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Laura Kaloi: So can UDL practices be integrated into existing curriculum? Or do schools need to build new curriculum around these practices?
Skip Stahl: UDL practices can indeed be integrated into some existing curriculum, but the drawback is that it often requires some degree of retrofitting of instructional materials, materials that may be print-based, that are by their very nature somewhat inflexible and very difficult to transform. But in terms of instructional practice, teachers tend to be inherently quite flexible and responsive to the needs of individual students. Most teachers have developed, different ways of engaging students. So what we are really trying to do is take advantage of the skills that teachers have and provide a little more of a structured framework to help them harness the flexibility they may already possess and target it a little better.
In the area of goal-setting, state standards, for example, many states have rewritten their standards to make them more accommodating to a wide variety of students. I remember in the early ‘90s coming across the standard in one state that set a goal that a first grade student would write his or her name at the top, right-hand corner of the paper. The challenge inherent in that particular standard was that you had to be able to see and you had to be able to write in order to meet that goal. The standard was rewritten to require the student to “identify his or her work in a consistent manner.” Reformatting that standard allowed for the expressive capabilities of a wide variety of students, and it didn’t confuse what the end goal was, within means of achieving that goal.
Finally, most assessments these days are large-scale, summative assessments and the challenge associated with those assessments is that they are often not particularly helpful for informing instruction because the instruction is over by the time the students take those large-scale tests. So we’re trying to work with test developers and states, to get people thinking about assessments to move towards more formative assessments where students’ achievement is measured as they progress through the material, which then provides them with an opportunity to revisit content and increase their achievement where necessary. It also provides teachers with information along the way as to how students are doing. What I’m trying to articulate is that we are not looking at a wholesale, total revolution or throwing out the existing curriculum; we are looking at identifying what barriers exist and, where barriers clearly exist and new materials need to be created, we are promoting those in the areas where strategies and approaches are indeed quite effective. We will be more than happy to promote those as well.
Laura Kaloi: Do you have estimates for how much it costs to implement UDL in a school or a state? And are most of the costs tied to buying technology, professional development, or a combination of both?
Skip Stahl: That’s a terrific question. We respond to that question by saying, “Let’s balance out the cost of either retrofitting or creating new materials to make them more UDL-oriented and contrast that with the cost of not taking a UDL approach.” One of the challenges in today’s schools is meeting the Adequate Yearly Progress expectations [under No Child Left Behind] and certainly students with disabilities are part of the disaggregated sub-group that is required to perform within the general education classroom and to achieve. It’s very clear to everybody in the educational system that a lot of materials that are presently available — and many of the assessments that are currently used to chart students’ achievement — have never been validated nor were they designed for students with varying learning needs, particularly disabilities. So in some cases those materials will have to be redesigned or reformatted into a more flexible presentation to accommodate the diversity within the student population. But the cost of not doing UDL is actually much greater in the long run. We certainly think that our curriculum materials are going to have to change and that some teacher practices are going to have to change. And certainly assessments need to be more authentic and more targeted to students. As far as technology is concerned, increasingly the cost of consumer technology (computers, wireless technology, handheld technology, cell phones, personal digital assistants, MP3 players), is increasing the capability to access and render digital content in some way. While that digital content may be focused these days on voice, it’s also increasingly coming to the point where it can accommodate print and images, video and music. I saw a cell phone the other day that had a built-in camera and optical character recognition software you could point it at a page of text, it would take a photo copy of the text and then proceed to read the text aloud to you in a quite serviceable synthetic voice. So, I’m thinking that the cost of technology is going to decrease, and that will allow for its increased use in instructional setting.
Laura Kaloi: NCLD is involved with a coalition that promotes incorporating UDL in No Child Left Behind [NCLB] and other laws. How does UDL fit into NCLB from your perspective, and what work can my organization and others do to promote UDL to policymakers?
Skip Stahl: The important thing about the fit between NCLB and UDL is looking at the recent reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act [IDEA] and the push within that legislation for more flexible, responsive, and appropriate technology and materials being used with students with diverse learning needs. Both IDEA and NCLB seek to include all students in the general education curriculum and as I mentioned earlier, with the Adequate Yearly Progress requirements those students with disabilities are not to be excluded and in fact if a school feels that it’s making Adequate Yearly Progress aligned to the NCLB legislation, they also have to look at students with disabilities and make sure that those students are progressing as well. So there is a real need fit between looking at Universal Design for Learning and incorporating aspects and with some new policy work (mandates, in some cases), to pay attention to the appropriateness of instructional materials, strategies for instruction, and assessments. And each of those aspects are mentioned both in IDEA and in NCLB, as those two pieces of legislation increasingly come together to form a seamless statutory foundation for creating a learning environment that is truly responsive to the needs of all students.
With regard to advocacy, certainly the important thing is for folks to let their congressmen, representatives, senators, and organizations know that there is a strong benefit to embedding Universal Design for Learning, language strategies and considerations into whatever reauthorization process is likely to occur which is not far down the road.
Laura Kaloi: What are some of the most exciting things happening with Universal Design technology in a classroom or school today?
Skip Stahl: The most exciting things from my perspective are actually again just going back from the recent reauthorization of IDEA in 2004 included an additional kind of reminder to school districts both at the state and local level that students with disabilities are to be provided with an equal opportunity to increase their achievement and that really meant building in from a statutory perspective flexibility. So the one area that’s moving very rapidly these days is the availability of accessible textbooks and core instructional materials. And while physical accessibility itself is only a sub-piece of Universal Design for Learning approach, it’s an essential foundation piece that actually allows students to get access to their material. So what began in 2004 now is really increasing its momentum as a high degree of awareness of the barriers inherent in some of our current instructional practices and that using technology of both high technology and some low technology there are ways to eliminate those barriers to make learning opportunities much more readily graspable by a much broader range of students.
So I’m really excited because I think 5 or 6 years ago, if someone had said to me we would be today where we are with a mandate for accessible instruction materials for students who are identified as print disabled for an increased flow of technology and flexible alternatives in the classrooms, I would have said, Boy, I think we’re probably 10 years on, but in reality it’s happening today, as the result of a convergence of advocacy efforts, research efforts, changes in pedagogy and changes in the market in which curriculum publishers actually produce materials or print publishers are well aware that some sort of digital product is in their future whether it’s electronic text or web-based textbook or audio books. And so increasingly those content purveyors are moving pretty aggressively in the marketplace to make their mark and make sure that schools are offering different formats of core instructional materials Three or 4 years ago that wasn’t the case. So all of those efforts, the statutory efforts, the commercial marketing efforts, the pedagogical efforts are making it for me a very exciting time and hopefully will result in significant achievement increases in students with disabilities.
Laura Kaloi: Skip, thank you. It’s exciting to hear about the future of education and what, the work you’re doing at CAST, the Universal Design for Learning has to offer to our students and teachers and we really appreciate spending time with us today.
This transcription was made possible by a grant from the American Legion Child Welfare Foundation.
