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Our Mission

In 2019, the New Jersey Department of Education (NJDOE) entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Montclair State University Center for Autism and Early Childhood Mental Health (CAECMH), and the New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education (NJCIE) to promote, support, and advance inclusive education across the state. 

This collaboration between NJDOE, CAECMH, and NJCIE is referred to as the New Jersey Inclusive Education Technical Assistance (NJIETA) project. 

NJIETA aims to provide support through professional development, coaching, and consultation on inclusive education topics and practices to school districts across the state. In addition, the project includes the development of webinars, tools and resources to school districts free of charge to support their development, implementation, and maintenance of inclusive education practices specific to the identified needs of the identified participating school districts.

This collaboration is intended to support, facilitate, and enhance current NJDOE initiatives of New Jersey Tiered Systems of Supports (NJTSS) and Positive Behavioral Supports in Schools (PBSIS) with the goal of developing, expanding, and improving inclusive education practices within New Jersey public schools. 

The vision of this collaboration aims to increase the number of students who:

  • Attend the school they would attend if not disabled

  • Are assigned to age-appropriate general education grades and classes

  • Are instructed with a core curriculum based on research and principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) that is further differentiated for the diverse learners in each classroom

  • Receive academic and emotional behavioral interventions within a school-wide multi-tiered system of support (NJTSS) that includes all students

  • Are understood through a multidisciplinary lens including cognitive, communication, sensory/motor, social and emotional well-being/mental health

  • Receive supplementary aids and services, program modifications, and accommodations within the core curriculum and across all tiers of academic and emotional/behavioral interventions and supports as needed

 
 

In principle, inclusive education means…

“…the valuing of diversity within the human community. When inclusive education is fully embraced, we abandon the idea that children have to become “normal” in order to contribute to the world…We begin to look beyond typical ways of becoming valued members of the community, and in doing so, begin to realize the achievable goal of providing all children with an authentic sense of belonging” (Kunc, 1992)*.

 

*Kunc, Norman. (1992). The Need to Belong: Rediscovering Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Published in: Villa, R., Thousand, J., Stainback, W. & Stainback, S. Restructuring for Caring & Effective Education. Baltimore: Paul Brookes.