students who are eligible and receiving Title services need? Looking at school data to see what are the areas that we need to provide additional supports, remediation, and structure, and then building your school system around that.

When I was in Washington State, the administrators’ association brought in a group and did training for school and district leaders on how to design an accessible school schedule. So I’ve seen some really great tools out there. I don’t wanna promote anyone, but I encourage people—and the last time I checked, it was WASA, W-A-S-A, was the association in Washington. They had recorded it, and it was available online, so it might still be out there.

But in listening to you and your reflections, it made me think about some work that’s been done around looking at the research and compiling it into Visible Learning. And part of that, what kind of struck me, is the research was saying that we typically refer to needing a smaller class size and that being incredibly effective. But what they found is that when class sizes were changed but teachers weren’t trained to teach differently as a result of the class size change or decrease, there was actually no impact. And so I think about that a lot too. I think we can apply that to the school schedule piece, right? Which is, if we only go in and adjust one piece without looking at the ripple effects, then we’re just gonna encounter another barrier.

So we know the strength is in bringing together the skill set and the knowledge of everyone across the system. I always think about that as a special educator, right? Who are the components of an IEP meeting, and who needs to be there? And so how do we use that to identify the gaps and barriers that we have and develop and design a system that’s more effective?

And I think with scheduling, your students can explain that to you—what’s working, what’s not working. I think parents can tell you from their aspects, and your general ed and your special ed and your related service providers. And you’re gonna see those unique use cases where something hasn’t worked, but you’ve had one person who behind the scenes has tinkered with it to make it look like it’s working, right?

And I think that’s a fascinating concept. There was just an article in, I think, the Wall Street Journal about those employees—they refer to them as glue employees. And they’re the people who are behind the scenes fixing the problems that no one knows exist. Because they’re like, “Oh, this isn’t gonna work,” and they just fix it, right? And I think that we have that in so many places in education. And again, it’s great because they’re fixing it there, but it’s not getting fixed in the bigger system.

Tim Villegas: You’ve mentioned the three barriers that can happen—so scheduling, and then collaboration, and then siloed professional learning. Have you seen something that school and district leaders do that really shifts the practice towards more inclusive classrooms, and in a cohesive way, not just piecemeal?

Glenna Wright-Gallo: Yes. I think this comes down to: do we have clear, consistent messaging that’s aligned with our policy and practices? So if I as a leader or if I as an educator say something like, “Every classroom is for every learner,” does that actually happen? Or is that something we’re saying, but then it’s not happening because somebody has made a decision behind the scenes?

So saying every classroom is for every learner, and then making sure that our educators are properly trained, they have co-planning time, they have the resources, they have the curriculum, right? All of those things to make it happen. Making sure that we truly invite authentic engagement with the people impacted by the decisions we’re making, and that we’re using those to identify successes that we can replicate, as well as barriers that we need to address. And approaching it as, this is a common goal and we’re working on it together—not in a protective stance of, I have to justify the decisions I’ve made to you no matter what, but as in, let me look at it through your lens and see how this could be done differently where we have flexibility.

The other one I’m gonna tell you—I talk about this so frequently, and I still feel like I can’t say it enough—we have to shift from compliance-focused to outcomes-focused. And this I think is a fascinating concept, because we need to look at the intent of the IDEA, and I’m not saying that people should not comply with it. But when you look at the intent and you design systems around the intent, that compliance piece is much easier. I think that we need to look at: How are we making decisions? How are we funding programs? How are we assigning staff? How are we designing and implementing IEPs? And how are we using those results and looking at them from that outcome lens going backwards?

And this is one where I think it’s fascinating—as special educators, we have identified that compliance role as our main responsibility in many cases, and tend to put the instructional role as a side step, something that isn’t as important or is the focus of a general education teacher, unless I’m working only on specially designed instruction. That, I think, has a lot of really unintended consequences. We are building lowered expectations for our children with disabilities by doing that. We’re taking over ownership of their education and their outcomes instead of that being a general ed ownership piece. We’re sending messages that this siloed system is the best that can be accomplished, and as skilled as it is, it doesn’t meet the needs of all students, right? It doesn’t have that general education component, which is a legal right and an ethical right for every child to have.

We don’t look at IEPs as really tools of driving change and improvement. I think we look at them as a check-the-box way to plan together once, but really not use them to the full potential. And this is something I’ve really been thinking about a lot lately. What if we changed the way we wrote IEPs, we changed the way we designed IEPs, to look at those long-term trends instead of year by year? What if we used them to look at starting at the grade-level expectation rather than at the present level? And so looking at what are the supports that are needed for that student to be successful in those inclusive programs, instead of saying, “Let’s start from a deficit-based model” and justify their inclusion in a general ed program. Those are things that we have wrestled with over and over again, that I hear people talk about over and over again, and yet we don’t move beyond it. That’s frustrating.

And I think this is fascinating, because I actually think this is the easiest one to do, right? We do so much training on compliance—it’s like an ongoing training—that if we repurposed that training, we could really accomplish some major changes and improvements that would truly change the trajectory of children’s lives and the lives of their families. So I think we have to look at this and say, “How are we going to make these decisions that actually change the system, that actually support students, and how are we gonna do it together? How do we model that collaboration? How do we provide that joint professional development? How do we provide co-planning time?”

This is what I do for work, so for me it seems very clear-cut and easy, right? At Everway, we’re working on aligning policy and strategy with the technology. We live in an age where technology is moving so quickly and has such great capacity and is pretty low cost compared to how it used to be. So how do we use all of those things to remove those barriers? And I think that this is something we can definitely do.

Tim Villegas: After the break, I ask Glenna about AI. Let’s see how it goes.

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Can I ask you a question about AI?

Glenna Wright-Gallo: Yeah.

Tim Villegas: I never know where people land on it, because—it’s not a secret—I’m pro-AI use in certain instances, mostly around analysis and even leadership using it as a thought partner. And the reason why I’m bringing it up is, recently I think Disability Scoop had an article about OpenAI doing some pilot programs for some Texas school districts.

Glenna Wright-Gallo: I was just looking at that article this morning.

Tim Villegas: Yes. Yeah. And I posted something about it. I was pretty agnostic, but I think that some people didn’t even want to talk about it, I felt like. AI is such a polarizing topic, and in my experience—and I don’t know about yours—it doesn’t have anything to do with political agenda at all. You can be anywhere on the spectrum and feel a certain way about it.

And so, the compliance piece that you’re talking about—in my ideal world, students’ privacy would be paramount, obviously, and all the safeguards would be put into place, and the cybersecurity. So let’s just assume that exists, right? But AI could be such a powerful tool to help school districts with the burden of figuring compliance out. Because you’re right, that is where the vast majority of the thinking goes, right? How do I make sure that this is a compliant program, IEP, whatever, however you wanna phrase it—and less time is taken into actually specially designed instruction or collaboration time or any sort of other professional learning. So I would just love your thoughts about that.

Glenna Wright-Gallo: Yeah. Actually, I have lots of thoughts on this. So I jotted down some notes, ’cause I was like, “Okay, how can I make this a coherent response?” I would say I see a lot of benefits of AI, right? It can reduce some of the cognitive load. It can take off some of the stress in areas where I may have some learning gaps or some skill gaps. So I think there are a lot of benefits to AI. I also see that there are quite a few risks. I don’t want AI to reduce the requirement for me to think independently and problem-solve and apply that across contexts. And I think a lot of that is gonna be key to the types of prompts and the way that we are taught to use and to not use AI, and the reasoning behind that.

I think that the protection piece—the privacy, the safety, all of those things—are key, especially when we’re talking about children, and making sure that those guardrails are in place. And I’ve recently read some research that has just come out by Brookings around AI and some risks there. One of the things that they’ve pointed out is, we’ve learned a lot through the rise of social media—what worked, what didn’t work, what are some of the long-term implications—and it would be nice if we were to apply those to the context of AI. And I say that with a slight smirk on my face, because I also feel that we should do that same thing with what we learned during COVID. We have so many examples of things that work well that are evidence-based and things that don’t work well, and yet we do a really poor job of remembering them and applying them across contexts.

When I think about ways that we could effectively use it to reduce teachers’ workload, though, I think that there are some really fantastic opportunities to have some AI-embedded tools within some of that technology and software. And that’s definitely something that is in process. Everway has several tools that have AI embedded within them, but with those safety guardrails. Because what we wanna do is reduce those repetitive tasks that are rote—copying, pasting, spell checking, those types of things. What we don’t wanna do is basically create an AI-generated goal bank that systematizes or makes decisions that should be made by teachers, by IEP teams, right?

So yes, I’m pro-AI. Yes, I see lots of opportunities for it. I use it similar to how you do, where I produce something and I ask it to re-review it and provide critique—to think outside of my expertise. I wanna know how other people might review this and what questions they had. So I use it as an expansion of my thought process, not as a replacement for my thought process. And that’s what I want for AI tools that are used by educators and used by students—to do those same types of things.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. So I’m thinking about—before we jumped on AI for a second—I guess maybe it’s the state or district policy question of, what’s it gonna take to start moving away from this focus on compliance to rethinking how we are structuring our IEPs? So that’s one question. And then the follow-up question is, does there need to be some change at the federal level with IDEA in order to make that happen, or can states pursue a different way, or a rethinking, of how they’re implementing IDEA? Does that make sense?

Glenna Wright-Gallo: Yeah, that does make sense. I’m gonna take this back to one of the ways that we started this conversation, which is: when we say things, we need to mean them, and we need to show that we mean them. So if we truly believe all students can learn and all students should be included, then we need to make decisions. We need to make policy decisions, we need to make training decisions, we need to make budget decisions, right? And we need to make day-by-day and long-term strategic decisions that are all reflective of that belief. That really is key here.

I think that a lot of things that we do are historical in nature. It’s because it’s always been done that way. We haven’t thought it through. And so we really need to go back and reexamine why we do those things. And the other part of that is we have to hold each other accountable. I have a really horrible memory, so when I remember something, it sticks out. But I remember walking down a hall with the Utah State Superintendent when I worked in Utah, and I was voicing concerns about some of the outcomes we were seeing with students with disabilities. And I remember she stopped me, ’cause I think I said “my students,” and she said, “No, you mean our students.” And that’s that accountability—that even as someone who truly believes that students with disabilities are general ed students first, sometimes I took ownership. And that ownership was not mine to take. And so holding ourselves accountable in ways that reframe it—publicly, privately, whatever—that’s what we need to do.

So when we’re having those trainings, we need to open it up. We need to give people the space to voice concerns, to ask questions, to say, “What would this look like? This is how I’m doing something now. How could I do it differently?” and try those opportunities to change.

I don’t think this takes a requirement at the federal level. Nothing in IDEA says it has to be implemented the way that we’re implementing it. Nothing says compliance is the driver. We’ve created this scenario by the way we’ve implemented it and the focus and the importance that we’ve put on it. And some of it’s needed. Again, I’m not anti-compliance—former compliance officer, former monitor of special ed programs. But it’s not the only thing.

When we drive with, “Were all of the IEP team members at the meeting, yes or no?” versus, “What was the value of having your IEP team members at the meeting?”—those are two very different things, right? And so I can easily meet the first standard, and I can have everybody there at that IEP meeting. But if I don’t have a general ed teacher who is prepped with knowing what they’re supposed to bring—that they’re supposed to bring the knowledge of the general curriculum, the knowledge of what the general ed peers are, the expectations and behaviors that are anticipated, and the supports that the student may need to be successful in that. If I don’t have a school leader who’s in that meeting setting the stage and setting the tone for what the expectations are for everyone involved. If I don’t have parents that are engaged, that I’ve provided an opportunity to look at data and come with thoughts and ideas—having everybody at the IEP meeting is not the point. The point is all of them contributing. And I think that we just do that in setting after setting, where we say, “Okay, we’ve invited everybody, so we’ve done our job.” And that’s not the goal. The goal is to do something different as a result.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. Yeah.

Glenna Wright-Gallo: It’s easy peasy, Tim. Come on.

Tim Villegas: It’s so easy. I’m just gonna snap my fingers and… yeah. I’m wondering, what is giving you hope right now? And I’m just gonna leave it at that. What is giving you hope right now?

Glenna Wright-Gallo: So I have a lot of hope. I truly believe in the goodness of people. I believe that we all care about our children and want them to learn and be successful, and that we wanna work together to develop a system, right? Everybody has a role to play in this system, whether it’s the families, the parents who understand their children best; the students themselves, who have their own voice and expectations and dreams; our educators, who have the educational experience, working with researchers who tell us what is effective and what is not effective; and then policymakers and funders, who help set up the systems and the funding to make this all work.

So I think that we all care about the same thing. Do we agree on the way to get there? Not at all. But that makes this journey better, right? If we really engage in it and we lean into it, it really makes it stronger, because we can have those conversations, and it helps us surface the barriers. What isn’t helpful, though, is when we are dealing from a scarcity mindset or a fear-based deficit mindset of, “I just need to tuck my head and take cover until this blows over.” Because that’s not moving us forward, and it’s not helping children.

So I have hope that even during the high velocity of change that we’re seeing with federal policy, with funding, with technology, all of the changes that are going on in the world, we can really pivot to what matters to us and identify that we need to put these systems in place. And I think that going back to that mission—being mission-driven, or your why, like why is this important to me—is gonna help us get there. So that gives me a lot of hope. We can use change as a force for good or a force for—I don’t wanna say evil—not good. So let’s use the velocity of opportunity for change to move things forward for all of our students, rather than using it to create more barriers, more silos, more gaps, and more exclusion.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. There is a lot of change going on, and I think this is a reminder to not stick our head in the sand and wait for it to blow over. Because if you do, then you will miss out on your opportunity to have input on the change, right?

Glenna Wright-Gallo: Yeah, we don’t like change being made to us.

Tim Villegas: Exactly. Exactly. In your role—and I don’t remember… you just told me the title, your title, again. Why don’t you say it again? At Everway, what is it?

Glenna Wright-Gallo: I’m the vice president of the Office of Strategic Research and Policy.

Tim Villegas: Okay, Strategic Research and Policy. In your role, and as someone who is thinking about policy a lot, how can policy really help move inclusive education forward? Because federal policy feels like it’s way too far removed to actually make a difference in the lives of students right now. So if we’re thinking about at the state or even at the local level, how can policy really affect change for inclusion?

Glenna Wright-Gallo: One of the things that we talked a lot about is the need to have all of those IEP team members, right? And so I really believe that policy works best when it’s shaped by the voice of the people it impacts. So not only hearing it from our children, students, our families, our educators, our leaders, et cetera, but also layering that with data—data that we use to learn and improve, not to punish—and to create shared goals, with those shared goals being better outcomes and better access for all students.

So I think about FAPE, the free appropriate public education that’s within IDEA, really being about more than compliance—that the law has moved from access to accountability and to outcomes, and policy has to do the same. But along with that, we have to marry, like I said, what we say and what we do. So as the policy shifts, are we moving those structural supports, and are we showing that we’re shifting?

So I think there’s a lot of opportunity here. Every state has a state accountability system, right? That’s required under the Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA. Those already include student growth. Some of them include measures of progress towards IEP goals. They include graduation rates for children with and without disabilities. There are so many tools out there, including some that are out by Everway, that connect all of those systems. So instead of taking your data and your policy piecemeal, how do we pull it together and look at those long-term patterns and trends? How do we run scenarios from that? How do we take data dashboards that are specific around student IEPs and look at the bigger picture?

And one of the things that I think we’re really lagging on is, how do we use special ed data to improve the entire system? I don’t ever hear people talking about that. In special ed, we’re so focused on the individual student, as we should be. But as a group of learners with various needs, the data that we generate on what works, what’s effective, their speed of progress, when they make faster progress, really could be used to inform MTSS systems for schools and systems. So I think that’s an opportunity where we look at that crossover between the use of technology platforms, the use of data, policy, and practice.

We also have IDEA reporting, right? The annual performance report, the data reports under that, that look at least restrictive environment or LRE placement data, discipline data, progress reporting data, all of those things. So we have those tools—again, some from Everway—that help schools and teams connect those instructional decisions to those required reports. It’s not helpful to look at long-term data and try to extrapolate it, without the use of a strategy or a tool, to the day-to-day concrete decisions that lead to long-term systems change, and that’s where people really struggle.

But fortunately, at the federal level, at the state level, at the district level, we have people who really support this work. There are systems grants, there are incentive grants, there’s school improvement funds, there’s discretionary dollars, and we have some really great opportunities for community partnerships, private-public partnerships, that offer some additional opportunities. I know that Everway works with several districts where we’ve entered into research partnerships to help them explore the results they’re getting, what led to those improvements or lack of improvements, and identify ways to move forward.

Tim Villegas: Wonderful. Wonderful. And if that sounds interesting to anyone who wants to learn more about Everway, where would they find more information?

Glenna Wright-Gallo: They could go to everway.com, which is the website. On January 19th, I am actually releasing a funding playbook that talks about how to align different sources of funding to move forward strategies like this, and that playbook will be available for free online. We’ll be doing several sessions. And as always, they can email me at g.gallo—G-A-L-L-O—@everway.com. I love talking about these things and always encourage people to reach out if they wanna chat about it.

Tim Villegas: Great. Great. And I hope people do. And so I want to shift into talking about mindset, because something I was reminded of in the beginning of our conversation is that mindset is so important as a foundation to actually changing practices. It’s like you have to have a belief system first in order for you to act on that belief system. And I think sometimes, in the field of inclusive education, and even advocates who are advocating for change, mindset gets brought up a lot. But I don’t often hear any strategy behind what are we going to do to change mindsets, other than just talking about it. So I’m wondering if you have any particular strategies that you can give school leaders, if they’re thinking, “Yes, we need a new mindset. We need an inclusive mindset.” What are some things that they can do and focus on?

Glenna Wright-Gallo: Yeah. So I have a couple that come really top of mind, around four main issues. So the first one is relationships. Find a partner, right? Like a co-teacher, a specialist, a counselor, another leader, to really co-plan or problem-solve or be a thought partner about it. Someone who holds you accountable, questions what you’re saying, what you’re planning, asks those tough questions, but gives you great support.

Second is gonna be that instruction base, right? It’s not just all cognitive, in mind—it’s, what are we actually doing? And so I would say whatever you’re doing—if you’re providing instruction to students, if you’re working with parents, if you’re working with teachers, whatever—make sure that you’re using that UDL, accessibility framework to provide multiple access points to that key content, so that we’re not only talking about the importance of accessibility and universal design, but we’re modeling it and we’re showing it.

And then third, I think, is advocacy, right? So how can we appropriately bring up questions and ideas to other people in an attempt to move the system forward? And I have to say, timing is always important when we talk about advocacy—the way we approach it, not making it sound like an accusation, but making it sound like a pondering, a wondering. As a leader, I liked when people brought me problems with potential solutions. Even if those solutions weren’t what I would’ve wanted, it gave me some ideas to bounce off of and reframe. And so I think that’s key.

And then the fourth one is, what am I actually doing, right? So it’s good to have these plans in place, but it’s so easy to lose track of time. I don’t know about you, but the last day, the last week, the last month, the last year flies by. And so it’s easy to say, “I’m gonna do something,” and then forget about it, unless I embed it in my daily activities and my daily plan. That’s something that I’m personally using technology for—to set reminders. “Have you thought about this? Here’s this goal you’re working on. What have you accomplished since then?” So little prompts in my calendar. I’ve set up AI reminders about these key performance indicators that I want to accomplish, just because it’s so easy to lose track of time. And you and I have talked about this—it’s so easy to talk about it. It’s moving the bar, moving the system forward.

I also think we really have to examine—there’s so much rhetoric going on right now about medical model versus social model. We really need to dig into that, and that can be a very uncomfortable conversation for people. But that’s gonna come back to our mindsets and our beliefs, right? That it’s not a medical model of trying to fix someone. It’s that social lens of, what are the barriers in instruction, environment, and tools that we need to address? And this to me is a frustrating point, because we have the tools and the technology to help us move beyond most of these things, but we aren’t proactively planning. And that’s the role and that’s our responsibility as adults within this system—to really be thoughtful and plan ahead.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. I think that is one of the most frustrating parts of all this—feeling like we have a better way of educating all learners. Like, we have a better way. We actually know what to do. And feeling stuck, or leaders feeling stuck, like they can’t move beyond where they are. That’s frustrating for the families that want inclusive practices to move forward in their district, and it’s also frustrating for the leaders who feel stuck as well. So there’s a lot, and it’s not just one thing. It’s everything everywhere all at once.

Glenna Wright-Gallo: We can’t just sit here and wait for it to all get better, right? We have to jump in. But I think that part of the problem is we think, “Okay, what can I do one piece at a time?” And it really needs to be more coordinated and systemic. It’s not that we have to do everything at the same time, but this one-off is not getting us there.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. If you’re listening and you’re thinking, “What can I do, actually?”—I think one of the things that changed in me is when I started to really think systemically. What are the barriers at the systems level that are impeding the progress? And start actually talking about those barriers—if you’re in a school district—with the people who could possibly do something about them.

That is one of the things that changed my mindset, because as a teacher, I was so focused on the students. And not that you shouldn’t be focused on students, but it was, what can I do right now to help include this particular student right in front of me? Which is very good, but it goes back to our original conversation about the heroic teacher, right? The teacher that is doing everything they can to include this one student, or students, and what really needs to happen is at the systems level.

Glenna Wright-Gallo: And if we could fix the system, can you imagine how much more impactful we would be?

Tim Villegas: Exactly.

Glenna Wright-Gallo: So a couple other things that I was thinking about here. What if we rewrote guidance, right? Like our school or our district or our state guidance, so that teams have to start with the concept of, what will it take to make the student successful in general education? If we started explicitly from that assumption—which is within IDEA, but that’s not how we talk about it, right?

What if we had to document why less restrictive options wouldn’t work, with families and students at the table? What if we invited general ed teachers to co-lead IEP conversations, so that they could talk about strengths and interests and classroom strategies? What if we looked at strengths instead of a deficits model, and what works for the student day to day, instead of focusing on minutes on an IEP? What if we had barrier-focused problems that we’re trying to solve, with conditions for success? And then what if we actually, as part of that work, connected UDL strategies—that engagement, representation, action and expression—to least restrictive environment and placement decisions? What if we changed the process of these meetings so that they’re not form-driven, they’re not compliance-driven, but they’re actually meaningful and moving us forward?

And then what if we took the data from that and extrapolated it to the school—without breaching privacy—but we are seeing these patterns in our students with disabilities or our struggling learners: how do we address that within tier one?

Tim Villegas: Wow. Those are fantastic suggestions. Even if you just did two of those things—oh my gosh, how amazing, and how much farther we’d be with inclusion in our schools. So thank you for those. I really appreciate that. Anything else you wanna… any final thoughts before we get to the mystery question?

Glenna Wright-Gallo: You know what? I feel like we’ve had a really comprehensive conversation, Tim, so I am curious about what the mystery question is gonna be here in a minute. But I would just say this: we’ve highlighted my past experience and expertise and my current role with Everway, but truly, I really do believe in the power of community and working together, and would love to hear from listeners—whether they reach out to you or reach out to me—about the things that they’re seeing that’s working well. And if they have any great examples of things, I would love to hear more about those.

Tim Villegas: Yes. Please do. You can email me at tvillegas@mcie.org, or you can email Glenna at g.gallo@everway.com, I think.

Glenna Wright-Gallo: You got it. Yep. Not as complex as the title.

Tim Villegas: I know. I’ll never remember that. I’ll have to write that down.

Glenna’s what-if questions for IEPs kept me thinking long after we stopped recording. What if we started from grade-level expectations instead of deficits? What if general ed teachers co-led those meetings? But before we wrap up, I had one more thing I wanted to ask her.

Okay, here we go. Mystery question. All right, the mystery question for today is: what’s a movie you can watch over and over?

Glenna Wright-Gallo: What is a movie you can watch over and over?

Tim Villegas: Yeah. I don’t think my… There it is. Okay. What’s a movie you can watch over and over? And that’s my chicken scratch, by the way. I have horrible handwriting.

I guess there’s two answers to this, because when I was a young man, I would watch the Back to the Future movies over and over. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen those movies. And Star Wars—original Star Wars, all that stuff. We just watched A New Hope with the kids again just a couple days ago, and my wife came home and she’s like, “Why are you watching Star Wars?” And I’m like, “Why wouldn’t I watch Star Wars?” What kind of question is that? I love Star Wars. I would just put it on.

But more recently, we really like the Lego movies—the original, the first Lego movie with, I think, Chris Pratt. I think it’s just called The Lego Movie. My kids love it. We love it. Anytime it’s on, we’re just quoting lines and enjoying all of it, and the animation is fantastic. And our family is big time into Legos. I don’t know if you can tell, but we have Lego plants in our library, and if you ever come to our house, we have Lego everywhere.

Glenna Wright-Gallo: Okay, I have a lot. I’m gonna say—here’s my caveat, though—I don’t tend to watch a lot of movies currently, ’cause of the time requirement for them. And if I do watch, I tend to only watch comedies, because I get my other things through the media.

So I would say, although a lot of them are no longer appropriate, the movies I grew up with. So a lot of the John Hughes movies—Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles, those types of things. The Sandlot. Better Off Dead. And A Christmas Story.

And I have to tell you, here in Vegas, at the beginning of February, my youngest daughter and I are going to see a production of Dirty Dancing where they are broadcasting the movie while they’re doing a live dance recreation of all of the dance scenes.

Tim Villegas: Oh, wow. Okay.

Glenna Wright-Gallo: So that’ll be fascinating.

Tim Villegas: That’s exciting. I’ve heard of the movies with the orchestra playing at the same time, but that’s a different take on it—like an interpretive dance of the same… yeah.

Glenna Wright-Gallo: I know. We’ll see. Oh, and I just saw The Wizard of Oz at The Sphere too, so The Wizard of Oz is another one that I watch over and over again.

Tim Villegas: Oh, yes. I have also seen that many times. Wow. Okay.

Glenna Wright-Gallo: And when you watch it at The Sphere, they have drone flying monkeys that come out over the audience, and drone butterflies and things that go along with the leaves and the tornado.

Tim Villegas: Oh my word. Like 4D.

Glenna Wright-Gallo: So it is interesting, that juxtaposition of the old movies with the new technology.

Tim Villegas: Oh, wow. That’s exciting. I haven’t been to Vegas in a long time. We used to live in California, in the LA area, so it wasn’t that long of a drive to get to Vegas. But now, since I’m on the East Coast, I don’t get out there very often.

All right. Glenna Gallo, thank you so much for being on the Think Inclusive podcast.

Glenna Wright-Gallo: Thank you, Tim, and I’ll see you soon.

Tim Villegas: Yes, definitely.

That was Glenna Wright-Gallo. Here’s what I’m taking with me: the difference between having everyone at the IEP meeting and having everyone actually contribute. Glenna named it clearly—checking the box on who’s in the room is not the goal. The goal is something different happening as a result. And I think that applies to a lot of what we do in inclusive education. We show up, we invite people, we say the right things, but does anything actually shift?

One practical step for educators: next time you’re in an IEP meeting, notice who’s doing most of the talking, and whether the general education teacher came prepared to share what grade-level peers are expected to know and do.

Share this episode with a colleague who’s building inclusive schools. Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and follow Think Inclusive wherever you get your podcasts. If you have something to share, you can always email me at tvillegas@mcie.org.

Now, let’s roll the credits. Think Inclusive is brought to you by me, Tim Villegas. This show is a proud production of the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education. Writing help from Claude, editing by Rey From Internet, scheduling and extra production help by Jill Wagoner. Our original music is by Miles Kredich with extra vibes from Melod.ie.

Big thanks to our sponsors, IXL and Adaptiverse. Visit ixl.com/inclusive and adaptiverseapp.com. If you’ve made it this far, you’re officially part of the Think Inclusive inclusion crew. Want to help us keep moving the needle forward for inclusion? Head to mcie.org and click the donate button. Give $5, $10, $20. It helps us keep partnering with schools and districts to move inclusive practices forward and support educators doing the work. Find us on the socials almost everywhere @thinkinclusive. Thanks for hanging out, and remember, inclusion always works.