This Library is a searchable data base of over 1000 research based articles for providing instructional and behavioral supports to students with disabilities in age-appropriate general education environments. The Library compiles current published research around the topics that make up the NIUSI Systemic Change Framework. Articles around professional effort, school organizational effort and district effort and support focus on student learning and effort within the contest of families and communities. These articles can be easily searched and shared with school personnel.

Simply click on a topic to access a list of articles and abstracts related to that topic, or enter a keyword in the "Search" box to search for more specific content.

Group Practice & Professional Development

• What Parents of Kids with Special Needs Think About Their Child's Educational Program?
  This paper is developed by the National Institute of Urban School Improvement (NIUSI). It is about parents' perspectives on special education programs.
• Understanding Culture
  This paper was produced by the National Institute of Urban School Improvement (NIUSI). It is about developing a complex and dynamic understanding of culture.
• Why are so many minority students in special education? Understanding race & disability in schools
  Scholars have discussed the overrepresentation of minority students in special education programs for high-incidence disability categories since long before the first federal law P. L.
• Rethinking Education in the Global Era
  The author of this article covered an exemplary school in Sweden, the Tensta Gymnasium, as a successful model of education in the global era that tries to promote lifelong learning and engagement with the world, as well as socialization for cross-cultural work. The author reviewed the general characteristics of the Tensta Gymnasium experimental high school.
• Working Together:Grououpwowork, Teamwowork, and Collollollaborative Work Among Teachers
  This paper is one of the brief practitioner oriented pamphlets called On Points produced by the National Institute for Urban School Improvement (NIUSI). This On Point is for all teachers who want to explore issues around teamwork among educators.
• On Inclusion and the Other Kids:Here's What Research Shows so Far About Inclusion's Effect on Nondisabled Students
  This OnPoint was developed by the National Institute for Urban School Improvement (NIUSI). It summarizes the reserach literature on inclusion's effect on nondisabled students.
• Leadership Academies - Module 3, Inclusive Schools
  This module was developed by the National Institute for Urban School Improvement (NIUSI) This module introduces the inclusive model of education, which proposes that, with support structures in place, all students are able to successfully learn in the general education classroom. Rather than teach students with special needs separately, general and special educators collaborate to address the needs of all students to allow them to learn together.
• Proactive Culturally Responsive Discipline
  This exemplar was produced by the National Center for Culturally Responsive Educational Systems (NCCRESt). The ways that schools intervene with students' challenging behavior have been historically "reactive, exclusionary, and ineffective." Traditional reactive discipline interventions include detention, suspension, and expulsion, all of which punish students by excluding them from school and limiting opportunity to receive positive support for behavior change.
• Preparing K-12 Teachers To Teach for Social Justice: An Experimental Exercise with a Focus on Inequality and Life-Chances Based on Socio-Economic Status
  The author describes a preservice multicultural education and social foundations course designed to expand awareness of and encourage an appreciation and respect for diversity, highlighting an experiential exercise that focuses on institutional inequities of socioeconomic status and that promotes critical thinking, cooperative group work, and making use of multiple intelligences.
• Conducting Focus Groups to Develop a Comprehensive School Portrait
  This paper is one of the brief practitioner oriented pamphlets called On Points produced by the National Institute for Urban School Improvement (NIUSI). This On Point is for all teachers who want to explore issues around conducting focus groups to develop a comprehensive school portrait.
• About Families and Schools as Partners
  This paper is developed by the National Institute of Urban School Improvement (NIUSI). It is about family and school collaboration.
• Educational change over time? The sustainability and nonsustainability of three decades of secondary school change and continuity
  This article is about long-term systemic sustainable change and applies to all educational leaders and policy makers. Based on a comparative research students conducted in Canada and the United States (US), the authors presented a conceptual framework, methodological design, and key research findings from a Spencer Foundation-funded project of long-term educational change over time.
• Becoming Culturally Responsive Educators: Rethinking Teacher Education Pedagogy
  This paper is one of the short practitioner-oriented pamphlets produced by the National Center for Culturally Responsive Educational Systems (NCCRESt). This practitioner brief deals with designing teacher education programs (TEPs) that are mindful of student diversity.
• Increasing African-American Teachers' presence in American Schools: Voices of students who care.
  The author presents the narratives of several African American students to illustrate the impact on students of having or not having African American teachers. Students' descriptions of their interactions with and praise for African American teachers illuminate why recruiting more teachers of color is important not only to the profession but also to the students themselves.
• Extending the Possibilities of Multicultural Professional Development in Public Schools
  The author of this article reported results of a 3-year qualitative study. The author documented and critiqued a city school system's efforts to enlighten faculty and staff through multicultural professional development.
• First things first: Demystifying data analysis
  This article applies to all teachers who struggle with which data can be used to improve teaching and learning. In this article, Schmoker points out that in developing data driven practices, teachers need to overcome experts’ tendencies to make the analyses of student achievement data complicated.
• The Reflective Principal
  This booklet was developed by the National Institute for Urban School Improvement (NIUSI)as part of the activities of the Principal's Project, a federally funded grant from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs.
• Looking for Answers in All the Right Places: Urban Schools and Universities Solve the Dilemma of Teacher Preparation Together
  This article discusses urban teacher shortages, the interaction between poverty, ethnicity, and academic performance, and how licensure contributes to poor results in urban schools. Two partnerships between local universities and school districts to address these shortages are described.
• A story of change: Growing leadership for learning
  The author of this article examined the process of change in 22 schools which participated in a three year study of leadership spanning seven countries. Quantitative and qualitative measures were used to establish a baseline in each of the schools, providing a basis for discussion at follow up workshops, and offering agendas for schools to work on and to refer to in face-to-face and virtual networking.
• On the Nexus of Race, Disability, and Overrepresentation: What Do We Know? Where Do We Go?
  This OnPoint was developed by the National Institute for Urban School Improvement (NIUSI). It is about minority overrepresentation in U.S.
• Poverty, class, and disability: A historical, social and political perspective
  This article presents a historical, social and political perspective on poverty, class and disability particularly regarding benefits to students who have been classified as having "special needs," and the necessity of inclusion and special education reform.
• From Rhetoric to Reality: Opportunity-to-Learn Standards and the Integrity of American Public School Reform
  Focusing on national policy and practice, this paper suggests key recommendations for consideration in the context of standards-based reform. The reform produced teachers who are multiculturally literate; re-assess ability grouping and tracking practices, reduced K-3 class size and elementary and secondary school size, and expanded and improve federal compensatory education programs; and incorporate school reform into broader social reform.
• Investigating leadership practice: Exploring the entailments of taking a distributed perspective
  This paper is about distributed perspectives on educational leadership. It applies to all educational leaders.
• Instructional leadership challenges: The case of using student achievement information for instructional improvement
  This article is about the instructional leadership. It applies to educational leaders.
• Preventing disproportionate representation: Culturally and linguistically responsive prereferral interventions
  This paper is one of the short practitioner-oriented pamphlets produced by the National Center for Culturally Responsive Educational Systems (NCCRESt). This practitioner brief deals with culturally and linguistically responsive prereferral interventions for preventing disproportionate representation of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students in special education.
• School Violence and Disruption: Rhetoric, Reality, and Reasonable Balance
  The authors of this article examined issues related to school violence and disruption. They discussed the sociocultural context within which school violence occurs, balancing educational rights within an orderly school environment, and the role of students with disabilities in school suspensions.
• Reporting on Teacher Quality:The Politics of Politics
  Responds to the Secretary of Education's 2002 report, "Meeting the Highly Qualified Teachers Challenge," which asserts that states must transform certification requirements because while states' academic standards for teachers are low, barriers that keep out qualified people who have not completed collegiate teacher preparation are high. This editorial suggests that four critiques are essential in responding to the report: empirical, conceptual, social justice, and political.
• The Role of Leadership in the Promotion of Knowledge Management in Schools
  The author of this paper drew on school systems and successful business to identify what knowledge sharing looks like in successful organizations. He suggested that knowledge building is a critical capacity for all organizations, and especially for schools and school systems.
• Implementing Coteaching and Cogenerative Dialoguing in Urban Science Education
  Over the past 7 years the authors have been involved in the development of a new model for the education of science teachers that has the potential to address teacher education in challenging urban settings characterized by problems such as teacher turnover and retention, low job satisfaction, and contradictions arising from cultural and ethnic diversity. An intensive research program accompanied the development effort; the research results were used as resources in redesigning the evolving model to make it more appropriate for the situations at hand The science teacher education program at an urban university was built around a yearlong field experience, during which all prospective teachers learned to teach in an urban high school while coteaching, that is, while teaching at the elbow of a mentor teacher or one or more peers.
• The impact of professional development schools on the education of urban students
  This brief is about professional development schools (PDSs). PDSs were originated a decade ago to provide a new model for teacher education that enables graduate students to have meaningful classroom experiences while they earn their degree.
• The Relationship Between Teacher Effectiveness and Teacher Attitudes Toward Issues Related to Inclusion
  The inclusion of students with special needs in regular education classrooms has become a major focus of current educational reform, and regular education teacher's acceptance is a critical component in how this type of service delivery will play out. The author of this study reexamined the results of a study which indicated that more effective teachers were less willing to include students with special needs in their classrooms.
• The Three Stories of Education Reform
  Michael Fullan discussed large-scale education reform and illustrates the reform through three stories. He differenced that professional learning communities for educators makes in how well students do in school.
• Leading coherent professional development: A comparison of three districts
  This article is about the relationship between professional learning/development programs and teachers’ instructional practices. It applies to educational leaders interested in implementing effective professional learning/development programs.
• Multiculturalism and Severe Disabilities
  This article discusses the need for educators to acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to help students with severe disabilities from mainstream groups to develop cross-cultural knowledge, values, and competencies. It outlines goals for multicultural understanding for educational researches, for teacher educators, and for school leaders and teachers.
• How Multiple Intelligences Theory Can Guide Teachers' Practices: Ensuring Success for Students with Disabilities
  This OnPoint written by National Institute of Urban School Improvement (NIUSI) explored the intersection between Multiple Intelligence(MI) and special education. MI can be used to improve the learning opportunities for diverse learners, and it has a positive impact on both students with special needs and their teachers.
• Principals of Inclusive schools
  This paper was developed by the National Institute of Urban School Improvement (NIUSI). It is about the roles of school leaders in inclusive schools.
• From Racial Stereotyping and Deficit Discourse toward a Critical Race Theory in Teacher Education
  The authors examine connections between critical race theory (CRT) and its application to the concepts of race, racial bias, and racial stereotyping in teacher education. They define CRT, then discusses racism and stereotyping, racial stereotypes in the media, and racial stereotypes in professional environments, noting the effects on minority students.
• School organizational structures: Effects on teacher and student learning
  In this study, the authors attempted to explore the relationship between teacher learning and student learning under different school structural conditions. Some 1,330 teachers from twenty nine secondary schools of different community backgrounds and student academic abilities in Hong Kong were surveyed, using instruments from diverse conceptual sources.
• Improving Pupil Attendance: Inclusive and Sensitive Approaches
  The author described a British secondary school's efforts to improve student attendance by promoting social inclusion. The project involved a first day absence monitor, school counselor, Education Welfare Officer, and specialist teacher.
• Building inclusive school cultures using school-wide positive behavior support: Designing effective individual suppport systems for students with significant disabilities.
  This article is about school-wide positive behavior support (SWPBS) and its applications for students with significant disabilities. It applies to all teachers, educational leaders and parents of children with significant disabilities.
• Creating schools as learning communities: Obstacles and process
  This article is about the concept of learning organization/community and applies to all teachers and educational leaders. The authors attempted to clarify the concept of learning organization/community in order to identify the barriers that are perceived to obstruct the creation of learning communities out of traditional schools; to identify how principals go about the task of converting their schools; and the special characteristics of leadership required to transform schools successfully.
• Technical Assistance and Professional Development Planning Guide
  This Technical Assistance (TA) - and Professional Development (PD) guide was designed by the National Center for Culturally Responsive Educational Systems (NCCRESt). It structures a five-step process for the development of TA/PD Plans for State Education Agencies (SEAs) and Local Education Agencies (LEAs).
• Skilled Dialogue
  This paper is developed by the National Institute of Urban School Improvement (NIUSI). When we interact with students, whether to assess or to instruct, we are in dialogue with them; that is, we are transmitting and exchanging meaning across the boundaries of their identities and our own.
• On PreparingTeachers for the Future
  This practitioner brief is produced by the National Institute of Urban School Improvement (NIUSI) and on teacher education. The author of this paper suggests that as American schools seek to accommodate an increasing range of students, teachers are challenged as never before.
• Leadership Academies - Module 2, Mining Data
  This module was designed by National Institute for Urban School Improvement (NIUSI) to help building leadership teams learn the skills required to mine data and use it to make decisions. As principals and teacher leaders become confident in their ability to query their data, they will become strong role models and coaches for the entire faculty.
• Toward a conception of culturally responsive classroom management
  The authors provide a discussion of culturally responsive classroom management (CRCM).They propose a conception of CRCM that includes five essential components: (a) recognition of one's own ethnocentrism; (b) knowledge of students' cultural backgrounds; (c) understanding of the broader social, economic, and political context; (d) ability and willingness to use culturally appropriate management strategies; and (e) commitment to building caring classrooms.
• Challenges of Urban Education: Sociological Perspectives for the Next Century
  Challenges of Urban Education includes a range of topics from quantitive analyses of student demographics to the description and analysis of urban high school students' creative writing. The book bridges the dualisms of local and global, theory and practice, and structure and agency.
• Cultural Identity and Teaching
  The authors of this practitioner brief suggested that understanding your own cultural background, and connecting that background to that of the students in your classroom as you explore the connections you have and the different ways you might look at things creates a rich learning environment in which the teacher and students can all participate, be valued, and learn.
  Download the document here.
• The return of large-scale reform
  The author reviewed three "types" of large-scale reforms and the emerging lessons being learned. Whole school district reform involving all schools in a district; whole school reform in which hundreds of schools attempt to implement particular models of change, and; state or national initiatives in which all or most of the schools in the state were involved.
• Preparing for Culturally Responsive Teaching
  The author discusses improving the school success of ethnically diverse students through culturally responsive teaching and for preparing teachers in pre-service education programs with the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to do this.
• Schools on move: Stories of Urban Schools Engaged in Inclusive Journeys of Change(JC Nalle Elementary School in Washington, DC).
  This paper is one of the brief practitioner oriented pamphlets produced by the National Institute for Urban School Improvement (NIUSI). This story depicts a school in the midst of exciting changes and renewal.
• Building cultural reciprocity with families: Case studies in special education
  See how the theory of cultural reciprocity becomes a reality with this engaging book! Actual case studies take you into the lives of eight families and show you how to apply this exciting technique to help strengthen your interactions with parents or caregivers. As you read each study, you'll develop a better understanding of your own culture as well as the unique culture of special education.
• Leadership Academies - Module 4, Co-teaching
  Co-teaching is a method for delivering instruction that draws on the strengths and expertise of multiple educators. Although there are many styles of co-teaching, each involves two or more educators collaborating to plan and deliver sound instruction for a group of students.
• Creating a school environment for the effective management of cultural diversity
  The authors of this article examined the factors that affect the creation of a school environment for the effective management of cultural diversity as legislated for in the directive principles of the South African Schools Act of 1996 and the Schools Education Act of 1995. These two Acts determined that every person shall have the right to basic education and to equal access to schools and centers of learning.
• Inclusion, diversity and leadership
  Drawing on research from a longitudinal case study of a large urban secondary school, this article examines senior leadership of and in a school struggling to be inclusive. The analysis focuses on the effect of senior leadership on: the ways in which inclusion is conceptualized and practised in this school, in particular by teachers; student intake profiles and diversity; teacher motivation and educational outcomes.
• On Time and How to Get More of It
  This paper is one of the brief practitioner oriented pamphlets called On Points produced by the National Institute for Urban School Improvement (NIUSI). It is about systemic change and educational improvement.
• Differentiating cooperative learning
  Effective cooperative learning methods help students grow academically, socially, and emotionally. The authors of this article encourage teachers to implement cooperative learning more thoughtfully and differentiate tasks within the group to personalize learning for each student.
• What we mean by "family and community connections with schools"?
  This paper is developed by the National Institute of Urban School Improvement (NIUSI). It is about family involvement.
• The Role of Empathy in Teaching Culturally Diverse Students: A Qualitative Study of Teachers' Beliefs
  The authors investigated teachers' beliefs about the role of empathy in their effectiveness with culturally diverse students. All respondents had participated in a multicultural professional development course geared to fostering culturally responsive practice.
• Outcomes for students with and without learning disabilities in inclusive classrooms
  The authors focus on intensive staff development for general and special educators that taught the educators how to implement instructional strategies with students who had a wide range of abilities in an inclusive classroom. Their study that examined social outcomes of 59 elementary school students with learning disabilities, 72 low- to average-achieving students, and 54 high-achieving students, found that students in the consultation/collaborative-teaching setting demonstrated more positive outcomes than students in the co-teaching setting on friendship quality and peer acceptance.
• Tools of Exclusion: Race, Disability, and (Re)segregated Education
  The authors explore the dynamic interplay between racism discrimination against someone based on perceived 'ability"in the resistance to school desegregation and inclusion of students with disabilities in general education. In attending to the workings of power that connect these two histories, the authors show how racialized notions of ability functioned to uphold segregated schooling and justify the use of special education as a tool of racial resegregation.
• Do increased levels of parental involvement account for social class differences in track placement?
  The author of this report examined whether increased levels of school involvement among socially advantaged parents account for children's advantage in track placement in United States high schools.
  Download the document here .
• Schools on move : Stories of Urban Schools Engaged in Inclusive Journeys of Change(Kepner Middle School in Denver, Colorado)
  This paper was produced by the National Institute for Urban School Improvement (NIUSI).The authors provided a story depicting school in the midst of exciting changes and renewal. Through the voices of parents, students, teachers, and administrators, this School on the Move is making fundamental and enduring changes in the work of schools and in the results that such changes make in the lives of children and youth.
• On preparing teachers for the future
  This is an article with the title "On teacher preparation and support in inclusive schools". As American schools seek to accommodate an increasing range of students, teachers are challenged as never before.