Inclusion and Comprehensive School Reform: Lessons from the Field

Sustaining comprehensive secondary school reform (CSR) represents an immensely difficult and unresolved challenge for the field. The problems associated with CSR are of significant concern to proponents of inclusion given that more responsive schools and classrooms are connected to, if not dependent upon, the success of broader school reform efforts. In this paper, we will employ the experience derived from a decade of practice in secondary school reform to interpret the findings from the CSR literature. We will extract lessons learned about the reform process to identify five key implications that seem to be preconditions for the success of comprehensive site-based reforms and lead to inclusive practice.