“Guiding Through Change: How Small Colleges Are Responding to New Realities”: A Live Conversation with Three Small College Presidents
August 2, 2025, by Dean Hoke: Over the past several months, higher education has experienced an unprecedented wave of transformation. The elimination or curtailment of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, shifting federal financial aid policies, declining enrollment in traditional undergraduate programs, and heightened visa scrutiny and geopolitical tensions pose potential risks to international student enrollment, an area of growing importance for many small colleges.
Dr. Chet Haskell, in a recent piece for the Edu Alliance Journal, captured the mood succinctly: “The headlines are full of uncertainty for American higher education. ‘Crisis’ is a common descriptor. Federal investigations of major institutions are underway. Severe cuts to university research funding have been announced. The elimination of the Department of Education is moving ahead. Revisions to accreditation processes are being floated. Reductions in student support for educational grants and loans are now law. International students are being restricted.These uncertainties and pressures affect all higher education, not just targeted elite institutions. In particular, they are likely to exacerbate the fragility of smaller, independent non-profit institutions already under enormous stress.”
Small colleges—often mission-driven, community-centered, and tuition-dependent—are feeling these disruptions acutely.
As we enter the third season of Small College America, a podcast series that spotlights the powerful impact of small colleges across the nation, my co-host Kent Barnds and I wanted to mark the moment with something special. Rather than recording a typical podcast episode, we’re hosting a live webinar to engage in a timely and candid discussion with three dynamic presidents of small colleges.
Join us for a special Small College America webinar:
“Guiding Through Change: How Small Colleges Are Responding to New Realities”
Wednesday, August 27, 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM Eastern
Our panelists bring deep experience, insight, and a strong commitment to the mission of small colleges:
Dr. Andrea Talentino is the president of Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. She previously served as provost at Nazareth College in Rochester, N.Y., and Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont. In her administrative work, she has focused on building strong teams and developing a positive organizational culture.
Dr. Tarek Sobh is the President of Lawrence Technological University. A distinguished academic leader, he previously served as Provost at LTU and as Executive VP at the University of Bridgeport. An expert in robotics, AI, and STEM education, Dr. Sobh has published extensively and presented internationally. He is passionate about aligning academic programs with workforce needs.
Dr. Anita Gustafson, President of Presbyterian College, is a historian and long-time faculty leader who assumed the presidency in 2023. She has been a strong advocate for the value of the liberal arts and the importance of community engagement. Dr. Gustafson returned to PC after seven years as the dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and a professor of history at Mercer University in Macon, Ga.
This one-hour webinar will explore how small private colleges are navigating today’s evolving environment and planning strategically for the future.
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ALEXANDRIA, Va. — To address chronic shortages of special educators and disability experts, leaders in the field are looking at best practices across early childhood, K-12 and postsecondary to focus on the similar challenges all three levels face in attracting, preparing and retaining special education professionals.
The cohesive approach to filling shortages of early interventionists, teachers, administrators, paraprofessionals and specialized instructional support personnel — as well as trying to reverse a decline in teacher education enrollment — reflects a shared mission to support students with disabilities at all age levels, speakers said July 14 at a legislative summit hosted by the Council for Exceptional Children and the Council of Administrators of Special Education.
“Schools are facing a significant shortage of qualified special education teachers — a challenge that directly affects the support and outcomes for students with disabilities,” said Kevin Rubenstein, president of CASE.
Rubenstein added that finding enough teachers to fill staff vacancies “feels like trying to spot a unicorn,” because it’s “rare but magical.”
At the start of the 2024-25 school year, 74% of both elementary and middle schools reported difficulty filling special education teacher vacancies with fully certified teachers, according to federal data. Early childhood education is also facing challenges in recruiting and retaining early interventionists.
At the higher education level, enrollment in teacher preparation programs has plummeted by 45% in one decade, according to CASE.
Supporting special educators
Developing a comprehensive special educator pipeline can better support teacher prep activities so future educators can eventually help boost outcomes for students at all levels, speakers said.
According to Amanda Schwartz, associate project director of the Maryland Early EdCorp Apprenticeship Program at the University of Maryland, some solutions to recruiting and retaining early interventionists include: boosting salaries, reducing teacher-student ratios, and training on high standards for early intervention services.
Recruiting and retaining qualified early interventionists is critical to children’s development, Schwartz said. “We want our teachers to have all this content in order to be able to deliver appropriate practice in classrooms,” she said.
David Krantz, executive director of special education at Michigan’s Saginaw Intermediate School District, said it’s helpful to have robust data that can pinpoint where there are staffing struggles.
Krantz then pointed to specific ways districts can attract and retain paraprofessionals who support special educators in the classroom. For starters, he said, paraprofessionals need to know their work matters.
“If people don’t feel valued in their service, they’re going to leave,” Krantz said.
The Michigan Association of Administrators of Special Education started a paraeducator learning series in January to provide professional development and other support to paraprofessionals. About 350 paraprofessionals have participated so far, Krantz said.
In the higher education field, Kyena Cornelius, an education professor at the University of Florida, put it bluntly: “Our supply pipeline is broken.”
While alternative pathways to the teaching profession have grown, those programs often don’t provide the depth of training into teaching pedagogy or disability-specific knowledge needed, she said. The alternative pathways, Cornelius added, were never meant to replace traditional teacher preparation programs
She highlighted CEC’s professional standards for special educators as a blueprint for the knowledge and skills teachers need so they are ready to serve students with disabilities and stay in the profession.
“We need to think about how we can not only attract and retain but how we can comprehensively prepare teachers in an affordable way, how we can make it attractable and get them the skills,” Cornelius said.
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.
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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.”
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.
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.
This week on the podcast the SUs team has been on a study tour to universities in Lisbon in Portugal, and have reflections on everything from space to food, from interdisciplinarity to curriculum design and from Praxe to ribbon burning.
With Khadiza Hossein, VP Education at UWE SU, Emillia Zirker, Student Representation Officer at Lincoln SU, Gary Hughes, CEO at Durham SU, Mack Marshall, Community and Policy Officer at Wonkhe and hosted by Jim Dickinson, Associate Editor at Wonkhe.
This week on the podcast it’s our Easter special – and we’re diving into the highlights from The Secret Life of Students, our event that looked at a new vision for the student experience.
We hear from student officers, sector experts, and campaigners on everything from the myth of the full-time model, to the pressures of placements, to the problems faced by international students. There’s testimony from nursing students, fire from SU officers challenging tokenistic consultation, and reflections on race, identity, and institutional indifference. Plus we zoom out to explore commuter challenges, disabled students, student cities and the global call for student solidarity. Hosted by Jim Dickinson, Associate Editor at Wonkhe.
The First Amendment is far more than what lawyers and judges do.
It is what We the People do with our freedom.
Whatever the peaceful cause, whenever people speak and assemble to exercise their rights, it is always a healthy sign in a constitutional democracy. To that end, and to underscore yet again the value of dissent, the photos below were taken in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, April 5 in the areas surrounding the Washington Monument, as part of the “Hands Off” campaign.
President Donald Trump said Friday that the U.S. Small Business Administration would handle the student loan portfolio for the slated-for-elimination Education Department, and that the Department of Health and Human Services would handle special education services and nutrition programs.
The announcement — which raises myriad questions over the logistics to carry out these transfers of authority — came a day after Trump signed a sweeping executive order that directs Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure” of the department to the extent she is permitted to by law.
“I do want to say that I’ve decided that the SBA, the Small Business Administration, headed by Kelly Loeffler — terrific person — will handle all of the student loan portfolio,” Trump said Friday morning.
The White House did not provide advance notice of the announcement, which Trump made at the opening of an Oval Office appearance with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The Education Department manages student loans for millions of Americans, with a portfolio of more than $1.6 trillion, according to the White House.
In his executive order, Trump said the federal student aid program is “roughly the size of one of the Nation’s largest banks, Wells Fargo,” adding that “although Wells Fargo has more than 200,000 employees, the Department of Education has fewer than 1,500 in its Office of Federal Student Aid.”
‘Everything else’ to HHS
Meanwhile, Trump also said that the Department of Health and Human Services “will be handling special needs and all of the nutrition programs and everything else.”
It is unclear what nutrition programs Trump was referencing, as the U.S. Department of Agriculture manages school meal and other major nutrition programs.
One of the Education Department’s core functions includes supporting students with special needs. The department is also tasked with carrying out the federal guarantee of a free public education for children with disabilities Congress approved in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA.
Trump added that the transfers will “work out very well.”
“Those two elements will be taken out of the Department of Education,” he said Friday. “And then all we have to do is get the students to get guidance from the people that love them and cherish them, including their parents, by the way, who will be totally involved in their education, along with the boards and the governors and the states.”
Trump’s Thursday order also directs McMahon to “return authority over education to the States and local communities while ensuring the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.”
SBA, HHS heads welcome extra programs
Asked for clarification on the announcement, a White House spokesperson on Friday referred States Newsroom to comments from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and heads of the Small Business Administration and Health and Human Services Department.
Leavitt noted the move was consistent with Trump’s promise to return education policy decisions to states.
“President Trump is doing everything within his executive authority to dismantle the Department of Education and return education back to the states while safeguarding critical functions for students and families such as student loans, special needs programs, and nutrition programs,” Leavitt said. “The President has always said Congress has a role to play in this effort, and we expect them to help the President deliver.”
Loeffler and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said their agencies were prepared to take on the Education Department programs.
“As the government’s largest guarantor of business loans, the SBA stands ready to deploy its resources and expertise on behalf of America’s taxpayers and students,” Loeffler said.
Kennedy, on the social media platform X, said his department was “fully prepared to take on the responsibility of supporting individuals with special needs and overseeing nutrition programs that were run by @usedgov.”
The Education Department directed States Newsroom to McMahon’s remarks on Fox News on Friday, where she said the department was discussing with other federal agencies where its programs may end up, noting she had a “good conversation” with Loeffler and that the two are “going to work on the strategic plan together.”
Maine Morning Star is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maine Morning Star maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Lauren McCauley for questions: [email protected].
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Federal special education operations, currently spearheaded by the U.S. Department of Education, will move to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, President Donald Trump said on Friday.
“It’s going to be a great situation. I guarantee that in a few years from now… I think that you’re going to have tremendous results,” said Trump, while seated in the Oval Office of the White House. Trump also said he would move federal student loan and school nutrition program oversight from the Education Department to the Small Business Administration.
Trump did not say when or how the transitions would occur. Additional information from the Education Department about logistics concerning the transfer of responsibilities was not available Friday afternoon.
U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon, in a Fox News interview Friday, said funding for the federal special education law — the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act — was in place before the creation of the Education Department in 1979. McMahon added that before the Education Department was created, special education programming was housed in what was then the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, “and it managed to work incredibly well.”
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. wrote on the social media platform X on Friday that HHS, “is fully prepared to take on the responsibility” of supporting students with disabilities. He added, “We are committed to ensuring every American has access to the resources they need to thrive. We will make the care of our most vulnerable citizens our highest national priority.”
.@HHSGov is fully prepared to take on the responsibility of supporting individuals with special needs and overseeing nutrition programs that were run by @usedgov. We are committed to ensuring every American has access to the resources they need to thrive. We will make the care of…
The Education Department oversees the distribution of about $15.4 billion for supports to about 8.4 million infants, toddlers, school children and young adults with disabilities. The department’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilatives Services and Office of Special Education Programs also conducts monitoring, provides technical assistance to states and districts, and holds states and districts accountable for compliance to IDEA.
The president’s comments come a day after he signed an executive order during a White House event directing McMahon to shutter the department to the “maximum extent appropriate.”
At the Thursday signing of the executive order and during comments on Friday, Trump said the low academic performance of U.S. students required a shakeup at the federal level.
He and his administration have also cited the desire to reduce federal bureaucracy in order to give more decision-making power to the state and local levels.
But public school supporters have vigorously denounced the Trump administration’s moves to dismantle the Education Department, which have already included reducing the workforce by half and canceling research and teacher preparation grants. At least one group — Democracy Forward — says it is planning legal action to stop the department shutdown.
Chad Rummel, executive director of the Council for Exceptional Children, said in a statement Friday, “IDEA is an education law, not a healthcare law, and belongs at the Department of Education.”
CEC is a nonprofit for professionals who work in special and gifted education.
Rummel added, “Moving IDEA programs to HHS would de-emphasize the purpose of IDEA to provide a free and appropriate public education and other critical activities to infants, toddlers, children, and youth with disabilities, and challenge the federal role to provide evidence-based research, personnel preparation, and technical assistance to advance the field of special education.”
National Parents Union President Keri Rodrigues said in a Friday statement, “This is not a minor bureaucratic reorganization — it is a fundamental redefinition of how our country treats children with disabilities.” The National Parents Union is a 1.7 million membership organization with more than 1,800 affiliated parent organizations in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.
“We must call this what it is: an effort to dismantle protections, disempower families, and turn education into a battleground for profit-driven insurance corporations,” Rodrigues said. “We will not allow it.”
