What True Inclusion Looks Like for Students With Disabilities
For parents of children with disabilities, one of the biggest questions is often deceptively simple: Will my child truly be included?
Being placed in a general education classroom is not necessarily the same thing as belonging there. Having an accommodation written into an IEP does not automatically mean a student can meaningfully participate. And a child who communicates differently should never be assumed to understand less.
These ideas came through clearly in a conversation between special education attorney Frances Shefter and Kayla, a neurodivergent disability advocate, college student, podcast host, and co-author living with cerebral palsy and epilepsy.
Kayla’s experiences—from elementary school through college—offer parents an important reminder: when children are given access, appropriate supports, and opportunities to demonstrate what they know, their potential may look very different from what others initially assume.
Inclusion Means Participation, Not Just Placement
Kayla attended school alongside her nondisabled peers with supports that allowed her to participate. Those supports included a paraprofessional, adaptive technology, extra time, therapies, transportation assistance related to epilepsy, and other accommodations.
But what stands out is not simply that those services existed.
Her classmates were part of her school experience.
They helped push her wheelchair, helped with papers, learned finger spelling from her, and interacted with her as a member of the class.
Frances pointed out an important distinction for families: schools can sometimes describe a placement as “inclusive” while the student with a disability and their aide spend most of the day separated from everyone else in the same room.
That is proximity, not necessarily inclusion.
True inclusion asks different questions:
- Is the student participating with classmates?
- Does the student have meaningful access to instruction?
- Are accommodations helping the student engage rather than isolating them?
- Are peers and adults interacting directly with the student?
- Is the school looking for ways the student can participate?
As Kayla put it, true inclusion is not simply allowing someone to be present. It is making sure they can fully participate.
That difference matters enormously when parents evaluate whether an IEP is actually working in practice.
A Communication Disability Is Not an Intelligence Test
One of the most powerful themes in Kayla’s story is how easily people can underestimate someone who does not communicate in a typical way.
Kayla uses augmentative and alternative communication, or AAC, along with finger spelling and other methods. She explained something parents and educators should never forget:
Not being able to speak does not mean a person lacks words, thoughts, feelings, or intelligence.
A student may understand the lesson perfectly and still have difficulty expressing an answer quickly. They may need additional processing time, specialized technology, different methods of response, or assistance physically accessing communication.
When adults confuse communication difficulty with cognitive inability, students can be placed into inappropriate instruction, given material far beneath their actual abilities, or excluded from opportunities they are capable of handling.
Kayla’s own academic history challenges those assumptions.
In high school, she took precalculus and Advanced Placement Psychology. She participated in drama and track. In college, after initially being placed into a longer developmental English course, a professor recognized that she could succeed at a higher level. Kayla went on to earn A’s in every English course she took, and one of her papers was published in a composition anthology.
The lesson for parents is not that every child needs advanced classes.
The lesson is that educational expectations should be based on evidence about the individual student—not assumptions about a diagnosis, disability, wheelchair, speech pattern, or communication system.
When Communication Breaks Down, Behavior May Be the Message
Frances also raised another issue familiar to many parents: behavior can sometimes emerge when a person cannot effectively communicate what they need, feel, understand, or are experiencing.
Imagine knowing exactly what happened but being unable to explain it before someone reaches the wrong conclusion.
Imagine being in pain and having an adult assume you cannot accurately describe what is happening.
Imagine understanding academic material but repeatedly being taught something you mastered years earlier because no one has found an effective way for you to demonstrate your knowledge.
Frustration in those situations is understandable.
That is why communication support cannot be treated as an optional extra. For some students, communication access affects academics, relationships, behavior, safety, self-advocacy, and nearly every part of the school day.
When a student is struggling behaviorally, parents and school teams should be willing to ask whether there is an unmet communication need underneath what everyone is seeing.
Students Should Learn to Advocate for Themselves
Parents play a critical role in special education, but one of the long-term goals should also be helping children learn what they need and how to communicate those needs whenever possible.
Kayla began doing that before entering middle school.
She met with sixth-grade teachers ahead of the transition and made sure they understood that she needed access to snacks during the day because eating helped her maintain her energy.
That might seem like a small request.
It was actually an important act of self-advocacy.
She identified something that affected her ability to function at school and communicated it to the people responsible for supporting her.
Students do not suddenly become self-advocates when they turn 18. These skills can be developed gradually through IEP meetings, transition planning, conversations with teachers, and age-appropriate opportunities to understand their own accommodations.
Parents can encourage children to participate by helping them answer questions such as:
- What helps you learn?
- What makes school harder?
- What do you wish your teachers understood?
- Which accommodations actually help you?
- What would you like to be able to do more independently?
The answers can become increasingly important as students approach adulthood.
The IEP Should Be Preparing a Student for Life After High School
An IEP may end when a student leaves the K-12 special education system, but transition planning should begin before that moment arrives.
Frances emphasized that an important purpose of the IEP is helping prepare a student for adulthood.
Kayla participated in a transition program where she gained real-world work experience. She served as an administrative assistant, helped tutor elementary students in math, wrote professional emails, maintained records, created materials, and even had her own office in the high school library.
Those experiences were not simply activities to fill a school day.
They helped build a résumé, workplace routines, confidence, and familiarity with adult expectations.
Good transition planning should be individualized. Depending on the student, it might address further education, employment, independent living skills, communication, transportation, self-advocacy, or community participation.
The question for families is not simply, “What happens after graduation?”
It is also, “What is the school doing now to help my child be ready?”
College Accommodations Are Different
Another major transition occurs when a student enters college.
As Frances explained, an IEP does not simply follow the student into higher education. Accommodations may still be available, but the process changes significantly.
The student is also legally an adult at 18. Colleges may communicate directly with the student rather than the parent, even when the parent has played the primary advocacy role throughout elementary, middle, and high school.
Kayla experienced those challenges firsthand while searching for a college that could appropriately support her.
Her story shows why transition planning should include more than selecting courses for senior year. Students who plan to pursue college may also need practice understanding their disability, discussing accommodations, approaching disability services, explaining what they need, and participating directly in the process.
That shift can be significant for both parents and students.
Parents Still Have an Essential Voice
Near the end of the conversation, Frances asked Kayla what advice she would give parents.
Kayla’s answer was simple:
“You are with your child the most.”
Frances followed by asking what that means when parents are sitting at the IEP table.
Kayla answered: “Speak up.”
Parents bring information to an IEP team that no evaluation score or brief classroom observation can fully replace. They know their child’s history, communication, patterns, strengths, frustrations, interests, and needs across environments.
That does not mean parents and schools will always agree.
It does mean parents should not feel that their role is simply to listen while everyone else makes decisions.
Ask questions. Request explanations. Share what you see. Raise concerns when something does not make sense. Pay attention not only to what the IEP says, but to what your child is actually experiencing.
Most importantly, do not allow assumptions about disability to become limits on your child’s opportunity.
Children deserve the chance to show what they know, participate meaningfully, communicate in ways that work for them, build independence, and prepare for the life ahead of them.
Sometimes the most important thing an adult can do is stop deciding what a child cannot do—and start asking what support would make it possible.