Preschool Solutions

Expanding Preschool Options for
Children with Disabilities

Despite the weight of evidence that identifies the impact of quality early childhood programs, access is limited. There are simply too few "seats" in high-quality early childhood programs; the program's schedule doesn't always map to a family's needs; or available seats may be in a program site that is inconvenient or simply too far away. This is particularly true for high-quality programs serving preschoolers with special education needs. Many more of these programs are needed.

The obvious solution is to expand the number of inclusion programs that can serve preschoolers with special education needs. An approach to this includes the following strategies:

• Support early childhood teachers to work effectively with preschool special education children
• Ensure the early childhood programs are high quality to support both typically developing and special education children
• Promote the benefits of inclusive preschools for general and special education children

All children should have full access to high-quality preschools that promote cognitive, social, and emotional development in settings that nurture and respect the individuality of each child.

This solution rests on building the skills of early childhood teachers to serve all children, ensuring quality and assessing the impact of the programs on general and special education children. Teachscape coaches will address this though a combination of face-to-face and online professional learning sessions enhanced by at-elbow coaching to ensure the skills are applied in the early childhood classrooms.

Support Early Childhood Teachers to Work Effectively with Preschool Special Education Children: The range of "normal" development is very wide at the preschool level, so early childhood teachers are used to working with children who are diverse in multiple ways. To prepare early childhood teachers to work with special education preschoolers, Teachscape coaches will:

• Offer extra support for individualizing teaching and learning to reflect a wide continuum of interests, abilities, and needs, using the online resources to focus the professional learning on adapting curricula, teaching strategies, and materials while ensuring all children are held to the same high standards to promote their academic, social, and emotional growth
• Focus on building teachers' capacity for assessing children's learning strengths and needs to inform modifications of instructional practices
• Provide coaching focused on finding effective ways to work with specific children in the classroom using, whenever possible, the special education and related services teachers to model effective interventions and approaches

Ensure High-Quality Early Childhood Programs: All children need and benefit from high-quality programs, which provide safe, nurturing, and intellectually stimulating environments; rich, language-based curriculum; high-quality and highly effective teachers; and ongoing assessments of child learning and progress. To ensure these baseline indicators of quality are present, Teachscape coaches will:

• Develop safe, nurturing, and intellectually stimulating environments that accommodate preschoolers with special needs and support the full range of abilities and disabilities of the children, enable easy access to centers, offer quiet places and space for physical activities, and provoke intellectual curiosity through stimulating and attractive centers and resources.
• Provide a rich, language-based curriculum that is designed to ensure to development of the early literacy skills that support reading and appropriate levels of social and emotional competence, including self-regulation.
• Offer professional development to ensure the teachers fully understand effective language and literacy-focused curricula and developmentally appropriate practices and that they have an understanding of the special needs of the children they serve and the concerns of the children's parents.
• Use ongoing assessments that align with the curriculum and inform instructional practices to monitor children's learning progress. The assessments should include standard learning assessments, checklist reports, learning histories, and observations to better understand the academic learning and social/emotional progress of the students.

Identify and Promote the Benefits of Inclusive Preschools: All children benefit from inclusion in high-quality, inclusive preschools. Teachscape coaches will work with teachers to ensure they understand that:

• Children with disabilities can model their typically developing peers, because they have a wide range of competencies to observe and emulate
• Typically developing children develop acceptance and tolerance for differences, along with other social and emotional competencies that contribute to their holistic development
• All children benefit from a high-quality, standards-focused program that promotes continuous progress and achievement