The Los Angeles Learning Tour
Starring Models of Inclusive Education
By: Stephanie Lassalle, Meg Lembo, Kelley Prosser and Giovanna Santimauro
On a sunny spring day in Los Angeles, a group of curious educators lined the walls of a math classroom at STEM Prep’s Math & Science College Prep high school to witness something special. In one part of the room, Jesse Mountjoy circulated among two-thirds of the students, who were independently practicing a math concept. He peered over shoulders, answered questions, and graded the activity on the spot. In another part of the room, a smaller group of students was practicing the same concept with more hands-on guidance from Whitney Woodard. Students who needed support at that moment looked to Woodard, who offered additional examples and continually drew students’ attention back to the model. Like Mountjoy, Woodard graded the activity as she circulated. As observers looked on, the instructional efforts of Mountjoy and Woodard served students so seamlessly that it was impossible to distinguish the math teacher from the special educator.
Then, the teachers came together to confer, and Mountjoy, the math teacher, called the students’ attention to the front of the room. With all eyes on him, he described trends that the teaching team had noticed on the whole, and used those trends as a bridge to the next activity.
This teaching partnership, launched before the start of the year, exemplifies a model for inclusive instruction known as co-teaching, where two educators — typically a general education and a special education teacher — share efforts for instructional planning, delivery, and assessment to serve the needs of all students in the classroom. Co-teaching has emerged as a leading strategy for meeting the needs of diverse learners in general education settings.
Co-Teaching: Designed for Inclusion
Today, 64% of students receiving special education services learn in general education classrooms for more than 80% of their school day (U.S. Department of Education, 2019). Co-teaching provides students the specialized academic instruction to which they are entitled, while ensuring that they are engaging with, and learning alongside, their general education peers in the least restrictive educational setting.
Numerous studies have highlighted the benefits of co-teaching for students, including enhanced academic achievement¹ for diverse learners and greater access to teacher support². Co-teaching also decreases social stigmatization for diverse learners among their grade-level peers³. Research has shown benefits for teachers, including increased job satisfaction⁴ and increased peer support and input on an ongoing basis⁵. For schools, co-teaching has led to fewer referrals for special education services⁶, resulting in fewer disproportionate referrals for Black and Latinx students⁷, and increased parent and family satisfaction⁸.
The NIC: A Learning Community
The co-teaching on display in Los Angeles was part of a three-day learning tour for the Networked Improvement Community for Students with Disabilities (NIC). The tour was an opportunity for NIC members to see and explore multiple examples of inclusion and co-teaching practices. Led by Marshall Street, the NIC is made up of ten public charter districts united in a shared aim to make dramatic gains for Black and Latinx students with disabilities experiencing poverty across the United States.
The NIC is a scientific learning community dedicated to deeply understanding challenges, and identifying possible solutions that best serve students. The NIC regularly engages leading experts and facilitates knowledge sharing among the community. The LA Learning Tour was one such effort. As the first in-person, network-wide event since the launch of the NIC in Fall 2019, the tour brought together team members from schools across the network: Green Dot Los Angeles, KIPP Northern California, Noble Network of Charter Schools, Collegiate Academies, Summit Public Schools, STEM Prep, and STRIVE Prep, along with the Marshall team, co-teaching content experts from Blue Engine, and representatives of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Most of the participating charter districts are members of the NIC’s Co-Teaching Professional Learning Community (PLC), which is facilitated by Blue Engine’s Meg Lembo and provides a space for members to learn from experts, share best practices and resources, and collaborate with one another to solve problems as a community. The learning objectives of the PLC go beyond the six basic models of co-teaching. Since its launch, the group has explored more advanced and novel topics, such as how to:
- adapt curriculum written for individual teachers for use by co-teaching pairs,
- create strong summer professional development (PD) and onboarding for new co-teachers,
- effectively execute co-planning, and
- build mindsets and enthusiasm for co-teaching throughout an organization.
The community’s desire to see examples of effective, well-implemented co-teaching — and the enabling conditions that support it — led to development of the tour.
“Through a combination of our monthly PLCs, working groups and 1:1 coaching sessions, we’ve collectively had the privilege of learning about our unique school contexts, overarchingly and specifically related to co-teaching. Because all of our work together is done remotely, the ability to have time, in person, to have deeper conversations about our work and priorities — and how what we were seeing in schools relates to that work — is invaluable,” said Lembo.
LA Learning Tour: Seeing Stars in Action
On the tour, NIC members observed classrooms at three Los Angeles area charter schools with strong reputations for excellence in co-teaching:
- At WISH Charter, inclusivity is a core part of the culture, vision, and mission. Tour participants saw WISH’s full-inclusion model in action, and gained insight from Executive Director Dr. Shawna Draxton on how the school leadership develops system-level plans to prioritize and sustain co-teaching. Examples included “macro” systems — such as master schedules, centralized data tracking tools, and communication systems — and “micro” systems, like guided meetings to ensure shared expectations across co-teaching pairs.
- At CHIME Institute, co-teaching is a core tenet of their organization and commitment to inclusion. Dr. Erin Studer, Executive Director of Charter School Programs, shared with the tour group a wealth of knowledge and resources. In particular, the group saw powerful programs for new staff training, continuing PD, and ongoing collaboration among instructional staff. Studer shared ways he and his team have ensured students’ needs and strengths are addressed, both individually and collectively, through full inclusion in a co-taught model.
- In classrooms at Math & Science College Prep (MSCP), participants observed strong examples of co-teaching practices used in math classes. Organized by Mary Maher, STEM’s Director of Special Education and Improvement Lead, observers saw how co-teachers used multiple co-teaching models, including flexible groupings, to re-teach content from the previous lesson or to guide practice for students who needed more time to confidently demonstrate a math concept. To make these adjustments, teachers collected data right from the outset and gave real-time feedback to students on their internalization of core concepts. They also shared information with each other, in quick conversations that allowed co-teaching pairs to speak as one.
Considering the overall Learning Tour experience, Lembo reflected, “It was a helpful reminder that focusing entirely on co-teaching models — and not on enabling systems and structures — can inhibit schools’ abilities to fully optimize co-teaching. Likewise it is also important to lean into coaching and development of educators around the daily use of the most effective co-teaching models — parallel teaching, alternative teaching and station teaching — that can bring collaboration to its highest outputs.”
Observations like these, and opportunities to connect with students, teachers, and school leadership teams, exposed the group to unique and valuable insights into co-teaching success. Three themes emerged to inspire future improvement efforts for participants as they returned to their schools:
- Participants were eager to plan summer professional development to create a strong launch for SY 2022–23 and to leverage and bolster the expertise of other instructional personnel. For example, the team at STEM Prep began thinking about how to train instructional aides to take more active co-teaching roles in classrooms next year.
- Positive, enabling mindsets were a consistent attribute of the successful co-teaching models. Since the tour, attendees have been working to convey the value and importance of inclusive education and co-teaching to team members at their schools. At Collegiate, for example, new leader training addresses mindsets around co-teaching and the importance of including every child in the general education classroom, regardless of their learning needs or designated services.
- At each site, systems to support co-teaching — deliberate scheduling, for example — ensured space and time for planning, action, and reflection by educators and coaches to meet the diverse range of student needs in their classrooms. “The teaching environment was carefully designed for co-teachers, so that they can focus their energies on getting the critical, student-facing work done, ” said Lembo. From hiring and budget decisions, to the way documents are housed and curriculum is explained, every system was set up with the expectation that collaboration is a must.
The learning tour highlighted these keys to successful co-teaching, and it confirmed the excitement and need for continued collaboration through the NIC’s co-teaching PLC. Said Lembo, “The outcomes of the learning tour — through working groups, 1:1s, and resource shares — have been extraordinary. After the March tour, PLC members and the greater NIC had a profoundly deepened level of commitment to and understanding of one another’s work. This has made further collaboration more frequent, more fruitful and more fun!”
Attendees and organizers alike look forward to future learning tours and the opportunity to share knowledge of emerging practices that will help make dramatic gains for Black and Latinx students with disabilities experiencing poverty.
Real Results: Bringing Co-Teaching to Summit Public Schools
The LA Learning Tour has had real effects on improvement efforts throughout the NIC. One notable example is occurring at Summit Public Schools, where co-teaching is being piloted this fall at one focal site, Summit Prep. The pilot is a direct result of the inspiration provided by the tour’s examples of excellence in co-teaching.
Sharon Johnson, Summit’s Senior Director of Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS), joined the tour, already aware of the research supporting inclusion of diverse learners in general education classrooms. Summit schools weren’t yet using co-teaching, but Johnson hoped that the examples on display might inspire ways that Summit’s model for supporting diverse learners could provide more flexibility in meeting individual goals, as well as foster collaboration between general and special education teachers. The early continuous improvement work that Summit had done through the NIC had uncovered initial ways in which Summit’s model of student support could be improved. Still, prior to the tour, shifting to a full-inclusion model, facilitated by co-teaching, seemed impossible.
Johnson wondered, how had these schools successfully implemented their co-teaching programs?
What she saw was illuminating: Instruction was effective because teacher teams were regularly working together to support students. They’d pre-planned which co-teaching model they’d use for specific lessons, and they were each made stronger by learning from the other’s expertise. The role of the special education teacher, and the value that they bring to all students, was elevated at every level of the school. And systems and mindsets were in place throughout the schools to support the work of co-teaching pairs.
“It was incredibly helpful and revealing to see a model of what co-teaching could look like,” Johnson shared. “I started to think of how we could adapt what I was seeing to our context: what if we piloted co-teaching in a few classes, narrowing our focus to subject areas where we have established student improvement goals, instead of co-teaching across all core classes at our focal site? This removed a barrier that stood in the way in previous attempts to create co-teaching models in our small school settings.”
What had been a theoretical concept became real through the examples she saw. Suddenly Johnson could imagine new possibilities for diverse learner support at Summit schools.
She took the learning and resources she had gathered on tour back to the improvement team at Summit Prep, who were already enacting changes to foster closer collaboration between general and special education teachers. The team at Summit Prep was eager to pilot co-teaching. Johnson decided, “We’re going where the energy is.”
Johnson began working closely with Summit Prep’s Executive Director, Cady Ching, Education Specialists Alisa Gonzales and Gretchen Oorthuys, Improvement Lead Max Beach, and co-teaching expert Meg Lembo from Blue Engine. Together, the team began to put systems in place for a strong launch in four English and math classes in the fall of 2022. The systems included scheduling to support co-teaching, development of common co-planning resources, and a carefully planned summer PD to introduce the models of co-teaching to participating teachers.
Meanwhile, a working group of the NIC’s co-teaching PLC was focused on defining ways to build the positive, enabling mindsets that were on display at all of the learning tour sites. The group, which included Johnson, Lembo, and Emily Isenberg from KIPP Northern California, began by developing a summer PD session highlighting co-teaching’s value to students with IEPs.
Lembo drafted a session that drew from the group’s conversations and Blue Engine’s expertise. After feedback and revision, Johnson took the draft to Summit Prep education specialists who adapted it to their own context.
In early June, the special education teachers led the PD session at their school. The response from teachers was more than they’d hoped for. Johnson described the success of the session: “We wanted all returning faculty to have a strong understanding of the model and why we’re going in the direction of co-teaching. By the end of the PD, every participant wanted to be a co-teacher!”
The success of the Summit Prep pilot will be determined in time, but the example of Summit Prep and the momentum for co-teaching coming out of the learning tour speaks to the value of the network’s efforts to learn from experts, share with one another, and continually improve to make gains for students who need it most.
This story was co-authored with Marshall Street’s Networked Improvement Community (NIC) team. Learn more about Marshall Street’s work in Continuous Improvement at marshall.org.
Continuous Improvement is a set of principles and practices to help educators “get better at getting better.” Marshall’s Continuous Improvement team uses these tools to tackle intricate, systems-level problems in K-12 education. Currently, we support a multi-year Networked Improvement Community (NIC) to make dramatic gains for Black and Latinx students with disabilities experiencing poverty.
Citations
¹ Bauler, 2020; Fu et al., 2007 in Bauler, 2020; Hang and Rabren 2009 in Alnasser, 2020; Kirby 2017 in Anderson, 2008; Magiera et al., 2005 in Anderson, 2008; Murawski 2006 in Alnasser, 2020; Strogilos and Avramidis 2016 in Alnasser, 2020
²Basso & McCoy, 2007 in Anderson, 2008; Capp, 2004 in Anderson, 2008; Keefe & Moore, 2004 in Friend et al., 2010;
Villa et al. 2004 in Anderson, 2008; Wilson & Michaels, 2006 in Friend et al., 2010
³Basso & McCoy, 2007 in Anderson, 2008; Cook, 2004 in Anderson, 2008; Friend & Cook, in Friend and Pope, 2005 in Anderson, 2008; Howser, 2015 in Alnasser, 2020; Keefe & Moore, 2004 in Friend et al., 2010
⁴Anderson, 2008; Basso & McCoy, 2007 in Anderson, 2008; Friend & Reisling, in Tichenor, 2004 in Anderson, 2008
⁵ Hang and Rabren, 2009 in Alnasser, 2020; Kirby, 2017 in Alnasser, 2020; Murawski, 2006 in Alnasser, 2020; Rea, McLaughlin, & Walther-Thomas, 2002 in Alnasser, 2020; Strogilos & Avramidis 2016 in Alnasser, 2020
⁶Basso & McCoy, 2007 in Anderson, 2008; Pugach & Johnson, in Villa et al., 2004 in Anderson, 2008
⁷ NCLD, 2020
⁸Afflect et al., in Popp, 2000 in Anderson, 2008; Cramer et al., 2006 in Anderson, 2008
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