Q1. The “Table of 4 Districts” is a story based on four school districts in a journey in the implementation process of Universal Design of Learning (UDL). The districts included schools in Baltimore County Public Schools in Maryland, Bartholomew Consolidated School Corporation in Indiana, Cecil County Public Schools in Maryland, and Chelmsford Public Schools in Massachusetts. I chose to review Baltimore County Public Schools (BCPS), it’s a county in Maryland, 45 minutes from the nations capital, Washington, DC.
The BCPS demographics include 174 schools, programs, and centers. There are 17,000 employees that includes 8,850 teachers and 105,315 students as of 2011, with 58% of students being minority and 3.8% English language learners. BCPS is considered the 26th largest school system in the U.S. At BCPS, UDL was introduced through the Special Education department. Unfortunately, UDL was not embraced fully by general classroom teachers because they had the misconception and believed to focus on students in special education.
BCPS initiated the Explore Phase of UDL through UDL symposiums in curriculum & instruction for staff, teacher & instructional leaders participated in UDL book studies, curriculum writers received UDL professional development, school administration (including those in Aspiritn Leaders Program-requirement for entering administrative pool at BCPS) participated in UDL awareness activities & principals attended in ULD workshops.
BCPS had a new superintended and with their goal to make a change in their district, former assistant Superintendent shared that Baltimore county had to change their curriculum to align with Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and implement a 21st century curriculum to meet the needs of all their learners. Two middle school principals with UDL knowledge were selected to participate in the UDL Implementation Project.
A challenge to implement UDL involved the introduction of a new initiative. For a few years, BCPS remained stagnant at phase one (prepare) of UDL, which was PD/training of staff, but had a difficulty in the implementation of UDL. To surpass those barriers, teachers took a survey that expressed share lesson plans and lessons learned was considered “most valuable” and with additional advice (e.g. UDL planning & purposeful sharing, provide enough time for UDL implementation initiative to grow, research best practices for establishing & support professional learning communities.) Over the years, BCPS is posed to continue the success of UDL through integration and scale phases of UDL Implementation (National Center on UDL).
Q2. Some ideas about beginning to explore UDL within a school or agency lies in the leadership team, adaptation of new models, new methods of teacher evaluations, & increased emphasis on all student results despite the increased student variability & decreased funding. For this system to work three core competencies of high performing school systems are needed 1. Understand where they are & where they’re going, 2. Develop a theory of action to support planning & strategy development, 3. Find ways to sustain improvement. Other factors do support success that include a strong culture within teachers, students, families, and communities to be part of the system and develop meaningful goals that align with the same vision (Novak & Rodriguez, 2016).
D.C. Public Schools (DCPS) launched Cornerstones initiative in the school year 2015-2016 to implemented UDL framework through across K-12 grades. It provides experiences for students to engage throughout the units of study. It is provided through various subjects including ELA, math, science, PE, world languages, art, social studies amongst the grade level content areas. Cornerstones vision is to bring education equity to our public schools. In year 2 (SY 2016-2017), UDL was incorporated to support students (DCPS Cornerstones, n.d.). In addition, I have also noticed that the CES classrooms in my schools have been guided to support students in special education through the principles of UDL. I have yet to see UDL implementation across homerooms in elementary school and early childhood. Further and continuous training is needed to support in my school to support all students.
The leadership team at my current school are amazing, I think they would be open to learning about UDL and acquiring training to obtain needed supports from the district to implement across general education homeroom classrooms. Obtaining the support from the special education team will support to bring their attention as we have classrooms that support inclusion across all grade levels at our school. Through this class I have learned about UDL and I see how its implemented in my classroom. Now with more knowledge and experience, I am able to actually plan within the UDL framework and guidelines to support learner variability for all of my students. Have you also noticed UDL implementation among special education classrooms in your school but not in general education homeroom classrooms?
References:
CAST Professional Learning [Online image]. (n.d.). CAST UDL. Retrieved from http://castprofessionallearning.org/udl-implementation/
CBS. [Online image]. (2012, June 30). Getaway Guide to Washington, D.C. Retrieved from
https://baltimore.cbslocal.com/top-lists/getaway-guide-to-washington-dc/
DC Alliance of Youth Advocates [Online image]. (n.d.). DC AYA. Retrieved from https://dc-aya.org/events/dcps-performance-oversight-hearing/education-dcps-featured-image/
DCPS Cornerstones. (n.d.). History. Retrieved from https://www.dcpscornerstones.org/history
National Center on Universal Design of Learning. (n.d.). UDL Implementation: A Tale of Four Districts. Retrieved from https://blackboard.gwu.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-9985887-dt-content-rid-69147449_2/courses/75233_202001/FourCaseStories3.13.13_mo.pdf
Novak, K., and Rodriguez, K. (2016). Universally Designed Leadership: Applying UDL to Systems and Schools. CAST Professional Publishing
Ivonne's Blog 
Ivonne,
I loved your use of images to drive home your points in the first discussion question. Thank you for sharing how implementation could be used throughout your school, mentioning your leadership team and implementation across general education homeroom classrooms. As I don’t work in a school setting I’m not sure about the scale of UDL use in Montgomery County schools, but know that Project SEARCH NIH uses UDL in their curriculum focused on work-based skills learning.
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Hi Monica,
Thank you for your observations. I love visuals on blogs! I love NIH, I did an internship in phlebotomy in high school years ago. It’s great UDL is implemented in the project. It would be interesting to know how MoCo implements UDL across their school. I’ve also noticed now with school closures that UDL guidelines is highly being reminded for special education. But also (unknowingly) across ever student because they have to take into account the family structures and variability needs. How’s the program at NIH providing supports to the patients/participants?
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Hello Ivonne,
Thank you so much for sharing your post. I really like the images you added to your post. I am glad that you did select a local school within Maryland to analyze their UDL implications. The impact of 21st century standards for BCPS has its strengths and difficulties. Of course being on par with modern education is essential but like you said the lack of resources or revenue can make this adaptation more challenging for schools who may not receive similar amenities and resources. I like how you mix different learning levels within the classroom because it is a culture and setting that the students have to adapt to. When they venture out into the world they will run across all walks of life and this learning capacity that you implement will only help encourage them.
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Hi Chelsea,
Thank you for your comment/response. I agree, it can be challenging with lack of resources to those schools. And it impacts both teachers and students, with starting UDL it can take time to implement any curriculum but it does support all students.
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