Building Staff Capacity to Support Growth in Students With Disabilities

The number of students receiving special education services has continued to grow over the past four decades. Despite this increase, many school leadership teams still struggle to meet the needs of these students. Supporting students with disabilities requires leadership teams to be intentional about building staff capacity, creating space for collaboration, and creating systems that directly support student growth.

Additionally, leadership teams need to create systems that prioritize students’ belonging and well-being, behavioral needs, effective instruction, and alignment of specially designed instruction with individualized education program (IEP) goals. This ensures that students with disabilities can engage meaningfully in the classroom and increases their access to the general education curriculum and progress toward their individualized goals.

While there are many important considerations, these four strategies can serve as a jumping-off point for school leadership teams to begin more intentionally supporting staff to drive growth for students with disabilities.

Build Collective Understanding of Students’ Needs

Understanding the behavioral and emotional needs of students with disabilities requires staff to explore how various disabilities affect behavior and emotional regulation. For example, it can be important for staff to know that certain behavioral or emotional needs of students with autism can come from sensory processing differences or a need for control or predictability, not defiance. When staff understand why a student is struggling behaviorally or emotionally, they can be more responsive and provide support that fosters a sense of safety and belonging.

It is helpful for staff to have access to supportive, proactive strategies that include training in restorative and trauma-informed approaches, de-escalation strategies, behavior modification, and social learning. This helps to reinforce the belief that all staff members are accountable for student well-being and the behavioral development of all students. Staff should also understand the framework for behavior support, such as Multi-Tiered System of Supports, the expectations, and specific procedures that staff must follow.

This unified approach to supporting the well-being and behavioral needs of students helps staff communicate a shared vision of high expectations and creates a collaborative environment where staff regularly open their practice for observation and feedback, share insights, and make adjustments to their practice to meet students’ needs.

Create Consistent Opportunities for Collaboration

Supporting growth in students with disabilities takes a village. On any given day, special education teachers are interacting with several stakeholders to ensure that students have meaningful access to and make progress toward the curriculum and their individualized goals.

Even though special education teachers are interfacing with colleagues daily, they often find themselves in silos. Leadership teams can break down barriers with special education teachers by clearly defining expectations around instruction and collaboration for all staff.

Instructional teams can identify collaboration opportunities for special education and general education teachers and establish and protect planning and collaboration time, leveraging practices that increase student success, such as co-planning lessons that integrate specifically designed instruction for students with disabilities.

Our school prioritizes co-planning relationships by giving back time each quarter for co-teachers to complete unit internalization work together. We also have the expectation of weekly planning for co-teachers. This intentional collaborative work helps teachers plan thoughtfully for all students.

Special education teachers can also benefit from planning time with other special education teachers and clinicians to problem-solve, share strategies, and receive caseload support.

Leadership teams can gather ongoing feedback from teachers on their perceptions of collaboration opportunities and use this information to strengthen relationships, provide feedback and coaching, and create professional learning opportunities related to collaboration and instructional planning.

Design Ongoing Professional Development Opportunities

Improving learning outcomes for students with disabilities requires consistent, targeted professional development focused on deepening educators’ understanding and identification of effective evidence-based instructional practices.

Professional development on data-based individualization (DBI), a research-based process for individualizing and intensifying interventions, can help special education teachers design instruction, write ambitious but realistic IEP goals, and intensify specialized instruction for students not making progress. The National Center on Intensive Intervention provides several resources for leadership teams to consider to learn more about DBI and its implementation.

Additionally, professional development should address inclusive instructional practices. CAST has many professional development opportunities that some of my colleagues and I have participated in, which have helped us understand and apply Universal Design for Learning guidelines. Professional development on assistive technology and tech tools is also helpful for special education teachers.

Engaging in Instructional Walk-throughs

Special education teachers also benefit from participating in instructional walk-throughs. Walk-throughs can serve as a catalyst for systemic improvement throughout a school. Special education teachers bring a unique perspective to the table and offer valuable insight into student belonging, behavior, and instruction in the general education setting.

Leadership teams can organize participants into small groups of three to five people with varying perspectives and expertise. For example, you could have an administrator, a general education teacher, a special education teacher, and a student or parent together in one group. The group would use the shared metrics to build consensus throughout the walk. The key focus of the walk-through would be on what students are actually doing—cognitive engagement.

The post-observation debrief can help teachers develop a shared understanding of what effective instruction and rightful presence look like for all learning spaces. Debriefs typically involve analyzing the walk-through data for trends, acknowledging strengths, and identifying areas for growth. The walk-through also provides the team with the opportunity to have difficult conversations, especially around how they support the success of all students with disabilities, ultimately connecting rigor to equity.

The final step of the walk includes identifying a theory of action (an “if-then” statement). The group then works to articulate together what specific changes in practice they believe will lead to improved instruction and presence for all students. This shared development opportunity fosters collective efficacy and can lead to an improvement in IEP implementation and rightful presence across the school.

Supporting growth for students with disabilities is achievable by design. By building intentional, coherent structures and systems that center collaboration and strategic development, leadership teams cultivate a culture where educators feel equipped and empowered to support every student’s success.