How It Started. How It’s Going.

Monica Berry • Cahn Fellow 2019

At PS 87, we pride ourselves on having a strong commitment to diversity. We believe that by celebrating our differences, not only will we promote inclusion, but we will also improve the education of all the students in our community. Because of this, we work to create an inclusive, heterogeneous learning environment where our students thrive socially, emotionally, and academically. In our effort to promote inclusion, at least two of the five to six classes on each grade are integrated co-teaching (ICT) classes. ICT classes have a general education teacher and a special education teacher working in the same room where 40% of the students have Individualized Education Plans or IEPs. We are proud that most visitors to our school cannot see a difference between our ICT and non-ICT classes, and students in the class do not know who has an IEP and who does not. While students in our ICT classes typically achieve a high level of success, we began to wonder if students from particular subgroups were disproportionately recommended for these classes, our school’s second most restrictive environment.