Specially Designed Instruction

Every student has unique strengths and talents; and, given the appropriate opportunity, they will independently leverage these abilities to acquire new knowledge and skills. This is a central focus of special education programming; yet, in New York City public schools, when it comes to student outcomes, special education placement has failed to demonstrate substantive advantages over regular classes despite lower teacher-pupil ratio and specialized teaching.

Schools working in Individual Learners Through Specially Designed Instruction quads will:

Develop a deeper understanding of the relationship between specially designed instruction, differentiation, and intervention.
Learn how to relate the range of instructional activities that can be considered Specially Designed Instruction to the presenting learning, behavioral, social, physical, health and other needs of students with IEPs (i.e. explicit instruction, specific reading/mathematics intervention programs, or data based individualization).
Learn to integrate specially designed instruction within multi-tiered support systems as a vehicle for improving access to more challenging academic curricula for students with IEPs.