Policies and Infrastructure

Ultimately, for UDL to be practical, affordable, and effective in reaching all learners, work at the state and national level is needed. Educational policy needs to demand UDL curriculum, designers need to create it, publishers need to distribute it, teachers need to be prepared to implement it, and professional and parent organizations need to embrace it.

The National Center on Accessing the General Curriculum (NCAC) and the Universal Learning Center, both led by CAST, are working to address these ‘top down” issues.

NCAC is part of a national initiative that emerged from the re-authorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA ’97), NCAC was established by CAST in 1999 through a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs. NCAC draws on the talents of five partners, already established leaders in their fields: CAST, as the lead organization; Harvard University Children’s Initiative/Harvard Law School; The Council for Exceptional Children (CEC);
Boston College Lynch School of Education’s Department of Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum, and Instruction; and The Parent Advocacy Coalition for Educational Rights (PACER). NCAC is addressing policy and legal issues, curriculum design, teacher preparation and training, and consensus building among varited stakeholders.

To read more about NCAC see http://www.cast.org/ncac/

The ULC is an Internet-based service that will provide teachers, administrators, publishers, and parents with just-in-time access to the tools and resources they need for UDL. The ULC will include a web site that will serve as a portal to digital tools and resources, a searchable databse of information about digital educational materials available in the ULC and elsewhere on the World Wide Web, and other components supporting the acqisition and use of digital content. Professional development support for the ULC will be offered through TES.