Who We Are

    Our Vision & Mission

    We envision a time when all public schools welcome and successfully educate all students, regardless of their abilities or background. In order to achieve this goal, we empower NYC charter schools to develop high quality inclusive educational environments by providing professional development opportunities, resources, school-based guidance and access to local and national best practices and renowned special populations’ experts.

    History

    In 2011, the New York City Charter School Center merged a consortium of borough-based special education cooperatives into a citywide membership program. The Collaborative for Inclusive Education now serves over 280 NYC public charter schools, providing access to professional development, expert technical assistance and advocacy in support of schools’ efforts to provide high quality education to their special populations.

    When we began, our work centered around the basics of ensuring compliant programs. Over the years – and in response to schools’ commitment and progress – our programming evolved and broadened to include supports and partnerships that grow an “all means all” mindset, strengthen inclusive pedagogy, and ensure favorable public policies and practices. Since our founding when we focused exclusively on special education, we have expanded the focus of our equity and inclusion work to also include supporting multilingual learners, social emotional learning, positive behavior supports, culturally responsive teaching, and more.

    By the Numbers

    298

    More than 89% of the sector, or 298 charter campuses, are members of The Collaborative for Inclusive Education.

    140

    The Collaborative offers over 140 professional development workshops, trainings, conferences and webinars annually.

    2,200

    More than 2,200 educators, leaders and coaches attend the Collaborative’s programs each year.

    450

    The Collaborative team spends approximately 450 hours in schools each year, conducting classroom observations and providing one-on-one consultations.

    900

    The Collaborative has certified over 900 educators in crisis prevention.

    49

    The five Collaborative team members have a combined 49 years of experience in teaching special populations and leading school-based support programs.

    Our Evolution

     

    2011

    NYC Special Education Collaborative founded to support schools’ compliance-related needs.

    2012

    Developed differentiated supports through tiered levels of membership. Offered approximately 30 workshops a year.

    2013

    Team grew to enable school-based observations and consultations. Programs shift to supporting instruction and school-wide culture.

    2014

    Mission revised to focus on inclusive education. Brought small group of NYC charterss to visit inclusive schools across the country (LA and Boston).

    2015

    Advocacy resulted in $7.5M in support of Committees on Special Education for charters. Offered nearly 80 workshops a year, including new in-school workshops for teaching staff. Hired an MLL/ELL Specialist to offer compliance guidance around identifying and serving multilingual learners.

    2016

    Collaborative expands programming to include MLL/ELL supports and social emotional workshops. Established communities of practice for MLL/ELL educators, high schools, and counselors and social workers. Launched a Leadership Coalition for Special Populations.

    2017

    Focus shifts to include equity and culturally responsive teaching. Doubled the offerings and fully integrated MLL/ELL programming into the Collaborative schedule with over 100 PD opportunities.

    2019

    Name officially changes to the Collaborative for Inclusive Education. Programming includes opportunities for educators to unpack racism, ableism, language discrimination, and identity discrimination and to reflect on how anti-bias education intersects with inclusive education.

    2020

    We shifted along with our schools to online supports, hosting dozens of sessions on educating during a global pandemic.

    2021

    Expanded the number of membership levels we offer to respond to the diverse array of school needs. Created and launched a P.I.P.E.L.I.N.E. Program with parallel teacher and leader tracks to support new-to-special education teachers and their coaches on the fundamentals of special education.

    2022

    Offered over a hundred trainings and workshops in a hybrid format in response to the evolving post-COVID adult learning landscape, including cohort learning opportunities specifically around trauma and mental health.

    2023

    Established our annual S.P.A.R.K. (Special Populations Advocate, Relationship Builder, and Knowledge Sharer) award to honor the legacy of our late colleague Jeannine King. This annual award acknowledges one special educator and one MLL/ELL educator who demonstrate outstanding commitment to equity and inclusion within their school communities.

    2024

    Re-launched our blog with weekly articles on educational trends and actionable advice on addressing equity and inclusion in schools. Conducted Project G.R.A.D., a months-long research project across approximately a dozen high school schools to surface best practices in monitoring and supporting students with disabilities and multilingual learners toward graduation.

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