Equity as a Basis for Inclusive Educational Systems Change

Inclusion of students with ‘disabilities’ in public systems of general education has been a global initiative since the Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action by the Ministry of Education and Science, Madrid (Spain), and United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, Paris (France), in 1994. Despite global and national policy efforts the practice has been sporadic and elusive. Framing education as categorical, specialised service delivery to discrete populations makes inclusion an unsolvable problem. The advent of multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) coupled with universal design for learning (UDL) practices delivered in whole-school rather than classroom-based formats poses a pathway out of the conundrum by framing public education as a system of equitable distribution of resources, such as services and supports, based on measured and monitored need on the part of all students. Potentially supportive research literature is reviewed.