Universal Preschool: Reaching All Children?
Are state-funded pre-k programs providing high quality inclusive options to children with disabilities?
by Pam Winton
Are state-funded pre-k programs providing high quality inclusive options to children with disabilities?
This seems like a question with the obvious answer of YES, but maybe not. A colleague from a state where universal pre-k (UPK) is getting strong support from policymakers and the public recently expressed her concern that this was not happening in her state. Children with disabilities are being left out and not included in community settings and/or school settings. Families from communities have shared their concerns that UPK states it's for All children but supports may not be available in their community for this to happen.
Community Questions
What is happening in your state? Are other states using IDEA funds in UPK settings to provide services for children with disabilities? How is that working? Our colleague would like to hear from you.
Preschool inclusion for children with disabilities
I am the supervisor of ECSE programming in one on Minnesota's largest school districts. We purchase slots from our Community Education programs, serve students in Headstart classrooms, childcare centers/homes and private preschools. In the Community Ed and Hdst programs we have a variety of service models, from Team Taught with a special education teacher or special education para educator to more of a consult model with services one to two times per week. We have provided free training and offered clock hours to all current and potential community partners. We were pleasantly surprised with the turnout this past year. Each of the 4 trainings had over 75 participants. We will continue this year with a variety of topics, even including Kara's Kit to look at accomodations and modifications for the children while in the community program. I feel we provide training and support to build the capacity of our partners through these trainings and consult with service. However, the comments from our partners always tends to be that they need more support, a teacher full time or a para full time. Even the para model has been met with a lukewarm response as our partner programs want licensed teachers. Some of these models are very expensive and we are limited to the number of slots they will open for us (for good reason with their size limitations, too). As much as we do to train and collaborate it still feels like the old "your kids" versus the "community kids".
We participated in the NIPIP program a few years ago and hope to work more with Camille Catlett this year to evaluate what we are doing and how we can expand inclusion experiences for our students. We are conducting an overall program evaluation, too. If you have any suggestions or survey/evaluation tools that might be helpful as we move through this evaluation and can share them, please do so.
I appreciate any comments, suggestions or resources you might have.
Thank you,
Jane Roundtree