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NCAC: What is UDL?: Access, Participation, and Progress in the General Curriculum: Introduction and Background

Introduction and Background

Introduction

The landmark IDEA amendments of 1997 stipulate that students with disabilities are entitled to access, participation, and progress within the general education curriculum. This language offers greater potential educational opportunities for students with disabilities than they have ever before enjoyed. Whether these potential opportunities are realized will depend upon how we interpret each of the key terms—"access," "participation," "progress," and the "general curriculum—"and whether new tools, methods, and approaches are implemented.

In our view, the conception, design, and implementation of the general curriculum and the assumptions that underlie it are the most important determinants of whether students with disablilities can access, participate, and progress within it. Consequently, the most critical step to increase access, participation, and progress for students with disabilities is to change the curriculum itself. In so doing, we will create a curriculum that is better not just for students with disabilities but for all students.

Because the "general curriculum" itself evolves, and because legislation has dramatically advanced opportunities for students with disabilities, the terms "access, participation, and progress" have not always meant the same thing. Before IDEA, the "access" hurdle was about legal access to an education and physical access to buildings and classrooms. As these barriers were removed (though even these persist in some settings), new ones came into view. Once in the building, students were faced with a curriculum filled with barriers, a curriculum that for many was virtually unusable. The challenge for educators of students with disabilities is a moving target—and fortunately so; the changing nature of the barriers reflects progress towards true access, participation, and progress.

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Background

Over the past 25 years, general education classrooms have served a growing number of learners with disabilities. This trend reflects policy changes stemming from growing awareness on the part of educators and parents that students with disabilities benefit from engaging with their peers in a common, challenging curriculum.

As recently as the 1960’s, many students with disabilities were not being educated at all, either because they were denied access to school or because they were physically in school but not being educated. For example, the US DOE notes that "in 1970, U.S. schools educated only one in five children with disabilities, and many states had laws excluding certain students, including children who were deaf, blind, emotionally disturbed, or mentally retarded (OSERS, 2001)."

Sustained federal leadership in support of special education has dramatically improved educational opportunities for students with disabilities. In 1975, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (P.L 94-142) entitled students with disabilities to an individually designed, free and appropriate public education provided in the least restrictive environment. One key purpose of this law was "to assure that all children with disabilities have available to them…a free, appropriate public education which emphasizes special education and related services designed to meet their unique needs (OSERS, 2001)." PL 94-142 opened doors for students who had previously been excluded from public education and for students whose disabilities were not well understood or addressed.

Although PL 94-142 dramatically improved education for students with disabilities, simple access to an individualized education proved an insufficient foundation for success, especially when the general education community began to seek higher standards and accountability for all students. With the focus on individualized programming, students with disabilities were often excluded from those standards and high expectations, to their detriment.

In 1990, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act was amended and renamed The Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA). In 1997, the law went further, entitling students with disabilities not only access to free and appropriate education but also access, participation, and progress within the general education curriculum. Under IDEA and its amendments, schools must educate students with disabilities to meet the same state standards and pass the same state-mandated assessments designed for students without disabilities. Specifically, students with disabilities are to be included in general state and district-wide assessments, with appropriate accommodations. IDEA supports the idea of appropriate instruction for diverse learners in mainstream settings. Further, IDEA brings parent involvement and participation to the forefront by offering principles for professional/parent collaboration.

IDEA has produced significant improvements in outcomes for students with disabilities. In 2000, Secretary of Education Richard Riley noted, "Twenty-five years ago, IDEA opened the doors to our schoolhouses for students with disabilities. Today, millions of students with disabilities attend our public schools. We have made steady progress toward educating students with disabilities, including them in regular classrooms, graduating them with the proper diploma and sending them off to college (U.S. Department of Education, 2000)."

However, we have a long way to go. The mandate for access, participation, and progress in the general curriculum is a recent development. It represents a new level of accountability for special education and a new set of challenges. Current practice falls short of the IDEA ‘97 imperative, with many of our children failing to achieve real participation and progress in the general education curriculum. The reasons are multiple and complex, but we believe that the nature of the curriculum itself lies at the heart of the problem, as well as at the heart of the solution. To explain why, we explore how our changing understanding and implementation of curriculum has affected diverse students’ ability to truly access, participate, and progress within it.