Federal special education and accountability policies requires that educators individualize instruction for students with disabilities, while simultaneously ensuring that the vast majority of these students meet age-based grade-level standards and assessment targets. In this paper, we examine this dynamic interplay between policies through analysis of policy documents and interviews that reveal how a sample of educators grapple with their simultaneous implementation. We found that educators made sense of some facets of the policies as complementary and others as contradictory. NCLB and IDEA offered consistent and specific guidelines defining “highly qualified” teachers and educators reported a clear and accurate understanding of these policy demands. On an issue where there was no specific guidance from NCLB–the placement of special education students–educators interpreted the law as promoting the inclusion of more students in general education courses, often to an extent that contradicted the guidance offered by IDEA. With respect to fundamental issues of teaching and learning, NCLB and IDEA represent contradictory theories of action and educators perceived conflict and expressed concerns about unintended consequences for students. Based on our empirical findings, we conclude with a set of theoretical propositions regarding how the alignment of policy messages influences educators’ interpretation of policies, which in turn may have implications for how they enact policies.

School organization is a key driver for meaningful inclusion for students with disabilities. While there are promising examples of how schools organize for inclusion with intensive technical assistance, little is known about how high schools organize without such supports. In a case study of two high schools, we compare school organization by looking at their formal design and teachers’ daily routines. While both schools incorporated models for supporting students into their formal design, their daily routines revealed practices that were at odds with the spirit of inclusion. Routines involved special educators helping students pass their classes, though often not through meaningful learning opportunities. We offer insight into the affordances and constraints of school organization, revealing implications for meaningful inclusion.

In this comparative case study, we draw from neoinstitutional and structuration theory to examine the individualized education program (IEP) meetings for five high school students identified with specific learning disabilities. Specifically, we examine how participants interacted during the IEP meetings and how learning, instruction, and postsecondary transition were discussed. Findings suggest that the IEP document served as the dominant script, or structure, for the IEP meetings. This dominant script established roles for participation and influenced participants' agency within the meetings. We also highlight instances of disruption when participants exerted agency and went off script, breaking from the institutionalized structure of the meetings. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA 2004, PL 94-142) provides the legal foundation and structural framework to provide students with disabilities a free, appropriate public education that attends to their unique learning needs (Yell and Crockett 2011). The individualized education program (IEP) remains the cornerstone of IDEA, serving as a legal contract between school districts and parents of a student with a disability (Bateman 2011). IEPs outline the types of educational services and supports that districts must provide to students at no cost to parents. IEPs are drafted at an annual IEP meeting where the student, parent(s), teacher(s), school administrator(s), and other professionals discuss, evaluate, and approve the document. IDEA makes it clear that students and parents are equal members of the IEP team. Therefore, the field envisions the IEP meeting as a collaborative decision-making process between students, parents, and school professionals.

Secondary school administrators increasingly include students with disabilities in general education classrooms with coteaching models. Theoretically, coteaching enables two educators to attend to the learning needs of students with disabilities while exposing them to grade-level content area instruction. However, our study on teachers’ perceptions of coteaching found that teachers often viewed their schools’ leadership decisions as adversely affecting their ability coteach effectively. The purpose of this article is to provide administrators with an overview of common coteaching models, summarize findings from our study on teachers’ perceptions of how their schools’ leadership influenced their coteaching practices, and provide a set of guiding questions to consider when seeking to support coteaching.

In this qualitative comparative case study, we drew from institutional theory and cultural historical activity theory to explore how educators wrote, used, and conceptualized the role of Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) for students with specific learning disabilities within secondary inclusive settings. We found that students' IEPs were responding to institutional pressures to educate students within inclusive settings. However, the content of the students' IEPs offered limited guidance on the activity of providing students with special education supports and services. With this being said, the IEPs still played distinctive roles in each school's unique activity system for educating students within inclusive classrooms. Our findings illuminate a dynamic interaction between institutional pressures and the activity of providing students with a special education.