What are high quality instruction and support in high need and culturally diverse schools?

Data from the United States Department of Education show that in the last seven years, students identified for special education services in Kindergarten through 12th are increasingly served in general education contexts for 80% or more of the school day (Kozleski & Lacy, 2012). When state data regarding these placements were benchmarked in 2005, the overall average across states and territories was about 53%, with a range of 10-92%. Seven years later, states and territories reported an overall average of about 63%, with a range among the states of 30-93% of students with disabilities served in general education classrooms for 80% or more of the school day. How these data changed, and what happened in individual schools and school districts to make this kind of shift, is important since other forms of more granular research suggest that the work is difficult and what passes for inclusive education is not necessarily high quality learning (Artiles, Kozleski, Dorn, & Christensen, 2006; Kozleski, Artiles, & Waitoller, 2014).