In "Eliminating Ableism in Education," Professor Thomas Hehir writes how ableism, or the discrimination against individuals with disabilities, manifests in a variety ways for students. I focus here particulalry on how ableist policies fail students with learning disabilities:

• Failing to identify students with these common learning disabilities,

• Removing students during normal instruction to special class placements that may fail to meet their needs (and exclude them from social and academic time with peers),

• Not providing proper access to the rest of the curriculum that the student has full capacity to complete, impeding their development with their peers, extending the impact of their disability,

Especially in the  middle school science context, the need for high expectations and full inclusion can reduce some of these barriers to learning. Students ought to not be pulled out of science instruction for time with reading specialist, nor should they be denied access to science instruction in other ways.

In their article  "The Better Question: How Can We Improve Inclusive Education?" by Laura Schifter and Thomas Hehir, the authors provide a rebuttal to Allison Gilmour's doubt on whether inclusion has gone "too far", which, in her argument, is based on a lack of evidence of inclusion's success and lack of studying its impact on other students:

In the rebuttal, the Schifter and Hehir write:

• Students with disabilities are not categorically different from other students,

• Data suggest that students who have a greater inclusion throughout the school day have better learning outcomes, such as higher graduate rates, and 

• The question ought to be reframed as how can inclusion be better, not if it is worth it at all. 

In the middle school science context, it is important to think of ways to meaningfully include all learners. When inclusion isn't "working", the onus should not fall on the students, but on the educational system--making it better for all students. 

The concept of Universal Design for Learning provides one important toolkit for elevating classroom inclusion. It emphasizes that there is no "one size fits all" way to demonstrate learning--and that, by providing choice and deep engagement over rote memeorization, particularly in the middle school context, learning will be elevated!

InCAST's newly (as of July 2024) guidelines,  some notable changes include, among many changes:

• Emphasizing learner agency: putting students in the "drivers seat" of their own learning, and shifting to learner-focused, not educator-focused language

• Addressing critical barriers to learning, such as bias and exclusion, and emphasizing many forms of identity that influence learning,

• Emphasizing the collective and interdependent nature of learning.

In my chosen context, UDL provides a framework for justifying inclusive practices not as an add on, but as a critical structure of framing learning for all students. Valuing many ways of knowing and demonstrating knowledge is a way to move towards more inclusion in the classroom.