Many families struggle to access inclusive education for their children with disabilities, especially in California. According to data collected for 2022-2023 by the US Department of Education, 18.42% of California children with disabilities spent 40% or less of their school day in a regular classroom. Even families that can gain access to an inclusive placement in a general education classroom often find that their child’s inclusion is not providing meaningful access to the curriculum.
As we discuss in our article What to Do When "Inclusion" Isn’t Working, inclusion isn't just about putting a child with a disability in a general education environment. It’s also about adapting the curriculum, instruction, physical space, and human interactions to create a learning environment in which the child can be successful. This often leads families to ask: whose job is it to adapt the environment? Often, the answer is to bring into your IEP team an inclusion specialist whose role is focused on the team’s collaborative effort to provide inclusive access.
To understand what inclusion specialists do and how a family might add one to their IEP team, we spoke to School-Based Inclusion Facilitator Mary Chirichella; Independent Inclusion Specialist Arielle Starkman; Inclusion Consultant Michael McSheehan of Evolve & Effect, LLC; and Special Education Advocate Dr. Sarah Pelangka, BCBA-D.
Since there is no official definition of an inclusion specialist, many districts have other titles such as “inclusion facilitator” or “accommodation and modification specialist.” Chirichella shares her experience working at a middle school within a district. Although her contract lists her title as "inclusion facilitator," everyone refers to her as the inclusion specialist, and she views the terms as interchangeable.
As for qualifications, there isn’t an official license or credential for an inclusion specialist, but their background should include being a credentialed special education teacher, ideally with extensive experience in both general and special education. Inclusion specialists should hold at least a special education or education specialist credential, and many will have a master’s in special education. Although there is no specific license or certification for this role, experience in supporting children in inclusive settings is crucial. Chirichella emphasizes, however, that inclusion specialists should have experience teaching in a special education classroom or co-teaching. This hands-on experience helps them understand the common challenges teachers face, identify areas of resistance, and fine-tune strategies to better support both educators and students.
Many school districts may not have any inclusion specialists or facilitators. In this situation it is possible for your school to hire an outside consultant, to write a report on your child’s participation in general education and how that might be better supported. In the report the specialist will make recommendations, and may also be hired by the district to provide training and support to your IEP team while they implement the recommendations. More information later in the article under section “How parents can work with an inclusion specialist.”
Inclusion specialists will look different in every district. In Chirichella’s small district they have one for elementary schools, one for middle and one for high schools. Another huge district has only one inclusion specialist for the whole district, although they have many high schools. In most districts, the inclusion specialist will work as a consultant to the other IEP team members, rather than directly providing modifications and accommodations to the student. In districts where there is no inclusion specialist, the district may contract with an outside consultant for a limited duration to identify services and support and provide training to IEP team members.
Starkman, an inclusive education consultant in Los Angeles with extensive experience as a special educator, a certification in school leadership, and as a neurodivergent parent of a child with an IEP, says, “I come to this work as an inclusive education consultant with many lenses… My goal is to ensure that students are able to access general education environments with their general education peers, participate meaningfully in general education curriculum, and for teams and families to have the tools that they need to be able to implement that.”
In this clip, Starkman describes her work as an inclusion consultant in supporting classrooms:
What inclusion specialists do not do
Inclusion specialists do not typically work extensively with the child, except possibly to test ideas out. The specialists will not take over from your special education teacher, or your case manager but will work with your entire IEP team to train and support their collaborative work. Inclusion specialist do not:
In practice: speech and language
The inclusion specialist is brought in to observe Charlie, a non-speaking child in fifth grade. The inclusion specialist observes that the child is not participating in either whole group or small group activities. The general education teacher expresses concern that the child is not working at grade level and cannot write when the other children are writing or reading the same books. The child is still working on foundational reading skills. Visiting the child in their pullout speech therapy session, the specialist sees that the child can communicate well using a communication device (AAC). Here’s the step the inclusion specialist takes with Charlie’s team:
The inclusion specialist meets with the speech therapist and the general education teacher to discuss ways they can collaborate to increase Charlie’s ability to communicate in small groups. The teacher shares that Charlie often can’t understand the material that the small groups are working on, so they add in the special education teacher to create modified curriculum materials. The inclusion specialist creates the modified materials for the first two units and the special education teacher then follows that model for the rest of the year, meeting with the general ed teacher to get the upcoming grade level curriculum materials, and with the speech therapist to ensure that the student can effectively use the AAC device to discuss the topic. The speech therapist pushes in to these small group activities to encourage Charlie’s communication partners to engage with Charlie using his AAC. The inclusion specialist might also meet with the two teachers to work on similar increased access to whole group instruction, and bring in an AT specialist to ensure Charlie has access to written materials and alternative means of responding in writing.
In practice: science class
McSheehan also gives us an example of an inclusion specialist's work, telling us, “I worked with a student in eighth grade, his first time in a general education science class. I don't remember the exact state standard but it was quite elaborate, having to do with predicting and describing changes in particles in motion and states of matter resulting from thermal influence.”
What did they do? McSheehan explains that they decided to focus on vocabulary and the student's participation in all of the class lectures and lab activities as an entry point. Instead of expecting him to understand all the processes right away, they first concentrated on whether he could recognize the difference between solids, liquids, and gases, “and that's where our attention went in the initial instructional activities that he was in.”
In this case, an inclusion specialist might initially support the team by identifying the alternate achievement standard and creating individually modified curriculum materials for the student to use in class, that match the materials other students are using but enable this student to respond in accessible ways to show his learning. McSheehan says that once the team saw that he was able to achieve this standard using these modifications, “We stepped up our goal, realized we could actually challenge him with more… And by the way, he did demonstrate all of those very well, and the general ed teacher really got more and more confident as he showed he was gaining benefit from this instruction.”
General education teachers often do not receive the training to effectively design specially designed instruction, which may include accommodations or modifications. They can implement modifications when given support from other team members. Although intimidating at first, with such support, their expertise can be transformed into lessons that are accessible to all students.
Similarly, special education teachers often do not have enough information about the curriculum or strategy in the general education classroom, so successful inclusion requires collaboration. An inclusion specialist’s main role is to help the team organize that collaboration in an effective and sustainable way. Starkman agrees, explaining that making inclusion work involves more people than just the general education teacher, the special educator, and the inclusion specialist: it has to be a collaborative, schoolwide practice.
Chirichella highlights the importance of building strong relationships with school staff to foster trust and collaboration, emphasizing that understanding their perspectives is key to effective teamwork. Chirichella says, “It's heavily about collaboration. And to do that collaboration, you need to build relationships. You can't just kind of go in there with heavy hands. I want them to trust me. I want to trust them too.” Chirichella tells us that an inclusion specialist needs an understanding of the challenges teachers face — such as the lack of resources and time to do what an inclusion specialist can do — and still encourage them to push forward to work collaboratively. ”If we truly want to do inclusion with fidelity, and if we want our teachers to feel good with me [as the inclusion specialist], I need to be here.” Chirichella says. “I can't just be this face that drives in every once in a while and just drops in. In order for me to feel part of the community and for them to know that I'm part of the community, then I need to be here.”
How to write collaboration into the IEP
As McSheehan explains, “The IEP is a great place to start to ensure that [collaboration] is supposed to happen. Team collaboration for instructional planning can be added to the IEP as a supplementary aid and service or as a program modification.” In this clip, he explains how you might write teaming or collaboration into the IEP and suggests sharing a resource from the TIES Center on team collaboration.
Different districts are going to want to document collaboration in different ways. A useful question to ask is: how will I know that this is happening? This is an example of an IEP from Welligent in which inclusion collaboration and planning is listed as a service called RSP: Collaborative Teaching and Planning. The inclusion specialist could be added here as Responsible Personnel. Like any other related service, the parent could request logs if they felt the service was not being provided for 10 hours a year.
Here is an example from a SEIS IEP form where the inclusion consultation is added as a support for the student and personnel:
Starkman, however, stresses that collaboration and co-planning don’t have to be written into the IEP to be effective, it will depend on the situation: “If you know for a fact that co-planning is happening already, and that's not an issue going into your IEP, then don't add it. But if you're not [sure it’s happening], then I do think it needs to be added. Because when “the higher powers that be” are looking at the special ed teacher caseload and all of the different minutes required, and compiling what they need, that person needs to know that the special education teacher is responsible for co-planning, and that's part of the minutes. And weekly co-planning is more effective than some of the pull-out stuff that's been happening that I see.“
While other IEP related services and supplementary aids and supports often have formal assessments, our experts tell us that they don’t often use formal assessments for inclusion. Starkman tells us that while there aren’t standardized assessments for inclusion, published tools based on decades of research can help because research and work into inclusion isn’t new. “Despite our IEP team sometimes thinking this is new work, it's not,” Starkman says. “There are so many experts in this space who have been researching best practices for decades around inclusion, and it's important for us to bring that work and tool back to our classroom.”
Chirichella explains how assessing for inclusion is often about observation and collaboration: “It's more so knowing the staff, the co-teaching pairs that we've created, the gen ed teacher, the special ed teacher — making sure that they are planning, collaborating, accommodating, and modifying lessons. One of them would reach out to me and say, ‘Hey, we need help.’ Or I go in and I observe and I see areas that could use some support. Or I hear that this student is failing, or is head down, not paying attention, maybe not attending class. It's truly just what information gets brought to me, or what I observe. In the event that we get to an IEP of a student and they're not reaching IEP goals — we could use that — or their grades are not good. I think those would be some of the components that we say, ‘Okay, let's bring me in and I can assess at what level I need to go in to support either the student or that teaching team.”
In this clip, Starkman describes how inclusion specialists observe classroom dynamics to analyze the discrepancy in performance in the classroom environment between the target student and their peers — with a view to finding what supports can be used to increase the student’s participation and access to the general education curriculum. This process is often called an ecological participation assessment/report.
An ecological participation assessment/report is a report written by an inclusion specialist based on an observation of your child in a classroom setting that looks at what kinds of supports and services can be added to create an environment that the child can thrive in.
McSheehan calls this a participation assessment. Most elements of the approach can be found in the digital download, Membership and Participation for Learning. In this clip, McSheehan describes how the assessment focuses on evaluating the environment and the student’s access to participation, rather than assessing the student’s ability to participate in a fixed environment that isn’t designed for all learners.
This will be different in each school district or charter school. Within inclusive charter schools, inclusion support is sometimes listed as a service along with other IEP services in much the same way as assistive technology or behavioral support might be listed. It does not require that a goal be written for inclusion; the support should be targeted at working on all the IEP goals within a general education setting.
Request the district’s inclusion specialist for a consult
Request that the district’s inclusion specialist consult with your child’s teacher(s), either as a related service or as a support for staff. Ask for the consult to be written in the IEP notes. Chirichella tells us that in her district, she’s not actually a component of the IEP — not a related service — but can be included in the notes. For example, the notes might say, “Our inclusion facilitator will have weekly meetings with the co-teaching team.” Chirichella adds, “We'll talk, communicate with family, but I'm actually not a component of the big legal IEP.”
Request an inclusion specialist or consultant from an outside agency
If there’s no inclusion specialist on staff: request that the district contract with an outside agency or individual to create an ecological participation report and bring that inclusion specialist into the IEP team as a short-term consultant. With an external consult, once their report is presented, the IEP team might agree to some consult or training time with the specialist, and that might be written into the IEP as a consultation or in the notes.
Pay for a private inclusion specialist or consultant
You can also privately pay for an independent inclusion specialist to write an Inclusion or ecological participation report:
Ask for an ecological participation report
Note that while an ecological participation assessment is not a new idea to leaders and researchers in the field of inclusive education, it may be new to your school. There may be some confusion from the school about what you mean. A good way to trigger the involvement of an inclusion specialist in your IEP team is to request an ecological participation assessment of your child’s learning environment to inform the design of supplementary aids and services that promote the student’s membership and participation in general education. There is a sample participation assessment provided at Evolve & Effect, LLC’s website. Here are some tips points to remember when requesting one:
Not all school districts have inclusion specialists on staff. Chirichella tells us that she had previously worked in a district that did not have a specific inclusion person and families often had to work with their special education teachers or case managers to achieve the same goals. “But [the special education case manager or teacher] is teaching all day, so that limits their time that they can talk to the gen ed teacher, look at the goals, or look at the service minutes and check in with the student,” says Chirichella. “The nice part of my job [is] we're not in the classroom. So our day can be filled with checking in with those teachers, doing meetings, doing observations, creating lessons that might be a little bit more accessible.”
In some schools, this work is assigned to a behaviorist, such as a BCBA or program specialist. Starkman explains that, as an inclusion specialist, her mindset comes from a slightly different approach, one that is more holistic versus a behavioral lens, which is what a BCBA is coming in with.
“I don't want to negate the importance of a behavior specialist because I do think there's an opportunity for an inclusion specialist and behavior specialist to collaborate,” she says. “But someone like me is going to look at the whole classroom environment and really think about universally what could be adjusted in this classroom to support the behavior of the child.” For example, an inclusion specialist might examine the curriculum, modifications, and the type of work given to the child, asking questions like: could this be causing frustration? What if we adjust accommodations or modifications — would that help reduce the frustration?
In some districts, parents are told that the program specialist can function as an inclusion specialist, but Chirichella disagrees, telling us that program specialists do essential work around compliance, but it’s very different than what inclusion specialists do. She notes that having a separate role for an inclusion specialist can give inclusion the attention it deserves.
An inclusion specialist’s first task is to identify what the individual barriers to inclusion, membership, participation and learning are for a particular student in each setting they are learning in.
Starkman tells us that what she sees most is kids not getting their accommodations or modifications. “If modifications are truly being provided, usually there's someone thinking in-depth about how to connect the curriculum and the student’s needs. A lot of students that we see are those whose modifications aren't provided, or something is being provided that is deemed modification, but it's not in alignment to the grade-level curriculum at all. And students could be doing that in isolation at the back of the classroom. Or maybe there's partner work happening in the class, but because the kid is working on something so different, there's no way that they're able to engage in that, and they're not provided with that opportunity. So I think when modification is deemed totally separate and different, we have a problem.”
An inclusion specialist might initially design accommodations or modified curriculum materials for the student to show the teachers how they can collaborate and create routines that enable them to do the same in each unit or lesson plan. For many teachers, modifying curriculum for students in general education classes most of the day seems overwhelming but when created using collaborative routines, such as unit planning, the teaching teams are often soon able to continue sustainably with minimal support from the inclusion specialist.
Parent tip: ask for clarification in the IEP of the role of the inclusion specialist in creating accommodated or modified materials. Who will be doing this work on an ongoing basis.
Starkman also sees packaged special education curriculum or “alternative curriculum” as challenging when school teams are trying to use it in a general education setting because that's not aligned with what's happening in the classroom. Schools often try to pull workbooks and different things that are not grade level. She says, “I think we really have to come back to our curriculum modifications with our IEP team. Once we can delineate how that's different from some of these other purchases, we can start having a conversation about what that will look like, who will be responsible for that, and how it'll be implemented.”
Inclusion specialists can design individually modified curriculum materials that follow patterns so that the same design can be adapted to each lesson. The materials are easier to use in the context of the general education class because they have adapted materials that everyone is using, instead of borrowing something from a package that is not individually modified. At the same time, individualized modification allows the special education teacher to shift the level gradually as to challenge the student to their utmost potential.
Parent tip: if your team uses the term “alternate” or “alternative” curriculum, ask for more information on what that means. Are they using a package such as Unique Learning Systems or Teach Town? How do the team ensure that the modified materials allow your child to move closer to the state standards for their grade level? What are the alternative achievement standards that your teachers are using?
See our article on Core Content Connectors to understand how aligned alternative achievement standards can be used to create individualized curriculum modifications.
Many professionals are resistant to new practices, and often there isn't enough funding or enough time. In this clip, Chirichella explains the barriers she faces, primarily with shifting the mindset of the professionals she is working with.
Starkman also notes the funding issues, and the focus in California on special education teachers often teaching multiple grade levels. She sees a possibility for improvement as more colleges in California offer a dual credential so that special education teachers have a better understanding of the general education curriculum.
Bringing an inclusion specialist to the team is a great way to overcome these shortfalls in teacher training and experience. The team can be taught inclusive practices and collaboration in service with a focus on your child’s unique needs. While the district might not have enough money to train all their teachers in a huge professional development program, inclusion specialists can work with teams to create expert teams, who then pass their experience on to other teachers in the district, including your child’s future teachers. Teachers are more likely to act on shared experience from another teacher than from a PD expert and can keep referring back to the experienced teacher as in a coaching model when the training is done.
Parent tip: instead of dismissing the teacher’s concerns about lack of resources, make clear your intention to use your voice in the IEP to get the teaching team the resources and training that they need to serve your child’s unique needs, including that most precious of resources — time!
Often, IEP teams discuss inclusion only in terms of the limits: limits to the amount of time and the type of learning that the child can participate in. Parents also often leave their IEP team feeling that inclusion isn’t possible for their child, when in reality what is possible is limited by the team’s experience, training, and imagination. As inclusion specialists, our experts see no limits to inclusion. All kids can be included.
Starkman tells us, “I don't think that it's too difficult for anyone. I think the adults are the difficult ones, and it's not the child. Is it too difficult based on the adults and the systems that don't make any sense? Sure, but does that mean that we don't then include the student? No. We have to work through some of those difficult adult-related decisions and structures.”
She adds that including students from the beginning is very important, and that research shows that. “I think putting a child into an inclusive placement later in our educational journey can be hard for that child, and I always support that decision, but I want to look at social-emotional pieces of that, and just make sure that you're doing that in a way that really supports the child in any of those kind of transitions.”
For Chirichella, it depends on the goal for the student. “If the goal is socialization, to be around their peers, then, yeah, absolutely. If the goal is to reach mastery and biology, we want to try, but I think it does take bodies on the ground. I think it takes time throughout the day to be diving into lesson plans in order to create something that is meaningful. It just takes a lot. I also would come back to: what does the IEP team want for this student? Do we feel happy with them just learning conversational skills while they're in class? That's huge. Learning how to be a good group member. Maybe that's the goal. … So what is our end goal for the student, and how can we support them in those ways?”
Bringing this shift in mindset to the IEP team — alongside an inclusion specialist — can roll up their sleeves and spark a new conversation. Instead of asking, “Can my child be included?” or “When can my child be included?” the focus shifts to taking action and answering, “How can my child be included?”
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