Radford Cares: Virginia Inclusive Practices Center

Within the School of Teacher Education and Leadership at Radford University, a visionary project leads the commonwealth in the development of inclusive practices – the long-term strategy of mainstreaming students with disabilities to build a better classroom education for all.

The Virginia Inclusive Practices Center (VIPC) originated from work done on the Radford campus since the early 2000s in preparing teachers for an inclusive approach, which began with teaching interns collaborating and co-teaching with special education interns.

“We’re still the only program in Virginia that does that,” said Liz Altieri, VIPC co-director. “We’re kind of a little bit of a hidden gem because we’ve been doing this collaborative, co-placed model for 15 years now.”

The VIPC has built on that early work to become a statewide leader in supporting inclusive education through professional development and classroom work with teachers. Today, the program works with educators all over Virginia, including projects in Waynesboro City Schools and, closer to home, the Montgomery County and Giles County school systems.

Karen Douglas, VIPC co-director, described the efforts in Montgomery County: “They’ve always provided inclusion, but they needed kind of another jump start. They needed to take it to the next level and to really see changes in student test scores. So right now, we are providing quite a few professional developments to their teachers, principals and instructional coaches.”

“We’ve gone in and provided some professional development, and we’ve also gone in and done some observations and provided teachers with some feedback: ‘Hey, here’s some ideas of how to better include students with disabilities and how to adapt materials for them so they can be more successful within your classroom, academically and socially.’

“What we try to push for is that all students, no matter what their disability is, should be included for the majority of their day,” Douglas said.

The matter is especially urgent at this moment, Altieri and Douglas agree. Across the state, “students with disabilities are still having incredibly limited academic success, at least as measured by the standards of learning assessments,” Douglas said. “And it’s gotten much worse during COVID-19. And since the pandemic, schools are getting pressure from the Virginia Department of Education to do something different, to do something better.

Despite all the goodwill and hard work from all sides, the message of inclusion hasn’t universally sunk in, the two educators say.

“There are still many school divisions that take kids with any kind of visible difference and put them in a separate classroom in the back of the hall,” Douglas said. “It might make it easier for people behaviorally, at least they think it does.”

The outcomes, however, tell a different story: “We’re seeing that young people with disabilities are graduating high school and they’re sitting at home. And they’re not working but they can work. Even kids with milder disabilities are significantly underemployed and unemployed. And so, the message is one that we are still working on... It’s really a cultural change. Segregation – we no longer accept segregating people on the basis of the color of their skin. But we still think it’s OK to do it on the basis of ability and disability.”

Douglas and Altieri are adamant that the data backs up inclusion practices – that inclusion provides a rising tide that lifts all boats. And the implications of inclusive practices echo far beyond graduation.

“If students are interacting more and have friendships now – then, when they own a business, and somebody comes to them who might have a disability, they’re going to be more apt to hire them because they know individuals like them,” Douglas said. “So, it’s going to help everybody in the long run.”