When I first started experimenting with AI in my classroom, I saw the same thing repeatedly from students. They treated it like Google. Ask a question, get an answer, move on. It didn’t take long to realize that if my students only engage with AI this way, they miss the bigger opportunity to use AI as a partner in thinking. AI isn’t a magic answer machine. It’s a tool for creativity and problem-solving. The challenge for us as educators is to rethink how we prepare students for the world they’re entering and to use AI with curiosity and fidelity.
Moving from curiosity to fluency
In my district, I wear two hats: history teacher and instructional coach. That combination gives me the space to test ideas in the classroom and support colleagues as they try new tools. What I’ve learned is that AI fluency requires far more than knowing how to log into a platform. Students need to learn how to question outputs, verify information and use results as a springboard for deeper inquiry.
I often remind them, “You never trust your source. You always verify and compare.” If students accept every AI response at face value, they’re not building the critical habits they’ll need in college or in the workforce.
To make this concrete, I teach my students the RISEN framework: Role, Instructions, Steps, Examples, Narrowing. It helps them craft better prompts and think about the kind of response they want. Instead of typing “explain photosynthesis,” they might ask, “Act as a biologist explaining photosynthesis to a tenth grader. Use three steps with an analogy, then provide a short quiz at the end.” Suddenly, the interaction becomes purposeful, structured and reflective of real learning.
AI as a catalyst for equity and personalization
Growing up, I was lucky. My mom was college educated and sat with me to go over almost every paper I wrote. She gave me feedback that helped to sharpen my writing and build my confidence. Many of my students don’t have that luxury. For these learners, AI can be the academic coach they might not otherwise have.
That doesn’t mean AI replaces human connection. Nothing can. But it can provide feedback, ask guiding questions, and provide examples that give students a sounding board and thought partner. It’s one more way to move closer to providing personalized support for learners based on need.
Of course, equity cuts both ways. If only some students have access to AI or if we use it without considering its bias, we risk widening the very gaps we hope to close. That’s why it’s our job as educators to model ethical and critical use, not just the mechanics.
Shifting how we assess learning
One of the biggest shifts I’ve made is rethinking how I assess students. If I only grade the final product, I’m essentially inviting them to use AI as a shortcut. Instead, I focus on the process: How did they engage with the tool? How did they verify and cross-reference results? How did they revise their work based on what they learned? What framework guided their inquiry? In this way, AI becomes part of their learning journey rather than just an endpoint.
I’ve asked students to run the same question through multiple AI platforms and then compare the outputs. What were the differences? Which response feels most accurate or useful? What assumptions might be at play? These conversations push students to defend their thinking and use AI critically, not passively.
Navigating privacy and policy
Another responsibility we carry as educators is protecting our students. Data privacy is a serious concern. In my school, we use a “walled garden” version of AI so that student data doesn’t get used for training. Even with those safeguards in place, I remind colleagues never to enter identifiable student information into a tool.
Policies will continue to evolve, but for day-to-day activities and planning, teachers need to model caution and responsibility. Students are taking our lead.
Professional growth for a changing profession
The truth of the matter is most of us have not been professionally trained to do this. My teacher preparation program certainly did not include modules on prompt engineering or data ethics. That means professional development in this space is a must.
I’ve grown the most in my AI fluency by working alongside other educators who are experimenting, sharing stories, and comparing notes. AI is moving fast. No one has all the answers. But we can build confidence together by trying, reflecting, and adjusting through shared experience and lessons learned. That’s exactly what we’re doing in the Lead for Learners network. It’s a space where educators from across the country connect, learn and support one another in navigating change.
For educators who feel hesitant, I’d say this: You don’t need to be an expert to start. Pick one tool, test it in one lesson, and talk openly with your students about what you’re learning. They’ll respect your honesty and join you in the process.
Preparing students for what’s next
AI is not going away. Whether we’re ready or not, it’s going to shape how our students live and work. That gives us a responsibility not just to keep pace with technology but to prepare young people for what’s ahead. The latest futures forecast reminds us that imagining possibilities is just as important as responding to immediate shifts.
We need to understand both how AI is already reshaping education delivery and how new waves of change will remain on the horizon as tools grow more sophisticated and widespread.
I want my students to leave my classroom with the ability to question, create, and collaborate using AI. I want them to see it not as a shortcut but as a tool for thinking more deeply and expressing themselves more fully. And I want them to watch me modeling those same habits: curiosity, caution, creativity, and ethical decision-making. Because if we don’t show them what responsible use looks like, who will?
The future of education won’t be defined by whether we allow AI into our classrooms. It will be defined by how we teach with it, how we teach about it, and how we prepare our students to thrive in a world where it’s everywhere.
Ian McDougall, Yuma Union High School District
Ian McDougall is a history teacher and edtech coach at Yuma Union High School District in Arizona. He also facilitates the Lead for Learners Community, an online hub for learner-centered educators nationwide. With extensive experience in K–12 education and technology integration, Ian supports schools in adopting innovative practices through professional development and instructional coaching. He holds a master’s degree in United States history from Adams State University, further strengthening his expertise as both a teacher and coach.
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Two months after Education Secretary Linda McMahon was confirmed, she and a small team from the department met with leadership from the National Center for Learning Disabilities, an advocacy group that works on behalf of millions of students with dyslexia and other disorders.
Jacqueline Rodriguez, NCLD’s chief executive officer, recalled pressing McMahon on a question raised during her confirmation hearing: Was the Trump administration planning to move control and oversight of special education law from the Education Department to Health and Human Services?
Rodriguez was alarmed at the prospect of uprooting the 50-year-old Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA), which spells out the responsibility of schools to provide a “free, appropriate public education” to students with disabilities. Eliminating the Education Department entirely is a primary objective of Project 2025, the conservative blueprint that has guided much of the administration’s education policy. After the department is gone, Project 2025 said oversight of special education should move to HHS, which manages some programs that help adults with disabilities.
But the sprawling department that oversees public health has no expertise in the complex education law, Rodriguez told McMahon.
“Someone might be able to push the button to disseminate funding, but they wouldn’t be able to answer a question from a parent or a school district,” she said in an interview later.
For her part, McMahon had wavered during her confirmation hearing on the subject. “I’m not sure that it’s not better served in HHS, but I don’t know,” she told Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who shared concerns from parents worried about who would enforce the law’s provisions.
But nine days into a government shutdown that has furloughed most federal government workers, the Trump administration announced that it was planning a drastic “reduction in force” that would lay off more than 450 people, including almost everyone who works in the Office of Special Education Programs. Rodriguez believes the layoffs are a way that the administration plans to force the special education law to be managed by some other federal office.
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The Education Department press office did not respond to a question about the administration’s plans for special education oversight. Instead, the press office pointed to a social media post from McMahon on Oct. 15. The fact that schools are “operating as normal” during the government shutdown, McMahon wrote on X, “confirms what the President has said: the federal Department of Education is unnecessary.”’
Yet in that May meeting, Rodriguez said she was told that HHS might not be the right place for IDEA, she recalled. While the new department leadership made no promises, they assured her that any move of the law’s oversight would have to be done with congressional approval, Rodriguez said she was told.
The move to gut the office overseeing special education law was shocking to families and those who work with students with disabilities. About 7.5 million children ages 3 to 21 are served under IDEA, and the office had already lost staffers after the Trump administration dismissed nearly half the Education Department’s staff in March, bringing the agency’s total workforce to around 2,200 people.
For Rodriguez, whose organization supports students with learning disabilities such as dyslexia, McMahon’s private assurances was the administration “just outright lying to the public about their intentions.”
“The audacity of this administration to communicate in her confirmation, in her recent testimony to Congress and to a disability rights leader to her face, ‘Don’t worry, we will support kids with disabilities,’” Rodriguez said. “And then to not just turn a 180-degree on that, but to decimate the ability to enforce the law that supports our kids.”
She added: “It could not just be contradictory. It feels like a bait and switch.”
Five days after the firings were announced, a U.S. district judge temporarily blocked the administration’s actions, setting up a legal showdown that is likely to end up before the Supreme Court. The high court has sided with the president on most of his efforts to drastically reshape the federal workforce. And President Donald Trump said at a Tuesday press briefing that more cuts to “Democrat programs” are coming.
“They’re never going to come back in many cases,” he added.
In her post on X, McMahon also said that “no education funding is impacted by the RIF, including funding for special education,” referring to the layoffs.
But special education is more than just money, said Danielle Kovach, a special education teacher in Hopatcong, N.J. Kovach is also a former president of the Council for Exceptional Children, a national organization for special educators.
“I equate it to, what would happen if we dismantled a control tower at a busy airport?” Kovach said. “It doesn’t fly the plane. It doesn’t tell people where to go. But it ensures that everyone flies smoothly.”
Katy Neas, a deputy assistant secretary in the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services during the Biden administration, said that most people involved in the education system want to do right by children.
“You can’t do right if you don’t know what the answer is,” said Neas, who is now the chief executive officer of The Arc of the United States, which advocates for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. “You can’t get there if you don’t know how to get your questions answered.”
Families also rely on IDEA’s mandate that each child with a disability receives a free, appropriate public education — and the protections that they can receive if a school or district does not live up to that requirement.
Maribel Gardea, a parent in San Antonio, said she fought with her son’s school district for years over accommodations for his disability. Her son Voozeki, 14, has cerebral palsy and is nonverbal. He uses an eye-gaze device that allows him to communicate when he looks at different symbols on a portable screen. The district resisted getting the device for him to use at school until, Gardea said, she reminded them of IDEA’s requirements.
Gardea, the co-founder of MindShiftED, an organization that helps parents become better advocates for their children with disabilities, said the upheaval at the Education Department has her wondering what kind of advice she can give families now.
For example, an upcoming group session will teach parents how to file official grievances to the federal government if they have disputes with their child’s school or district about services. Now, she has to add in an explanation of what the deep federal cuts will mean for parents.
Voozeki Gardea, who attends school in the San Antonio area, uses an eye-gaze communication device with the assistance of school paraprofessional Vanessa Martinez. The device verbalizes words and phrases when Voozeki looks at different symbols. Credit: Courtesy Maribel Gardea
“I have to tell you how to do a grievance,” she said she plans to tell parents. “But I have to tell you no one will answer.”
Maybe grassroots organizations may find themselves trying to track parent complaints on their own, she said, but the prospect is exhausting. “It’s a really gross feeling to know that no one has my back.”
In addition to the office that oversees special education law, the Rehabilitation Services Administration, which is also housed at the Department of Education and supports employment and training of people with disabilities, was told most of its staff would be fired.
“Regardless of which office you’re worried about, this is all very intentional,” said Julie Christensen, the executive director of the Association of People Supporting Employment First, which advocates for the full inclusion of people with disabilities in the workforce. “There’s no one who can officially answer questions. It feels like that was kind of the intent, to just create a lot of confusion and chaos.”
Those staffers “are the voice within the federal government to make sure policies and funding are aligned to help people with disabilities get into work,” Christensen said. Firing them, she added, is counterintuitive to everything the administration says it cares about.
For now, advocates say they are bracing for a battle similar to those fought decades ago that led to the enactment of civil rights law protecting children and adults with disabilities. Before the law was passed, there was no federal guarantee that a student with a disability would be allowed to attend public school.
“We need to put together our collective voices. It was our collective voices that got us here,” Kovach said.
And, Rodriguez said, parents of children in special education need to be prepared to be their own watchdogs. “You have to become the compliance monitor.”
It’s unfair, she said, but necessary.
Contact staff writer Christina Samuels at 212-678-3635 or [email protected].
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
Every year, tens of thousands of infants are born prematurely, at a low birthweight, or with other conditions that would make them automatically eligible for therapeutic services that could help them thrive.
When everything goes smoothly, early intervention provides those services, required by federal law for children ages birth to 3. Funding sources for the program can vary, but it’s often paid for by a mix of federal, state, local, and private insurance dollars.
But far too few of the youngest children actually receive that help. (It’s an issue I wrote about earlier this year.) One particular gap is in services provided to infants from birth to 1. Only about 1.3 percent of babies that age receive early intervention services, compared to 7.5 percent of 2- to 3-year-olds, according to a new report from the think tank New America.
Kayla Khan, a long-time speech therapist, has experienced that gap herself.
When her infant daughter was released after a month and a half in neonatal intensive care, she asked the discharge team about early intervention services. Because of her background, she knew about the therapies.
At the time, the family lived in the Washington D.C. area, and no one at the hospital was helpful. “They said, ‘You don’t want that,’ or, ‘It’s not going to help you,’” Khan recalled.
After moving to Seattle a few months later, Khan finally connected with early intervention services that provided physical and feeding therapy to her daughter. She now helps lead a decade-old effort in Seattle to provide care and support specifically to families of “tiny babies” who are transitioning from the hospital to home.
The program relies on building trust and communication with hospital staff to ensure eligible babies get referred to early intervention and speeding up the evaluation timeline so babies get seen within three days of a referral — “really, really, really fast” for a system where the requirement for referral is 45 days, Khan said. Her program also connects families with therapists who are skilled and trained in the specific needs of newborns.
“We’re making this process that was designed for all children, birth to 3, work for the tiniest babies,” Khan said.
This kind of targeted attention for the youngest is desperately needed, according to the New America report and another that focused on Illinois, from early nonprofit advocacy group Start Early. (I recently completed a reporting fellowship with New America which supported some of my writing on early intervention, among other topics.)
Among the two reports’ recommendations:
Make the list of conditions that automatically qualify a baby for early intervention easy to understand and find. States have identified scores of different qualifying conditions that make a child more likely to develop a delay, including extreme prematurity, low birthweight, a parent with a substance use disorder, and child welfare involvement. But, as the New America report points out, finding a user-friendly list of the conditions can be a challenge. “The eligibility criteria and the way things work varies so much from one state to the next,” said report co-author Carrie Gillispie, the Early Development & Disability project director at New America.
The Start Early report noted that in a related study, two families were judged ineligible for early intervention despite their children having medical conditions that should have made them automatically eligible.
Consider co-locating early intervention staff in the NICU to make the transition as smooth as possible. Coordinators would be physically present in NICUs to build relationships, participate in medical rounds, and lead the process to enroll children in early intervention programs, the Start Early authors wrote. Both reports stress the importance of providing the family with a personal connection to early intervention before a baby gets discharged from the hospital.
Improve coordination and communication with the early intervention system, hospitals and pediatricians. Pediatricians are not always notified when doctors in the hospital refer a child to early intervention services. And well-child visits are often so short that physicians miss the full developmental picture. Too often, referrals come after a child is already starting to struggle, said Sarah Gilliland, a senior policy analyst in the New Practice Lab at New America, who co-wrote the report.
Bridge cultural and language barriers with families by hiring more multilingual hospital and early intervention staff. Cultural divides are pervasive throughout the early intervention system, where the overwhelming majority of the therapists and other providers in many communities are white, English-speaking women. But even simple forms often go untranslated: One survey found that nearly three-quarters of state early intervention referral forms are only available in English, the New America report noted. The report also stressed that families should be reassured that early intervention services are meant to be support, not surveillance. “Hesitant families might benefit from a connection with families within their own communities who can explain what to expect from early intervention,” the authors wrote.
Strengthen electronic referral systems and centralize enrollmentin early intervention programs. When I reported on the too-often broken path from the NICU to early intervention in Chicago, I heard stories of a system that relied heavily on faxing paper forms. NICU physicians often had no idea what happened with referrals they made. Indeed, surveys have found that only a fraction of early intervention coordinators have access to technology that links children’s electronic health records to the referral system.
Some states and communities are introducing technological advances which could be implemented more widely, the New America report noted. For instance, one state is trying to address the problem using “e-referrals,” which share an infant’s medical records directly with the early intervention system.
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The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
When pediatricians diagnose preschoolers with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, there are clear steps they are supposed to take.
Families should first be referred to behavior therapy, which teaches caregivers how to better support their children and manage challenging behaviors that may be related to ADHD. If therapy isn’t making a significant difference, the American Academy of Pediatrics advises, pediatricians can then consider medication.
Nationwide, this process — behavior therapy, then medication if needed — isn’t being followed as often as it should, according to a study recently released by Stanford Medicine and published in JAMA Network Open. Instead, more than 42 percent of 3- to 5-year-olds with ADHD were prescribed medication within a month of their diagnosis.
Missing out on behavior therapy has worrisome implications for children and families, said Dr. Yair Bannett, assistant professor of pediatrics at Stanford Medicine and lead author of the study. Behavioral management training for parents over the course of several months has been found to reduce children’s ADHD symptoms and behavioral problems, and improve parent skills and their relationships with their children.
Without that support, families may be left facing additional challenges. Behavioral training “reduces the chaos in the house and can improve the quality of life for the parents and the child,” Bannett said.
There are several reasons families may be missing this intervention. Some pediatricians aren’t familiar with the purpose of behavior therapy, Bannett added, which is specifically aimed at the adults who support children with ADHD, not the children. “It’s really more of an advanced type of parenting course,” he said. Families also may have trouble finding affordable local therapists.
Bannett said parents should use three key practices to support young children with ADHD. (These strategies also work well for teachers, he added.)
Focus on building a strong, positive relationship: Having a strong attachment between the child and parent or teacher is an important first step to managing behavior, Bannett said. That means spending quality one-on-one time with the child. “That’s the child’s motivation, they want to please you,” he added. “Without that first piece, none of this will work.”
Use positive reinforcement: Rather than punishing a child’s negative behavior, Bannett said, parents and teachers will see more success if they praise good behaviors and develop reward systems to encourage them.
Adjust the child’s environment: Children with ADHD may thrive with simple environmental changes, such as “visual schedules” — charts that use pictures to show a child daily activities or tasks — and a consistent, structured routine.
Parents who can’t find in-person therapists can substitute online therapy, Bannett said. The training is also useful for families even after their children are prescribed medication.
To make sure more families have access to helpful strategies, Bannett would like to see more education for doctors and clinicians on these best practices.
“The pediatricians could also counsel families in the office about these techniques,” Bannett said. “Some written materials and resources could be enough” to at least introduce these practices, he added. “That’s what I’m hoping could make a change.”
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This story about children with ADHD was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
Illinois hospital staff will soon be required by law to refer parents of severely premature infants to services that can help prevent years of intensive and expensive therapy later, when the children are older. The new law follows reporting from The Hechinger Report that exposed how hospitals often fail to connect many eligible parents to these opportunities for their children after they leave neonatal intensive care units.
Earlier this year, Hechinger contributor Sarah Carr wrote about how, across the country, far too few parents are made aware of the kinds of therapies their babies are entitled to under federal law. Such early intervention services can ultimately reduce the need for these children to require costly special education support as schoolchildren.
Carr noted: “Federal law says children with developmental delays, including newborns with significant likelihood of a delay, can get early intervention from birth to age 3. States design their own programs and set their own funding levels, however. They also set some of the criteria for which newborns are automatically eligible, typically relying on qualifying conditions like Down syndrome or cerebral palsy, extreme prematurity or low birthweight. Nationally, far fewer infants and toddlers receive the therapies than should. The stats are particularly bleak for babies under the age of 1: Just 1 percent of these infants get help. Yet an estimated 13 percent of infants and toddlers likely qualify.”
After the Hechinger Report story was published, Illinois state Rep. Janet Yang Rohr authored legislation to require that hospitals distribute materials informing parents of premature and low birth weight babies about their eligibility for early intervention therapies. The bill also required that hospitals make a nurse or physical therapist available to explain these rights to families.
Related: Young children have unique needs and providing the right care can be a challenge. Our free early childhood education newsletter tracks the issues.
“The problem is that these families often don’t know about these services,” Yang Rohr said last spring, after her chamber passed the bill. “So this bill improves that early intervention process by requiring NICU staff to share information about these services and requires hospital staff to write a referral to these programs for families that are eligible.”
Illinois Representative Janet Yang Rohr Credit: ILGA
Carr also wrote: “The stakes are high for these fragile, rapidly growing babies and their brains. Even a few months of additional therapy can reduce a child’s risk of complications and make it less likely that they will struggle with talking, moving and learning down the road. In Chicago and elsewhere, families, advocates and physicians say a lot of the failures boil down to overstretched hospital and early intervention delivery systems that are not always talking with families very effectively, or with each other hardly at all. ‘They really put the onus of helping your child get better outcomes on you,’ said Jaclyn Vasquez, an early childhood consultant who has had three babies of her own spend time in the NICU.”
“Early intervention is life-changing for many families, as these programs provide critical services and therapies as children develop,” Illinois state Sen. Ram Villivalam said when the bill was sent to Pritzker. “But, these services can only benefit those they are able to reach, which means uplifting the program and expanding its outreach to those who need it is imperative.”
Contact editor Nirvi Shah at 212-678-3445, securely on Signal at NirviShah.14 or via email at [email protected].
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
This story about children with disabilities was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.
COLUMBUS, Ohio — When Selina Likely became director of the Edwards Creative Learning Center six years ago, she knew there was one longstanding practice that she wanted to change. For as long as she had taught at the thriving child care center, it had turned away many children with disabilities such as autism and Down syndrome. The practice was even encoded in the center’s handbook as policy.
Likely, the parent of a child with a disability, wanted to stop telling families no, but she knew that to do that she and her staff would need more support. “I said, ‘Let’s start getting training and see what we can do.’”
Not too long after, her effort received a big boost from a state-funded initiative in Ohio to strengthen child care teachers’ knowledge and confidence in working with young kids with disabilities and developmental delays. That program, Ohio PROMISE, offers free online training for child care workers in everything from the benefits of kids of all abilities learning and playing together to the kinds of classroom materials most helpful to have on hand. It also offers as-needed mentorship and support from trained coaches across the state.
Related: Young children have unique needs, and providing the right care can be a challenge. Our free early childhood education newsletter tracks the issues.
Child care providers across the country — including large, established centers and tiny home-based programs — struggle to meet the needs of children with disabilities, according to a 2024 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. More than a quarter of parents of children with disabilities said they had a lot of difficulty finding appropriate care for their kids. And even those who do find a spot regularly encounter challenges, like having their children excluded from extracurricular activities such as field trips and even academic instruction.
“It’s really hard to find child care for this population, we heard that loud and clear,” said Elizabeth Curda, a director on the GAO’s Education, Workforce and Income Security team and a coauthor of the report. Even the most well-resourced centers report that they struggle to meet the needs of children with disabilities, according to Curda.
There’s a lot of desire at the grassroots level to change that. Ohio PROMISE and a few other recent initiatives provide models for how to expand the capacity — and the will — of child care centers to serve the more than 2 million U.S. children age 5 or below who have a disability or developmental delay.
Cards on the walls at Edwards Creative Learning Center display the signs for different letters so students — whether nonverbal or not — can all learn sign language. Credit: Sarah Carr/The Hechinger Report
In Vermont, for instance, officials hope to soon unveil a free, on-demand training program aimed at helping child care teachers have more inclusive classrooms. And officials in Ohio’s Summit County, home to Akron, report growing interest from other counties in creating programs based on Summit’s more than decade-old model that provides in-person training for child care operators in inclusion of children with disabilities.
“We’re helping to create child care centers that feel they can handle whatever comes their way, especially when it comes to significant behavior concerns,” said Yolanda Mahoney, the early childhood center support supervisor for Summit County’s disabilities board.
The federal government until recently encouraged the creation of such models. In 2023, the federal Department of Education and Department of Health and Human Services issued a joint statement urging states to take steps to support inclusion in early childhood settings, including strengthening training and accountability.
Under the current president, federal momentum on the issue has largely stalled. While the administration of President Donald Trump hasn’t directly attacked inclusion in the context of special education, the president has criticized the term more broadly — especially when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion. That can create uncertainty and a chilling effect on advocates of inclusion efforts of all kinds.
Funding for some inclusion efforts is also in jeopardy. States rely on Medicaid, which faces nearly $1 trillion in cuts over the next decade, to pay for early intervention programs for children birth to age 3 with developmental delays and disabilities. Trump has also proposed eliminating Preschool Development Grants, which states such as Vermont and Illinois have used to expand support of young children with disabilities.
That means over the next few years, progress on inclusion in child care settings could hinge largely on state and local investment. It helps that there’s a “real desire” among providers to enroll more children with disabilities, said Kristen Jones, an assistant director on the GAO’s education, workforce and income security team, who also worked on the report. “But there’s also a concern that currently they can’t do that in a safe way” because of a lack of training and resources.
In Ohio, the idea for Ohio PROMISE came after an appeal in 2022 from Republican Gov. Mike DeWine. He reported that families were coming to him saying they couldn’t find child care for their kids with disabilities.
“He said, ‘Come to me with ideas to solve that problem,’” recalled Wendy Grove, a senior adviser in the Ohio Department of Children and Youth who spearheaded development of the program.
Grove and her colleagues had already been working on a related effort. In 2020, Ohio won a federal grant that included help exploring how well — or not — children with disabilities were being included in child care and early education settings. DeWine liked the idea Grove’s team presented of morphing that work into a state-led effort to strengthen training and support for child care teachers. They also proposed more direct support to families, including the extension of child care vouchers to families with incomes above the poverty level, with a higher reimbursement rate for children with disabilities.
The training, which debuted about two years ago, is provided in three levels. Jada Cutchall, a preschool teacher at Imaginative Beginnings, an early learning center just outside of Toledo, recently completed the third tier, which for her included customized coaching. Cutchall’s coach helped her create communication tools for a largely nonverbal student, she said, including a board with pictures children can point to if, for example, they want to go to the bathroom or try a different playground activity.
As a result, Cutchall said, she has watched kids with disabilities, including those with speech impairments and autism, engage much more directly with their classmates. “They have the courage to ask their peers to play with them — or at least not distance themselves as much as they usually would,” she said. All of the children in the classroom have benefited, she added, noting that kids without disabilities have taken an interest in learning sign language, strengthening their own communication skills and fostering empathy.
Child care programs where one teacher and one administrator have completed some of the training earn a special designation from the state, which may eventually be tied to the opportunity to get extra funding to serve children with disabilities. In Ohio PROMISE’s first year, 1,001 child care centers — about 10 percent of the total number in Ohio — earned that designation, according to Grove.
For the last six years, Selina Likely has overseen the Edwards Creative Learning Center, where she’s steadily tried to enroll more children with disabilities and developmental delays. Credit: Sarah Carr/The Hechinger Report
The effort costs a little over $1 million in state dollars each year, with most of that paying for several regional support personnel who work directly with centers as mentors and advisers. Over the last two years, Ohio has seen a 38 percent increase in the number of children in publicly funded centers who qualify for the higher voucher reimbursement rate for children with disabilities, which can be double the size of the standard voucher.
Grove hopes that ultimately the effort plays a role in narrowing a critical and stubborn gap in the state: about 27 percent of children without disabilities show readiness on state standards for kindergarten; only 14 percent of children with disabilities do. Since so few disabilities exhibited at that age are related to intellectual or cognitive functioning, “we shouldn’t see that gap,” said Grove. “There’s no real reason.”
One goal of the new efforts is to reduce the number of young children with disabilities who are expelled from or pushed out of care. Those children are frequently asked to leave for behaviors related to their disability, the GAO report found.
Several years ago, a child care center in Columbus expelled Meagan Severance’s 18-month-old son for biting a staff member. The boy has several special needs, including some related to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Severance brought him to Edwards Creative Learning Center, where not too long after Selina Likely shifted into the role of director. The boy also bit a staff member there — not uncommon behavior for toddlers, especially those with sensory sensitivities and communication challenges.
Likely was determined to work with the child, not expel him. “They put in time and effort,” said Severance. “The response wasn’t, ‘He bit someone, he’s gone.’”
Likely empathized. Decades earlier, her own daughter had been expelled from a child care center in her hometown of Mansfield, Ohio, for biting.
“I was so angry and mad at the time — how are you going to kick out a 1-year-old?” she said. The center director didn’t think at all about how to help her child, Likely recalled, instead asking Likely what might be happening at home to make the child want to bite. She said she got no notice or grace period to find a new placement. “That left me in a disheartened place,” she said. “I was like, ‘I still have to go to work.”
Seventeen years old at the time, she was inspired by the injustice of the situation to quit her job in a factory and apply to be an assistant in a child care program. She’s been in the industry ever since, gradually trying to make more space for children like her daughter, who was later diagnosed with autism.
Meagan Severance, a parent and teacher at the Edwards center, has worked in recent years to make her classroom more inclusive for children with all different abilities. Credit: Sarah Carr/The Hechinger Report
As director, Likely displays the nameplate “chaos coordinator” on her desk. And she’s taken the stance that the center should at least try to work with every kid. She and some of her teachers have completed the first two tiers of the Ohio PROMISE training, as well as some related sessions available from the state. Likely estimates that about 10 percent of the children in her center have a diagnosed disability or developmental delay.
Liasun Meadows, whose son has Down syndrome, chose Edwards several years ago for her then 1-year-old over another program better known for its work with children with disabilities. She has not been disappointed.
Parents of kids with disabilities watch their children like a hawk, she said. “There are certain things you notice that you don’t expect others to notice, but they do at Edwards. They’ve been growing and learning alongside him.”
Severance, whose son is now 8, works at the center these days, leading the 3-year-old room, which includes two children who are largely nonverbal. She’s made the classroom more inclusive, adding fidget toys for children with sensory issues, rearranging the classroom to create calming areas, providing communication books to nonverbal children so they can more easily express needs and wants, and teaching everyone some sign language.
“For a while there was segregation in the classroom” between the kids with disabilities and those without, Severance said. But that’s lessened with the changes. “Inclusion has been good for the kids who are verbal — and nonverbal,” she said.
As in Ohio, state officials in Vermont turned to online training to help ensure young children with disabilities aren’t denied quality care. The state should soon debut the first parts of a new training program, focusing on outreach to child care administrators and support for neurodivergent children. The state wanted to focus on center leaders first because “directors that are comfortable with inclusion lead programs that are comfortable with inclusion,” said Dawn Rouse, the director of statewide systems in Vermont’s Child Development Division.
One tool for supporting and calming children with sensory issues is keeping a healthy supply of fidget toys and Pop-Its on hand. Credit: Sarah Carr/The Hechinger Report
Vermont also pumped millions of dollars into a separate program, known as the Special Accommodations Grant, that supports young children with disabilities. Since 2009 the state has set aside $300,000 a year that child care centers can tap to provide services for individual children with disabilities. It might help buy specialized equipment for a child with cerebral palsy, for instance, or be used to hire a full- or part-time aide.
The $300,000 has been maxed out every year, Rouse said. And after the pandemic, the need — and the number of applications — surged.
As a result, the state allocated some federal American Rescue Plan and Preschool Development Grant dollars to increase spending on the program by about sevenfold — to between $2 million and $2.5 million annually — an amount Rouse still describes as a “Band-Aid.” Without access to the grants, “we see a lot of children being asked to leave programs,” Rouse said. “That’s not good for any child, but for children with specialized developmental needs it’s particularly bad.”
Over time, Likely hopes, her Ohio center can play a small role in reducing that instability, although the center hasn’t yet been able to work with all such children it wants to. Likely recalls one toddler with a severe disability who climbed up anything he could. There wasn’t enough money to pay for what the child really needed: a full-time aide. “It’s hard when you know you’ve tried but still have to say no,” she said. “That breaks my heart more than anything.”
On one June morning, the center’s teachers acknowledged and celebrated several milestones in its work on inclusion, big and small. One child in the 3-year-old classroom with fine and gross motor challenges was drinking independently from a bottle. The preschool classroom held its first graduation ceremony, translated partly into sign language. All of the kids, no matter their challenges, were set to go on field trips to Dairy Queen and the zoo.
Likely dreams of someday running a center where about half of the children have a disability or delay. It may be years off, she said, but as with the milestones she sees scores of children at the center reach every day, “There’s a way — if there’s a will.”
Sarah Carr is a fellow at New America, focused on reporting on early childhood issues.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
Scores of speech therapists across the country erupted last month when their leading professional association said it was considering dropping language calling for diversity, equity and inclusion and “cultural competence” in their certification standards. Those values could be replaced in some standards with a much more amorphous emphasis on “person-centered care.”
“The decision to propose these modifications was not made lightly,” wrote officials of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) in a June letter to members. They noted that due to recent executive orders related to DEI, even terminology that “is lawfully applied and considered essential for clinical practice … could put ASHA’s certification programs at risk.”
Yet in the eyes of experts and some speech pathologists, the change would further imperil getting quality help to a group that’s long been grossly underserved: young children with speech delays who live in households where English is not the primary language spoken.
“This is going to have long-term impacts on communities who already struggle to get services for their needs,” said Joshuaa Allison-Burbank, a speech language pathologist and Navajo member who works on the Navajo Nation in New Mexico where the tribal language is dominant in many homes.
In a written statement after this story published, a spokesperson for the association stressed that the proposed changes have not been finalized, and said that member feedback is currently under review.
“ASHA remains steadfast in our belief that all health care services should be non-discriminatory and address the needs of every individual,” the spokesperson added. She characterized the proposed changes as “an evolution, not a retreat,” and noted that person-centered care aims to ensure “clinicians are equipped to deliver services tailored to each person’s context, including their lived experience, language background, cultural identity, and home environment.”
A shift away from DEI and cultural competence — which involves understanding and trying to respond to differences in children’s language, culture and home environment — could have a devastating effect at a time when more of both are needed to reach and help multilingual learners, several experts and speech pathologists said.
They told me about a few promising strategies for strengthening speech services for multilingual infants, toddlers and preschool-age children with speech delays — each of which involves a heavy reliance on DEI and cultural competence.
Embrace creative staffing. The Navajo Nation faces severe shortages of trained personnel to evaluate and work with young children with developmental delays, including speech. So in 2022, Allison-Burbank and his research team began providing training in speech evaluation and therapy to Native family coaches who are already working with families through a tribal home visiting program. The family coaches provide speech support until a more permanent solution can be found, said Allison-Burbank.
Home visiting programs are “an untapped resource for people like me who are trying to have a wider reach to identify these kids and get interim services going,” he said. (The existence of both the home visiting program and speech therapy are under serious threat because of federal cuts, including to Medicaid.)
Use language tests that have been designed for multilingual populations. Decades ago, few if any of the exams used to diagnose speech delays had been “normed” — or pretested to establish expectations and benchmarks — on non-English-speaking populations.
For example, early childhood intervention programs in Texas were required several years ago to use a single tool that relied on English norms to diagnose Spanish-speaking children, said Ellen Kester, the founder and president of Bilinguistics Speech and Language Services in Austin, which provides both direct services to families and training to school districts. “We saw a rise in diagnosis of very young (Spanish-speaking) kids,” she said. That isn’t because all of the kids had speech delays, but due to fundamental differences between the two languages that were not reflected in the test’s design and scoring. (In Spanish, for instance, the ‘z’ sound is pronounced like an English ‘s.’)
There are now more options than ever before of screeners and tools normed on multilingual, diverse populations; states, agencies and school districts should be selective, and informed, in seeking them out, and pushing for continued refinement.
Expand training — formal and self-initiated — for speech therapists in the best ways to work with diverse populations. In the long-term, the best way to help more bilingual children is to hire more bilingual speech therapists through robust DEI efforts. But in the short term, speech therapists can’t rely solely on interpreters — if one is even available — to connect with multilingual children.
That means using resources that break down the major differences in structure, pronunciation and usage between English and the language spoken by the family, said Kester. “As therapists, we need to know the patterns of the languages and what’s to be expected and what’s not to be expected,” Kester said.
It’s also crucial that therapists understand how cultural norms may vary, especially as they coach parents and caregivers in how best to support their kids, said Katharine Zuckerman, professor and associate division head of general pediatrics at Oregon Health & Science University.
“This idea that parents sit on the floor and play with the kid and teach them how to talk is a very American cultural idea,” she said. “In many communities, it doesn’t work quite that way.”
In other words, to help the child, therapists have to embrace an idea that’s suddenly under siege: cultural competence,
Quick take: Relevant research
In recent years, several studies have homed in on how state early intervention systems, which serve children with developmental delays ages birth through 3, shortchange multilingual children with speech challenges. One study based out of Oregon, and co-authored by Zuckerman, found that speech diagnoses for Spanish-speaking children were often less specific than for English speakers. Instead of pinpointing a particular challenge, the Spanish speakers tended to get the general “language delay” designation. That made it harder to connect families to the most tailored and beneficial therapies.
A second study found that speech pathologists routinely miss critical steps when evaluating multilingual children for early intervention. That can lead to overdiagnosis, underdiagnosis and inappropriate help. “These findings point to the critical need for increased preparation at preprofessional levels and strong advocacy … to ensure evidence-based EI assessments and family-centered, culturally responsive intervention for children from all backgrounds,” the authors concluded.
Carr is a fellow at New America, focused on reporting on early childhood issues.
Contact the editor of this story, Christina Samuels, at 212-678-3635, via Signal at cas.37 or [email protected].
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
New Jersey students with disabilities are the least likely in the nation to spend their days surrounded by peers without disabilities.
One underlying reason: a sprawling network of separate schools that allows districts to outsource educating them.
New Jersey has more than a hundred private schools, plus eight county-run districts specifically for students with disabilities.
Districts spend hundreds of millions of dollars placing students in private schools rather than investing in their own staffing and programs — placements that cost New Jersey taxpayers $784 million in 2024, not including transportation. That’s up from about $725 million the year before. This can create a self-perpetuating cycle that increases reliance on separate schools and, experts say, may violate students’ federal right to spend as much time as possible learning alongside students without disabilities.
In many cases, parents say school administrators are too quick to send children out of district and pressure families to agree to those settings. Other times, parents choose to send their child to a separate school, sometimes feeling that they have no choice after repeatedly failing to get their kids the help they need in their local school.
“Whatever it is that their kids need within the district, they’re not getting,” said special education parent and advocate Amanda Villamar, who works with families throughout New Jersey. “The question becomes: Why are these services in private schools and not necessarily integrated into our public school system?”
In all, about 30,000 students with disabilities in New Jersey — or 13 percent— attend separate private or public schools, according to The Hechinger Report’s analysis of federal data. That’s the highest percentage in the country. Nationwide, 4 percent attend separate schools.
New Jersey’s history of failing to include children with disabilities in public school classrooms dates back to the 1910s. That’s when the state began promoting separate schools for students with disabilities as a more humane alternative to barring them from schools altogether.
Nationwide, only 1 in 5 students with disabilities were enrolled in the public school system in the 1970s, when Congress passed the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act or IDEA. The law enshrines integration by saying students with disabilities have a right to learn alongside students without disabilities to the “maximum extent” possible and that they should be placed in the “least restrictive environment.”
Across the nation, parents and children fought state laws excluding students with disabilities from public schools — with fights in Washington D.C. and Pennsylvania fueling the passage of IDEA. It wasn’t until 1992 that New Jersey repealed its statutes allowing public schools to exclude “untrainable” children with disabilities. By then, separate schools were an integral part of the state’s highly decentralized education system, which today comprises roughly 600 districts.
New Jersey Department of Education officials said the state is committed to ensuring students with disabilities are in the most appropriate school setting based on individual needs, and that includes out-of-district programs.
“New Jersey is uniquely positioned in this regard, with a longstanding infrastructure of out-of-district options and many small local public school districts,” department spokesman Michael Yaple said in an email. “These and other factors have contributed to the state’s historical reliance on a wide array of specialized programs designed to offer diverse, individualized educational options for students with disabilities.”
The rate at which New Jersey school districts place students in separate schools has declined over the past two decades. In the same period, however, more parents chose to send their children to private schools, sometimes because they felt they had no other viable options.
Some parents say there are significant trade-offs when their child leaves their district school.
Ellen Woodcock’s son, a fifth grader, attends a county-run school for students with disabilities where she says teachers understand his autism much better than they did in her home district.* Despite her son’s fascination with geography, however, teachers spend little time on science or social studies. The school has no library, and the day ends an hour earlier than his district elementary school. School staff focus on teaching social skills, but he’s lost the chance to model the behavior of peers without disabilities.
Left out
New Jersey has the nation’s lowest inclusion rates for students with disabilities. The Hechinger Report investigated why — and visited places that show how it doesn’t need to be that way.
Do you have experiences with special education you’d like to share with our journalists?
“I feel like he’s not being challenged, like he’s kind of pigeonholed,” Woodcock said. “We just felt like we didn’t have a choice.”
Her son spent kindergarten through second grade learning in general education classrooms at his local neighborhood school in Haddonfield, New Jersey, and she was happy with the social and academic progress he was making. In third grade, however, things changed. The school shifted him into a separate classroom for significant parts of the day. Woodcock said school staff seemed unable, or unwilling, to address how his autism affected his learning and provide the right support to account for it. She felt he was unwanted.
In the middle of fourth grade, she said she reluctantly transferred him to a specialized school where he spent his day with other students with autism.
“It was almost out of desperation,” Woodcock said. “It was like, let’s get him out of the school district, because we feel like they can’t support him. It was a fight all the time to get him what he needed.”
Haddonfield district officials said privacy laws prevent them from commenting on individual students but noted that the percentage of students with disabilities who spend almost all of their time in general education classrooms is significantly higher than the state’s average. About 69 percent of Haddonfield students with disabilities spend at least 80 percent of the school day in general education classrooms, compared with 45 percent statewide, according to state Education Department data.
“We are proud of our inclusive practices and the strong sense of belonging we strive to create for all students,” district officials said in a statement. “The least restrictive environment can look different for each student.”
In Haddonfield, 19 percent of parents with students with disabilities choose to enroll their children in private schools, compared with 7 percent statewide.
Woodcock decided to move her son back to the district next year, where he’ll start sixth grade at the local middle school. She understands that her son may need to be pulled out of class to learn a subject like math in a special education resource room — but she believes he can, and should, learn in general education classrooms as well.
Under IDEA, students with disabilities should be placed in separate schools or classes only if their disability makes it too difficult for them to learn in a regular classroom, even with extra help and support. A team made up of a child’s parents, teachers, school district officials and, when appropriate, the child, decide on a placement together and must review it each year.
The federal Department of Education says those teams have to make this decision based on an individual child’s needs — not solely because of the kind of disability, how significant the child’s needs are or whether the school has the money or the staff. In New Jersey, however, some parents say schools too often determine placement on a child’s diagnosis alone.
Observers, including special education advocates and attorneys, say school districts and leaders of separate schools tend to argue it would be too difficult for all of New Jersey’s hundreds of public school districts to provide services for all types of disabilities. That’s fueled a reliance on private and county-run separate schools, many of which have classrooms or programs focused on a specific disability, such as autism or dyslexia, with specially trained teachers.
Districts sometimes launch specific special education programs — applied behavioral analysis classrooms for students with autism, for example — only to abandon them after challenges paying for them or finding qualified staff, said Paul Barger, a special education lawyer in Irvington, New Jersey.
“Instead of continuing to develop their own programs in the districts, they went ahead and just said they’re placing out into state-approved private school programs,” Barger said.
Returning some students with disabilities to in-district schools would require more money. Lawmakers in New Jersey are debating the governor’s proposal to boost funding for special education services in public schools by $400 million for the next school year. Advocates say that’s an opportunity to build stronger special education systems in public schools. The governor also proposed flat funding of $420 million for private school tuition payments for students with disabilities.
Some parents, unhappy with the services they see in public districts, prefer private schools: A growing number pay for their children to attend. That’s despite the fact that those parents who choose private schools lose federal protections, including the rights to raise formal complaints.
ASAH, the group representing New Jersey private schools for students with disabilities, which enroll more than 10,000 students, points out the lack of special education services in public districts. It tells parents that poorly trained paraprofessionals in public schools can be stigmatizing, and placing students in self-contained classrooms doesn’t make students feel valued or included. The group, formerly known as the Association of Schools and Agencies for the Handicapped, argues private schools may not be more costly to the state than public schools once pensions are factored in.
Students with disabilities have the right to options like private schools, the association’s executive director John Mulholland said in an interview.
“It really is an individualized determination, and merely just being a part of your home district isn’t always a least restrictive environment,” he said.
Unlike for public schools, the federal government doesn’t collect data from private schools about how often their students interact with peers without disabilities. According to the association’s recent study of 5,300 students served by ASAH schools, 262 students planned to leave their private schools in the 2022-23 school year to return to their home district. That report suggests such a move was less likely for children with autism and multiple disabilities.
Mulholland said private schools may offer some interaction with students without disabilities through community service or sporting events. His association’s analyses have found that students who start at a private school earlier are more likely to return to their public school district.
“If students come to us younger, they can get the intensive support they need or return to their school districts — many of our members pride themselves on that turnaround,” Mulholland said.
Nicole Lannutti, of Washington Township in Gloucester County, said her daughter Sophia, who is non-verbal and has multiple disabilities, attended a private preschool for one year at a cost to the district of roughly $90,000. (New Jersey requires school districts to provide preschool for students with disabilities.)
Lannutti pushed to get Sophia into the public school system for a second year of preschool and then elementary school, where she said her daughter thrived in a school that prioritized inclusion. But that changed in middle school, where her mom says she’s had to push to have her daughter included even in lunch, recess and extracurricular activities. Washington Township school district did not respond to requests for comment.
Lannutti said her local public school is still the most appropriate setting for her child, who will enter seventh grade in the fall and has made friends by participating in the school play. The school agrees, and said as much in her education plan. Lannutti said private schools play an important role, but public schools should work harder to serve more students and fulfill their civil right to an education. “When it comes to my kid, it’s not that she should go because this district can’t handle it,” Lannutti said. “They should learn how to do it.”
*Correction:This story has been updated to correct Ellen Woodcock’s son’s current grade level.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
CINNAMINSON, N.J. — Terri Joyce believed that her son belonged in a kindergarten classroom that included students with and without disabilities.
The year before, as a 4-year-old, he happily spent afternoons in a child care program filled with typically developing children, without any extra support. Like other kids his age, her son, who has Down syndrome, was learning about shapes and loved sitting on the rug listening to the teacher read books aloud. His speech delay didn’t prevent him from making friends and playing with children of differing abilities and, during the summer, he attended the same program for full days and would greet her with big smiles at pick up time.
But when Joyce met with school district administrators ahead of her son’s kindergarten year, they told her that he would need to spend all day in a classroom that was only for students with significant disabilities.
“They absolutely refused to even consider it,” Joyce said. “They told us, ‘We move so fast in kindergarten, he needs specialized instruction, he’ll get frustrated.’”
It was the separate classroom that left him frustrated.
Terri Joyce said her son, who has Down syndrome, has thrived after she fought for him to be included in a general education classroom. Credit: Yunuen Bonaparte for The Hechinger Report
Under federal law, students with disabilities — who once faced widespread outright exclusion from public schools — have a right to learn alongside peers without disabilities “to the maximum extent” possible. That includes the right to get accommodations and help, like aides, to allow them to stay in the general education classroom. Schools must report crucial benchmarks, including how many students with disabilities are learning in the general education classroom over 80 percent of the time.
More than anywhere else in the country, New Jersey students with disabilities fail to reach this threshold, according to federal data. Instead, they spend significant portions of the school day in separate classrooms where parents say they have little to no access to the general curriculum — a practice that can violate their civil rights under federal law.
Just 49 percent of 6- and 7-year-olds with disabilities in the state spend the vast majority of their day in a general education classroom, compared with nearly three-quarters nationally. In some New Jersey districts, it was as low as 10 percent for young learners. Only 45 percent of students with disabilities of all ages are predominantly in a general education classroom, compared to 68 percent nationwide.
For over three decades, the state has faced lawsuits and federal monitoring for its continued pattern of unnecessarily segregating students with disabilities and regularly fails to meet the targets it sets for improving inclusion.
Surrounded mostly by children who had trouble communicating, Terri Joyce’s son’s speech development stalled. He wasn’t exposed to what his peers in the general education classroom were learning — like science and social studies.
For Terri Joyce, getting her son included in a general education classroom “was a part-time job” and meant staying on top of, and documenting, his academic and social progress. Credit: Yunuen Bonaparte for The Hechinger Report
Joyce tried mediation with the Cinnaminson district but they refused to budge. In the end, she hired a lawyer, filed a due process claim with the state and succeeded in having her son placed in a classroom that included students with and without disabilities the next year, repeating kindergarten to see if he could regain the skills he had lost. The process cost her family thousands of dollars.
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The Hechinger Report spoke with more than 80 parents, researchers, lawyers, advocates and school officials across the state who described a widespread failure to devote resources to integrating students with disabilities — and a decentralized system that gives enormous power to district leaders, who have long been able to refuse to prioritize inclusion without facing consequences from the state or federal government.
New Jersey is known nationally as a leader in public education, but the state’s governance system has led to inclusion rates that vary dramatically between districts. As a result, a child who is placed in a separate classroom for the entire day in one district could be included all day in a general education classroom in a neighboring one.
“Mindset is the biggest barrier,” said Michele Gardner, executive director of All In for Inclusive Education and previously an administrator for 15 years in the Berkeley Heights district. “There are educators, parents, administrators and physicians who truly believe that separate is better for children with and without disabilities. With more than 600 districts, local control makes change harder.”
Experts say integrating students with disabilities in general education should be easiest, and can be the most beneficial, in the early years. Researchers have found students with and without disabilities — particularly the youngest learners — can benefit when inclusion is done with enough staffing and commitment. Young children also learn from watching each other, and parents worry denying students with disabilities this chance can have lasting damage on them academically and emotionally. Worldwide, inclusion is considered a human right helping all children develop empathy and prepare for society after graduation.
Too often, New Jersey parents say, young learners are placed right away in separate classrooms based on a diagnosis — as Joyce’s son was — rather than an assessment of what support they actually need.
Just over a decade ago, New Jersey settled a class-action lawsuit filed by parents and advocacy groups over student placement, which required years of state monitoring, a new stakeholder committee, and training and technical assistance for districts with the lowest rates of inclusion.
But since then, the proportion of young students in the general education classroom the vast majority of the day actually decreased by about 5 percentage points, from 54 percent in the 2013-14 school year. Nationwide, there was no such drop.
“We are certainly seeing a trend that, even at younger ages, students are being shuttled into segregated schooling and never really starting in inclusive experiences,” Syracuse University inclusive special education professor Christine Ashby said of New Jersey and other states.
Ashby, who also runs the university’s Center on Disability and Inclusion, said students then tend to stay in separate — commonly called self-contained — classrooms, where they may receive individualized instruction alongside peers with disabilities but may be less prepared for life after high school.
For Terri Joyce, the opportunity she fought for her son to have proved worth it. It took him time to adjust, but with the help of an aide, he settled in and, now in first grade, is thriving alongside his general education peers once again.
“It was like night and day,” said Joyce. “His speech improved. He loves school. He has friends. He gets invited to birthday parties.”
Terri Joyce is happy with how her son’s writing skills have developed in first grade while learning in a general education classroom. Credit: Yunuen Bonaparte for The Hechinger Report
New Jersey Department of Education officials declined a request for an interview, but said in a statement that the agency is working with schools statewide to improve how often students with disabilities are placed in general education classrooms through training, technical assistance and programs promoting inclusion. A new website provides a detailed look at each district’s data, broken down by grade and type of disability.
“All placement decisions must be made on an individual basis and there is no one-size-fits all standard or outcome that should be applied to every district, school or student,” Laura Fredrick, the department’s communication director, said in the emailed statement.
Fredrick said districts that fail to meet state goals for increasing inclusion may face more intensive monitoring, but there are no direct financial penalties or automatic consequences for failing to improve. She also noted that the state pays for voluntary trainingto increase inclusion in K-12 schools.
That program has helped in some districts, but a limited number of schools have participated so far and space is limited — some that have applied for the training have been turned away.
In Cinnaminson, district officials said they could not comment on specific students but that school officials and parents work together on placement decisions.
“To the fullest extent possible, we strive to place students in general education classrooms for the most inclusive educational experience,” Superintendent Stephen Cappello said in a statement.
Some experts said the data suggests that, unlike other states, New Jersey districts do a good job providing individualized services that students need. Autism New Jersey clinical director Joe Novak said in contrast, “There are certain districts, or states, where the default may simply be to place the child in general education and say, ‘Well, best of luck.’”
Indeed a frequent complaint from some parents is the lack of specialized services in general education classrooms, especially because of staffing shortages or lack of expertise. In those cases a student may be counted as included in a general education classroom but without the support they need, which advocates on both sides of the debate say can be harmful.
“New Jersey is probably doing a lot of things right, because it means we’re probably really customizing what makes sense for the individual,” Novak said
Yet others say the state can improve inclusion rates that are sharply lower than the nation’s.
The federal government doesn’t say how many students should be included or for how much of the school day. States set targets for inclusion rates but typically don’t fine or sanction districts for not meeting them. States can also take other steps like requiring training or administrative changes for districts. Advocates say New Jersey districts have little to lose for repeatedly falling below the state’s own targets for including children with disabilities.
Left out
New Jersey has the nation’s lowest inclusion rates for students with disabilities. The Hechinger Report investigated why — and visited places that show how it doesn’t need to be that way.
Do you have experiences with special education you’d like to share with our journalists?
Oversight from the federal government could also diminish going forward. Although the Trump administration pledges to continue funding special education, advocates warn the planned dismantling of the Department of Education, including its civil rights enforcement arm, will harm students with disabilities.
“It’s sort of petrifying, from my end, for these families,” said Jessica Weinberg, a former New Jersey school district attorney who now runs a special education law firm.
“It could be completely disbanded,” she said of the Education Department. “The uncertainty is really unsettling.”
Federal law says students should be placed in separate classrooms “only if” they can’t learn in the general education classroom with services detailed in IEPs, or individualized education programs — the document that outlines a student’s needs, the services they should receive and where they’ll receive them. Teachers, school officials and parents sit on their child’s IEP team, which is supposed to review placement decisions each year.
And parents across New Jersey say it takes time and money to fight for access to general education classrooms — which means whether a child is included can reflect existing racial disparities and whether families can afford lawyers and advocates. Parents say when a school argues their child must be taught separately, their best way of fighting that decision is lawyers and experts — if they can afford it.
Districts with less poverty and a larger share of white students tend to have higher inclusion rates and test scores, according to The Hechinger Report’s analysis of state data. Overall, just 37 percent of Black students in kindergarten, first or second grade in New Jersey are included in the general education classroom for the vast majority of the school day, compared to half of white students.
It’s challenging to get special education services in urban and lower-income districts in the first place, said Nicole Whitfield, a mother of a child with a disability who founded an advocacy group in Trenton for families fighting for special education services.
Urban “districts are so overloaded with so many kids, they don’t do a good job in managing it,” she said.
In all districts, arguments against including more students often hinge on money. Administrators may say they can’t afford all the services every child needs, like an aide assigned to work with one child, and some parents worry providing comprehensive services could strain budgets or cut services for students without disabilities. As special education costs rise, the federal government has long failed to provide as much special education funding as it pledged.
The way New Jersey funds schools doesn’t consider how many students have disabilities. The governor’s proposed budget for the upcoming school year would take that into account and increase overall special education spending by about $400 million — though some districts will lose money. Lawmakers are debating the governor’s proposal, which has some support from the chair of the state Senate Education Committee, Sen. Vin Gopal.
Yet districts spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year to pay tuition at private schools ($784 million last year statewide) and fight legal battles — money advocates say could boost public special education.
It cost Washington Township school district about $90,000 to send Nicole Lannutti’s daughter, who is non-verbal and has a developmental delay, to a private preschool for a year rather than educate her in one of its schools.
“If you can come up with the money for lawsuits, why can’t you put it into the district right now?” Lannutti said. “That makes no sense.”
Washington Township school district did not respond requests for comment.
Whittier Elementary School in Teaneck, New Jersey, rearranged its classrooms to improve how many students with disabilities are included in classes with their peers. Credit: Meredith Kolodner/The Hechinger Report
In some districts, officials say inclusion doesn’t cost more in the long run, even if there are upfront costs. Administrators in Sparta Township, for example, said improving inclusion rates didn’t require more spending. Its schools got help from the New Jersey Inclusion Project — the state-funded training program that helps districts provide students with the least restrictive learning environment appropriate for them.
“[It] has really changed the way we educate our students,” said Adrienne Castorina, Sparta’s director of special services. Teachers found that they were able to provide specialized instruction in reading inside a general education classroom, for example, instead of pulling children out and teaching them in separate rooms.
In 2024, a special education parent advisory committee in Bernards Township School District asked administrators to apply to the New Jersey Inclusion Project. Parents thought the program would be a no-cost, collaborative path forward.
District officials refused.
Many parents in the wealthy district say Bernards’ classroom staff are committed and skilled, but they also say there’s an unwritten policy of separating children based on their diagnosis — close to three-quarters of children with autism, for example, spend the vast majority of their day without contact with their general education peers.
For years, Trish Sumida pleaded with staff at her daughter’s elementary school in Bernards to allow her to have contact with her non-disabled peers. But every day, starting in kindergarten, she learned only alongside other children with autism. Most years, she was the only girl in the room, and she longed for someone to play with who shared her interests.
“Those early years are so important,” said Sumida, whose daughter is now in fifth grade and still spends most of her time in a separate classroom. “I feel like we’ve missed our window.”
Many Bernards parents are particularly frustrated by the refusal to set up co-taught classrooms, a nationally used approach where a general education and special education teacher work together to educate students with and without disabilities.
Jean O’Connell, Bernards’ director of special services, rejected the idea of co-taught classes in elementary school, saying they made it harder to support individual students, particularly in reading. “We had this model in place for many years and found it ineffective,” she said in an email.
Research suggests even students with significant disabilities can learn alongside general education peers with help from co-teachers or paraprofessionals. And a large body of evidence suggests inclusion doesn’t harm learners with or without disabilities.
Some scholars say inclusion research is flawed because students who appear to benefit may need less support and have fewer academic struggles. Such experts point out that a separate classroom may be the appropriate setting for some children, who could languish without intensive support in a general education classroom. And schools with high inclusion rates on paper may place students with disabilities in general education without needed aides and accommodations — which federal data does not capture.
Even a prominent researcher who has questioned the benefits of inclusion, however, said most children don’t need to be taught separately all day.
“Most students with disabilities do not need very intensive forms of instruction,” said Vanderbilt University special education professor Douglas Fuchs.
O’Connell did not respond to questions about why Bernards refused to participate in the New Jersey Inclusion Project and said only that the district has participated in inclusion workshops. She added that the district has no “blanket district-wide policy on inclusion” and involves parents in all placement decisions.
Yet several Bernards parents said they met intense resistance from administrators. One mom said her child who has autism that requires limited support was in an inclusion classroom for pre-K without any problems, but Bernards administrators insisted he be placed in a self-contained classroom for kindergarten.
“He would cry to me every morning and say he didn’t want to go to school,” said the mom, who asked not to be named, afraid her child could experience discrimination because of his disability if identified. “I just felt heartbroken every day.”
She tried repeatedly to have him moved, eventually turning to mediation and filing a complaint with the state. Ultimately, she felt her child couldn’t wait for a resolution. She moved to another district last fall, where he learns alongside his general education peers all day. She said her child is now happy and doing well academically and socially.
Other districts that have struggled with low levels of inclusion have embraced outside help — including from the Inclusion Project. The program helped Whittier Elementary School in Teaneck create its first co-taught classrooms two years ago. Teachers there said the shift requires a lot of planning and they wish they had more staff to provide support, but they’ve seen their students develop academically and socially.
“When you think about the conversations that kids have — turn to your partner, talk to your table, those opportunities aren’t there in self-contained,” said Janine Lawler, who has been a special education teacher for 18 years, mostly in self-contained classrooms, and is now co-teaching in a first-grade class.
Janine Lawler teaches math to a group of first graders in Teaneck, New Jersey. Her classroom includes students with and without disabilities. Credit: Meredith Kolodner/The Hechinger Report
Educators say they can provide intensive instruction without having to separate children for large portions of the day.
“Do we have to isolate young people to give them a service, or can we include them and provide the same service or greater service?” said André Spencer, superintendent of Teaneck Public Schools. “We believe we can include them.”
For decades, New Jersey education officials have failed to support or pressure districts to improve their inclusion rates. A 2004 report found a lack of consequences — such as financial penalties — for New Jersey districts who repeatedly failed to increase inclusion of students with disabilities despite years of promises to improve.
“There’s a culture in New Jersey, which is that you teach kids with impairments in segregated classes,” said Carol Fleres, a long-time special education administrator in New Jersey who is now a special education professor and department co-chair at New Jersey City University.
A 2018 report by the National Council on Disability, an independent federal agency, found “serious contradictions” in New Jersey’s regulations that lay out how schools have to provide special education services. For example: The state categorizes students as having mild, moderate or severe disabilities and says that students with similar behavioral or academic needs should be grouped together.
Those issues make it easy for New Jersey schools to lump students with disabilities together in violation of federal requirements, according to the report.
A spokesman for New Jersey’s education department defended the regulations as doing the opposite. “This arrangement helps ensure that students who require more individualized instruction, especially those whose needs cannot be met in a general education setting, even with supplementary aids and services, are educated in smaller, more supportive environments,” Michael Yaple said in an email.
Despite settlements and scrutiny, advocates want more accountability: New Jersey’s State Special Education Advisory Council, which advises the state Education Department on special education issues, recommended required training for districts with low inclusion rates.
Special education parent and advocate Amanda Villamar, who works with families throughout New Jersey, said education officials try to educate the state’s over 600 school districts — but those efforts only go so far.
“We have a lot of districts that just say: ‘Well, it’s guidance. We don’t have to do it,’” Villamar said. “They literally just don’t even give it the time of day. Then you have other districts that put a lot of work and thought and effort into it.”
Lawyers representing families said young children with behavioral challenges or intellectual disabilities often wind up in separate classrooms for years, even if behaviors improve. Promises of inclusion in gym class or at lunch don’t always happen, they said.
Many parents said they felt forced to agree to separate classrooms, with the promise of inclusion, eventually. That day never came.
“Once you start restricting them, how are you going to get them back and get them increasingly more time within the classroom?” said Elizabeth Alves, a member of the State Special Education Advisory Council.
For Terri Joyce’s son, learning in the co-taught classroom meant accessing the general education curriculum, including social studies. The lessons on civil rights inspired him.
“He became obsessed with Martin Luther King,” she said. “He still will sit for hours and watch YouTube videos of his speeches.”
Like other students with disabilities, her son’s IEP is subject to an annual review, which means that inclusion in the general education classroom isn’t guaranteed in the years to come. Joyce says that means constant vigilance in a process that feels like a part-time job.
But her efforts to have her son included are about more than academics. He’s on the flag football team. He rides the school bus. Other kids recognize him and say hello in the grocery store.
“It’s much bigger than just his education and being included in the classroom,” she said. “Being included in school means he’s more included in life, and he’s more included in our community, and he’s more valued.”
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The founder and executive director of a network of Arizona charter schools serving autistic children has been named the U.S. Education Department’s deputy assistant secretary for special education and rehabilitative services. Education Secretary Linda McMahon made the announcement while touring the Arizona Autism Charter Schools’ Phoenix location.
Diana Diaz-Harrison, whose son is autistic, said that in her new job she hopes to continue her efforts to help others launch autism charter schools throughout the country. Her schools, she said in remarks captured on video by AZ Central, are a testament to what happens “when parents like me are empowered to create solutions.”
“My vision is to expand school choice for special needs families — whether through charter schools, private options, voucher programs, or other parent-empowered models,” she said in a statement to The 74. .
The five-school network uses a controversial intervention that attempts to train children to appear and behave like their neurotypical peers. Created by the researcher behind LGBTQ conversion therapy, applied behavior analysis, or ABA, is widely depicted as the gold standard despite scant independent evidence of its effectiveness and mounting research documenting its harms.
Diaz-Harrison opened the network’s first school in 2014 as a free, public alternative to private schools for autistic children, which are popular in Arizona but typically charge tens of thousands of dollars a year in tuition. Her Arizona charter schools are a 501(c)3 nonprofit financed by state and federal per-pupil funds. ABA is specifically endorsed by Arizona education officials as a strategy to use with autistic students.
In the time since those charters opened, ABA has grown to be a national, multi-billion-dollar industry, with for-profit companies tapping public and private insurance to pay for as much as 40 hours a week of one-on-one therapy. The intervention uses repeated, rapid-fire commands that bring rewards and punishments to change a child’s behavior and communication style.
A 74 investigation last year showed that most data supporting ABA’s effectiveness is drawn from research conducted by industry practitioners. Independent analyses, including a years-long U.S. Department of Defense review, found little evidence the intervention works. Former patients who underwent the therapy as children reported severe, lasting mental health effects, including PTSD.
Diaz-Harrison told The 74 the therapy is both valuable and sought-after. “For the autism community, specifically, many families seek schools that integrate positive behavioral strategies,” she says. “The evidence supporting behavioral therapy is extensive and well-established. It has been endorsed by the U.S. surgeon general and the American Academy of Pediatrics as an effective, research-backed approach for individuals with autism.”
During her visit, McMahon told students and staff she was eager to tell President Donald Trump about the schools. “He doesn’t believe any child, whether they have neuro-difficulties or any other problems, should be trapped in a school and not have the facilities that they need,” she said.
Since Trump’s second inauguration, he has issued numerous orders that have alarmed disability advocates and the autistic community. Though both edicts contradict longstanding federal laws, in March he ordered the closure of the Education Department and said responsibility for special education will be transferred to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
About half of the Education Department’s staff has been fired, including most of the people responsible for investigating what had been a backlog of some 6,000 disability discrimination complaints. Though it’s unclear whether Trump and McMahon may legally disregard special education funding laws and allow states to spend federal dollars as they see fit, both have said they favor giving local officials as much decision-making power as possible.
Meanwhile, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has stoked fear in the autistic community by announcing a new effort to tie autism to vaccines or other “environmental toxins” — a hypothesis discredited by dozens of studies. The man he appointed to head the study has been cited for practicing medicine without a license and prescribing dangerous drugs to autistic children.
Last week, the new head of the National Institutes of Health announced that an unprecedented compilation of medical, pharmaceutical and insurance records would be used to create an autism “disease registry” — a kind of list historically used to sterilize, institutionalize and even “euthanize” autistic people. HHS later walked back the statement, saying the database under construction would have privacy guardrails.
Among other responsibilities, the offices Diaz-Harrison will head identify strategies for improving instruction for children with disabilities and ensure that as they grow up, they are able to be as independent as possible. The disability community has raised concerns that the administration is retreating from these goals.
Advocates have said they fear the changes pave the way for a return to the practice of separating students with disabilities in dedicated special ed classrooms rather than having them attend class with typically developing peers. The Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act guarantees special education students the right to instruction in the “least restrictive environment” possible.
Families’ preferences vary widely, with some parents of autistic children refusing any form of behavior therapy, while others want their kids in settings with children who share their needs. Many insist on grade-level instruction in general education classrooms
Diaz-Harrison has a master’s degree in education and worked as a bilingual teacher in California early in her career. From the late 1990s until she began supporting her son full time, she worked as a public relations strategist and a reporter and anchor for the Spanish-language broadcast network Univision.
In 2014, frustrated with her son’s school options, she organized a group of parents and ABA providers who applied for permission to open what was then a single K-5 school serving 90 children. The network now has about 1,000 students in all grades and features an online program.
At the end of the 2023-24 academic year, 9% of the network’s students scored proficient or highly proficient on Arizona’s annual reading exam, while 4% passed the math assessments.
In December 2022, the network won a $1 million Yass Prize, an award created by Jeff and Janine Yass. The billionaire investors have a long track record of donating to Republican political candidates and organizations that support school choice.
One of the award’s creators, Jeanne Allen, is CEO of the Center for Education Reform. The center nominated Diaz-Harrison for the federal role.
Yass award winners were featured at the 2023 meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, a conservative forum where state lawmakers are given model bills on education and other policies to introduce in their respective statehouses.
Diaz-Harrison has partnered with a Florida autism school to create a national charter school accelerator program to help people start schools like hers throughout the country. She told The 74 the effort has so far supported teams of hopeful school founders from Louisiana, Texas, Florida, Alabama and Nevada.
Parents of young autistic children and autistic adults often disagree about ABA. Told by their pediatrician or the person who diagnosed their child as autistic that they have a narrow window in which to intervene, families fight to get the therapy. Adults who have experienced it, however, report lasting trauma and have lobbied for research — much of it now at risk of being defunded by Kennedy — into more effective and humane alternatives.
