Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a part of the new Every Student Succeeds Act. It promotes what is heralded as a new way to reach students with diverse needs. It sounds new agey.
But what does this miracle program have that those of us who worked in special education for years don’t? You may, like me, scratch your head at first.
Some Background
Much harm has been done to public schools, special education, and the teaching profession with high-stakes testing.
Most of us understand that such testing was meant to shut down public schools.
Insisting that every child, even those with the most challenging medical disabilities, reach the same standards, has meant that teachers, good teachers, would fail. Schools would close. Special education would cease.
Claiming that everyone could reach the same standards was a lie. Almost everyone knew it, but it went on anyway because corporate powers and corrupt politicians were permitted to make such claims all in the name of privatizing education.
Promising the Universe
So here comes UDL which promises assessment geared to the individual needs of the student whatever those needs might be.
Suddenly, everyone is on board for diversity–the extreme opposite of the agenda used to decimate public education, special education, and the teaching profession!
Even people like Jeb Bush are suddenly excited for differentiated or “customized” learning. One wonders how many third graders had to flunk the FCAT before Jeb figured out that students learn differently.
Teachers who work with students who have a variety of special needs, who could never have been fully prepared for such a wealth of differences, are now supposed to rejoice that UDL has arrived.
Never mind if it’s confusing. To read about UDL and its brain studies can be a challenge for the best of us. It’s mystifying.
Breaking it Down
Education Week says,
Sprinkled throughout the newly reauthorized version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act are references to an instructional strategy that supporters think has enormous potential for reaching learners with diverse needs.
A universally designed lesson, for example, might include audiovisual components, illustrations, traditional lectures, enlarged print, or glossaries so that students can have easy access to unfamiliar terms. Universal design for learning also encourages students to use a variety of techniques, such as group projects, multimedia presentations, drawings, or music.
Within the Every Student Succeeds Act, the latest update of the ESEA, Congress said that states should adhere to principles of universal design for learning as they develop student assessments. The law also calls for states to create plans for comprehensive literacy instruction and to incorporate universal design for learning principles in those plans.
Enormous potential? Haven’t special educators always searched for multiple ways to reach learners?
In fact, wasn’t that the point of special education? An Individual Educational Plan sealed the deal.
And we’ve always searched for literacy programs that work. It’s been the quest of good teachers everywhere to search for effective reading curriculum.
The only thing that UDL has that is different from what special and general educators do is online modules that are geared to individual students at their level.
That’s the real difference. UDL is competency-based education or personalized learning.
What Goes Around, Comes Around…Only Privatized Online
So, after years of standardization, computer modules geared to individual needs sounds like something special. Online assessment at the child’s pace sounds nice too.
To get to this point, it is important that the UDL promoters make sure the buyers understand that it is more than computer instruction. They realize parents might not like their kids having all-day screen time.
But when one strips away all the universal, individually diverse, flexibility talk, the only thing different between UDL and special education is sticking kids online for instruction for personalized learning. Unfortunately, learning by machine is not really so personalized.
What is different is teachers are not teachers. The classroom is different too. The computer takes over.
Those from groups like Teach for America and Relay Graduate School of Education are at this moment learning how to plug kids in. They will be facilitators making sure the computer is working and that students sit in their chairs straight.
It all makes sense now. It’s the universal design for privatization, and it’s created by corporate America to replace democratic public schools.
Reference
Samuels, Christina A. “ESSA Spotlights Strategy to Reach Diverse Learners.” Education Week. February 23, 2016.
Or, the older one. HERE.
ESSA legislation: Excuse us as we make this one little change in traditional public education. What is different now? No more of those pesky (and so expensive!) teachers needed as our computers take over….
That’s about it. Thanks, Ciedie!
From Alfie Kohn:
“When -ized is added to personal, again, the original idea has been not merely changed but corrupted — and even worse is something we might call Personalized Learning, Inc. (PLI), in which companies sell us digital products to monitor students while purporting to respond to the differences among them.
“Personal learning entails working with each child to create projects of intellectual discovery that reflect his or her unique needs and interests. It requires the presence of a caring teacher who knows each child well.
“Personalized learning entails adjusting the difficulty level of prefabricated skills-based exercises based on students’ test scores. It requires the purchase of software from one of those companies that can afford full-page ads in Education Week.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/02/24/four-reasons-to-seriously-worry-about-personalized-learning/
Excellent points! Thanks, Sheila!
great presentation on “personalized” learning from Leonie Haimson:
http://www.classsizematters.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/NPE-personalized-learning-4.16.16-final.pdf
Excellent to the very end with the Joe Bower quote! Thank you, Sheila!
I miss the old fashioned way if teaching and developing plans. How did we do it without the experts and computers.
One wonders! Thanks, Mark!
Universal Design principles come from Harvard’s David H. Rose’s work in the 1990’s, but I have only heard of it recently; I find that it is common for true innovations in education to need a few years to become accepted.
While I have never heard this term until recently, for years, ever since learning about multiple intelligences and different learning styles, I have used what sounds to me to be these principles in my planning. I search for the methods that will work for the most students, break down the concepts and skills, and use multiple approaches in presentation and practice to reach different learning mindsets. My field is foreign languages, and I have successfully taught special education students using my methods.
Of course we don’t want students to sit in front of a computer screen all day, and they don’t want to either. Computers cannot substitute for the student/teacher relationship. My use of these principles did not include computers, though I did make some judicial use of appropriate audio and visual materials.
We certainly don’t want to buy and use materials just because they’re stamped “UDL” (like the materials stamped “common core”); a label means nothing, and we don’t want to be taken advantage of by companies subverting the latest buzzwords for a chance to make a profit. But UDL principles do not necessarily mean “personalized” or computer-based learning. I don’t find UDL principles “confusing”; certainly there is complexity involved, but as academics, we teachers should be able to understand such concepts, if we can take the time to do it. I find that the principles make a LOT of sense, and that the way they are organized makes for the most exciting innovation I’ve seen in many years.
Finding good curriculum is always one of the main problems of teaching. The framework developed by Harvard’s Center for Special Applied Technology is supposed to use Vygotsky’s ideas and Bloom’s taxonomy, which is certainly not the case for most curriculum I’ve seen, for computer programs or not. As educators, I think we owe it to our students to make a study of anything like UDL that uses cognitive learning concepts to see if we can apply them ourselves, or to be able to evaluate materials to see if they actually make good use of them or not. I think we’ll be missing a valuable tool if we just dismiss UDL principles as “confusing” or assume that anything called UDL is a sneaky way of selling computer-based competency learning..
Rebecca, I never meant to suggest that teachers not pay attention to new innovation when it comes to instruction.
But I believe UDL is more about technology and CAST is what it is really about.
I also think you prove my point. Thank you.
http://www.cast.org/about/staff/david-rose.html#.WESz6H2n-Vs
Computers have their place in instruction, but, if anything, both children and adults spend entirely too much time staring at electronic, computerized screens.
We are becoming a society that doesn’t know how to communicate and relate face-to-face. This program takes us MUCH farther down that path – enriching the computer companies at the expense of our humanity. No thank you. If we want real diversity, then one dimensional learning by computer goes the wrong direction.
Schools must be much more than computer screens with the computer companies tracking our kids’ every interaction for further financial gain by those computer companies.
I’m with you, Nancy! Thank you!
Hi Nancy (et al)
I must admit I am floored by your criticism. As a lifelong educator of students with disabilities, and one who has dedicated my whole career to finding better pathways for those students, I find the personal attack in your blog quite dispiriting and perplexing. And also misinformed and unfair. CAST is hardly corporate America or big government: it is a small not-for-profit organization of about 40 people who share a deep and sustained dedication to improving learning for students with disabilities. At CAST we are huge advocates for public education and do almost all of our work with public schools for that reason. I would guess that I am at least as concerned about privatization as you are, and see the improvement of our public schools, for all of our students, as critical to the life of this democracy. .
It may be that we pursuing approaches that you don’t agree with, and there may indeed be better approaches than the ones we are pursuing (if so, we hope to continue to learn about them!), but I don’t understand why attacking our character or motives or by lumping us together with people or approaches that we dislike as much as you do is a helpful approach for your readers, or for us. .
I hope you will take some time to find out more about what UDL is and what CAST actually does, and what kinds of people are working on UDL I think you would actually like us.
If there is anything I can do to help you or your readers learn about UDL or CAST, i hope you will let me know. It would be nice to be on the same team.
David Rose
Hi David,
Thank you for commenting on my blog.
Many teachers and parents, not just me, are concerned by the aggressive push involving digital learning. They fear losing teachers and schools to tech. We see examples of this in many charters.
I first learned of this push of transforming brick and mortar schools when Clayton Christensen and Michael Horn (your co-workers at Harvard) came out with their book Disrupting Class. Christensen at that time claimed computers could address the individual learning needs of children and class enrollments would be online by 2019. I found that a bold prediction especially since there is really no research to indicate all online instruction works better than actual human teaching.
While I appreciate and favor using a variety of tools and approaches to help students learn–including tech, CAST which involves personalized learning strikes me as the prime player in UDL.
Reaching diverse learners by multiple approaches and looking at learning styles has been around in special education for years. Tech has too. But the push for digital learning now appears to be over all other forms of instruction.
In addition, many of the people you associate with have not been kind to public schools or career teachers. Here is one example. https://dianeravitch.net/2016/04/27/harvard-is-all-in-for-corporate-reform/
If this is not a fair assessment of you or your program, I apologize. But statements like this one at the Learn Launch program inn 2015 that you keynoted worry me.
“LearnLaunch is dedicated to connecting, supporting, and growing the education technology ecosystem to drive innovation and transform learning.”
http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/david-rose-keynote-upcoming-learnlaunch-edtech-conference-on-january-23-24-2015-harvard-1980621.htm
Please don’t see this as a personal attack. I am sure you have worked hard to reach this point in your career and believe strongly in what you are doing. In fact, if you would like to guest blog about UDL let me know. If you can distinguish UDL as something more than tech that would be interesting.
“CAST is hardly corporate America or big government”
Past and present supporters include:
Creative Commons
The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Intel Education
George Lucas Educational Foundation
National Science Foundation
New Profit, Inc.
New York Community Trust
Oak Foundation
Poses Family Foundation
Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation
Barr Foundation
Eastern Bank
US Department of Education
US Department of Defense
US Department of Labor
State of California
State of New Hampshire
Commonwealth of Massachusetts
https://www.cast.org/about/funders-partners
US Department of Defense!
Point well made. Thank you.
Hi, Nancy. While I appreciate your desire to keep teaching in the hands of good teachers, I am not sure you understand the concept of UDL.
I have used UDL in my teaching for at least 15 years and love its core principle: teachers are responsible for designing curriculum that removes barriers so students can learn. ALL young people should have the opportunity to become expert learners. I have never seen an online module for UDL (except, I guess, to teach teachers about the concept). UDL was founded by David Rose. I suggest you check out his website, CAST.org, where you will find many great resources for teaching, but no computerized modules for students.
O.K. Gina. Let’s go at it this way. Could you please lead me to something on CAST.org that isn’t about digital learning. I’d appreciate it.
Hi Nancy,
Thanks for the (potential) apology. (And thanks to Gina for the corrective note).
One thing that really needs clearing up (and it might help other misunderstandings) is the problem of lumping me (or CAST) with other people or ideas. For example, I do teach at Harvard. And so does Clayton Christensen, as you note. But I have never even met Clayton Christensen = he teaches in the Business School, not the Education school. Moreover, you will probably not be surprised to find out that people at Harvard (even in the Education school) do not agree with each other – far from it. And while I gave a keynote at Learn Launch (a nice organization), doing so hardly means that I would agree with everything there – far from it. Perhaps more immediately, I am writing now on your blog.: that clearly doesn’t mean I agree with everything you say (or vice versa)..
I think it would be great to concentrate more carefully on what UDL really is, or what CAST really is, rather than imagining who we might be associated with. That way we can have a productive conversation, or even a debate, that advances both of our thinking. Just like we teach our students to do.
So, briefly, UDL is a set of principles and guidelines for how to create inclusive classrooms where all students, especially including those who have faced barriers or obstacles in the past, will find lessons and activities that provide the right balance of challenge and support. Modern technology (like older technologies: pencils, books, blackboards, etc,) are an important part of UDL because they are part of the culture into which students will matriculate. But also because careful design of modern technologies can remove barriers that students have typically faced in traditional classrooms – books whose words they can’t see (because they are blind), or that they can’t decode (because they have dyslexia), instruction or dialogue they can’t hear (because they are deaf), concepts that are poorly explained in words but easily graspable in a simulation or video. (etc. etc.). That is why we use technology: to reduce the barriers that have prevented many students from showing their strengths and becoming expert learners.
We do NOT use technology to replace teachers. Like you, we see teachers as the critical heart of any classroom. Our aim is to provide teachers the best tools that we can find or invent so that they can do their jobs more effectively, helping each of their very different students learn. Importantly, we have seen (and love) lessons and learning activities that use no technologies at all (that would even include technologies like books or blackboards too). But they too are carefully designed, universally designed, to make sure that all students can participate and learn. The UDL principles and guidelines help to do that.
So, that’s a nutshell. To learn more, you might visit the National UDL Center website: http://www.udlcenter.org/. Or you can read one of the books about UDL. My favorite (better than my own) is one by Katie Novak called UDL Now. She’s a great teacher and it comes through.
Thanks for the opportunity to have some good dialogue. (I won’t continue to respond, just because I have probably occupied your blog too much already).
David Rose
In a February press release in support of the passage of ESSA, CAST features a quote that links UDL with Competency Based Education. This is YOUR own website. Honestly, I think you perhaps protest too much David. We understand very well the transition that is taking place to replace human teachers with technological devices that monitor and “optimize” children’s brains to meet established societal expectations. We’re not buying it either.
“Our friends at the National Center on Learning Disabilities celebrate ESSA’s “many provisions to expand innovative practices in states and school districts, including expanding personalized learning, multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS), and universal design for learning, and integrating technology and competency-based education initiatives.”
http://castpublishing.org/essa-and-udl/
As a special educator, you already view your world with a UDL lens – you are tasked with removing barriers to the curriculum. That’s what UDL is. Yes, CAST does a lot of work with technology because technology can be a powerful equalizer. It’s what allows low-vision students to read emails or web pages and students with significant reading disabilities to access the printed word in textbooks, novels biographies, etc. But it’s a tool. It’s not a replacement for good teaching and I don’t believe anyone at CAST thinks otherwise. I worked with them years ago and their teachers were always central to what they were doing. In fact, they couldn’t do what they do without input and guidance from teachers because first and foremost, CAST is research-focused. They know that proper and effective integration of any technology in the classroom requires a skilled teacher.
Yes, there are instances where technology is used as a replacement for teaching. But it’s only successful when there are educators ensuring that students demonstrate growth, not proficiency, which if often the benchmark of many education software packages.. Even the Khan Academy school in Palo Alto, whose model relies on students accessing content models at home as their initial instruction, requires individualized follow-up by a teacher in the classroom. It’s in the individualization, directed by educators, that UDL happens. Because UDL is about acknowledging that not all learners learn the same way and that this variability requires an innate flexibility in approaches and environment. Does that sound familiar? It should, if you are a special educator. That’s what we do.every.single.day.
Many of us believe technology is the end game and teachers are being pushed out. Here’s a recent article to show why we think that way. Technology can certainly be helpful, but I think there’s more going on. Thanks for commenting.
http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/education/2017/03/21/computers-teachers-tn-appeals-court-may-weigh-toni-jones/99446902/
I understand your concerns. But make the leap from this court case to “UDL creates a microcosm for destruction” is irresponsible and shows how little you truly understand what UDL is or what CAST does. I urge you to be a little more open-minded and explore UDL in more depth. I think you will find there’s nothing threatening there.
CAST is a heavy presence with UDL. I’m sorry but we disagree. I don’t think my comparison is a leap at all. Tech “Disruption” is everything in education today. Familiarize yourself with it and you will see the similarities. And I am open-minded. I invited David Rose to write about UDL and CAST on my blog.
The Future of Learning:
https://www.gettingsmart.com/2013/12/01/10-elements-next-generation-k-12-systems/
And…
https://knowledgeworks.org/resources/foundation-readiness/
I find the infographic particularly concerning. How can education be data and metric-driven without a heavy use of computers?
Bingo! Pretty savvy research there, Prairie. I hope others will read it. Interesting, too, that Vander Ark’s article was written in 2013. Thanks again!
Our school is currently pushing UDL as a way to play CYA, basically–the school can now claim that no child is left behind because all teachers are expected to create lessons that will reach all students at all times. When I hear statements such as this one, that a UDL presenter made at a recent presentation–“It’s not that the student isn’t ready for the lesson, but that the lesson isn’t ready for the student” (paraphrased)–I’m appalled at the immediate blame that’s placed on teachers if every student doesn’t get everything all the time.
Personally, I see UDL as nothing but Differentiated Learning on steroids. We’re taking away the expectations that the children learn how to adapt and push themselves and even struggle sometimes, and we’re replacing it with the idea that all people should be able to get from point A to point B with as little effort as possible, and definitely without any sort of stress or cognitive dissonance. Part of growing up has always been about reaching points at which we realize we’re going to need to push harder if we’re going to get farther, but we want today’s kids to have none of that–it’s the teacher’s job now to make sure that the students learn without effort.
I love this article: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/1478210320940206 . Murphy does a good job of showing just how little the king is actually wearing.
Thanks for this, Tom. I appreciate the report too. Murphy also refers to CAST online learning, heavily a part of UDL. My fears surrounding UDL have to do with this. It’s easy to see students sitting in front of screens to do their learning on their own, including students with disabilities.
I’m not opposed to some differentiation, but inclusion with large classes can make it very difficult for teachers to adequately reach students who aren’t working at grade level.