The Ohio Deans Compact on Exceptional Children promotes shared understanding and implementation of effective practices that contribute to improved results for all children and youth in Ohio. While primarily focused on strategies that build the capacity of the P-16 system to improve outcomes for children and youth with disabilities and other marginalized groups of learners, the Compact promotes collective conversation among representatives from higher education, districts and their schools, regional technical assistance provider agencies, state agencies, and professional associations around problems of practice that affect the pre-service preparation and ongoing professional development of teachers, principals, superintendents, and related services providers.
The United States Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (2010), asserts that our nation's ability to compete successfully in the global community depends on the meaningful inclusion of all residents in our educational system, including students with disabilities. In support of this assertion, the Ohio Deans Compact on Exceptional Children offers the following statement of beliefs. Such beliefs, grounded in research and authoritative opinion, are used to guide the Compact's work:
- All students learn to higher levels when held to high expectations and provided the necessary services and supports, and when taught by adults with the necessary competencies and dispositions to support higher levels of learning for all students.
- Student learning improves when adults who interact with them learn, and adult learning is most effectively fostered through peer-to-peer feedback and support that is provided through structured collaborative learning teams.
- Effective implementation of targeted instructional practices is necessary for meaningful improvements in student learning and educator professional practice to be sustained.
- Some instructional practices are more effective than others and all educators should be critical consumers able and willing to examine the effectiveness of practices used in supporting student learning.
- The development of collective capacity and shared responsibility at all levels of the system is essential for continuous system learning and improvement.
- Increased opportunities and outcomes for all students depend upon shared leadership across the district-wide system that serves to sustain core work in teaching and learning and prepare every learner for meaningful transitions to post-secondary endeavors.