The Structure (4 Domains/22 HLPs)

HLP 1: Collaborate with professionals to increase student success.

Collaboration with general educators, paraeducators, and support staff is necessary to support students’ learning toward measurable outcomes and to facilitate students’ social and emotional well-being across all school environments and instructional settings (e.g., co-taught). Collaboration requires the use of effective collaboration behaviors (e.g., sharing ideas, active listening, questioning, planning, problem solving, negotiating) to develop and adjust instructional or behavioral plans based on student data, and the coordination of expectations, responsibilities, and resources to maximize student learning. 

HLP 3: Collaborate with families to support student learning and secure needed services.

Educators collaborate with families, support student learning, and secure needed services. Educators maintain high expectations to collaborate with families in support of individual children’s needs, goals, programs, and progress over time and to ensure that families are informed of and understand special education processes and their rights (e.g., evaluation, IEP meetings, procedural safeguards). Educators engage in reflexivity practices to address biases and meaningfully understand and maximize family priorities and relevant familial background information they wish to share such as linguistic practices, family culture, family structure, or familial educational experiences. Educators advocate for resources to help students meet instructional, behavioral, social, and transition goals. Educators effectively communicate with families to co-design home and community learning opportunities, advocate for their children, as well as students to become self-determined advocates in culturally-responsive inclusive ways.

HLP 2: Organize and facilitate effective meetings with professionals and families.

Educators lead and participate in a range of meetings (e.g., meetings with families, individualized education program [IEP] teams, individualized family services plan [IFSP] teams, instructional planning) with the purpose of identifying clear, measurable student outcomes and developing behavioral plans using culturally inclusive pedagogies and practices that support these outcomes. They develop a meeting agenda, allocate time to meet the goals of the agenda, and lead in ways that encourage consensus building through positive verbal and nonverbal communication, encouraging the sharing of multiple perspectives, demonstrating active listening, and soliciting feedback.

HLP 6: Use student assessment data, analyze instructional practices, and make necessary adjustments that improve student outcomes.

Effective educators use all data available to create instructional goals and plans. After instructional goals are developed, educators evaluate and make ongoing adjustments to students’ instructional programs. Once instruction and other supports are designed and implemented, successful educators have the skill to manage and engage in ongoing data collection using curriculum-based measures, informal classroom assessments, observations of student academic performance and behavior, self-assessment of classroom instruction, and discussions with key invested partners (i.e., students, families, other professionals). Educators study their practice to improve student learning, validate reasoned hypotheses about salient instructional features, and enhance instructional decisions. Effective educators retain, reuse, and extend culturally inclusive practices that improve student outcomes and adjust or discard those that do not.

HLP 4: Use multiple sources of information to develop a comprehensive understanding of a student’s strengths and needs.

To develop a deep understanding of a student’s learning needs, educators compile a comprehensive learner profile using a variety of assessment measures and other sources (e.g., information from students, parents, general and special educators, other partners) that are sensitive to intersectional backgrounds, experiences, and needs, to (a) analyze and describe students’ strengths and needs, and (b) analyze the school-based learning environments to determine potential supports and barriers to students’ academic progress. Educators collect, aggregate, and interpret data from multiple sources (e.g., informal and formal observations, work samples, curriculum-based measures, functional behavioral assessment [FBA], school files, analysis of curriculum, information from families). This information is used to create an individualized profile of the student’s strengths and needs that reflects the whole child while considering sociocultural or intersectional context.

HLP 5: Interpret and communicate assessment information to collaboratively design and implement educational programs.

Educators interpret assessment information for different partners (e.g., other professionals, families/caregivers, students) and involve them in the assessment, goal development, and goal implementation process. Educators must understand each assessment’s purpose, help key partners understand how bias may influence interpretation of data generated, and use data to collaboratively develop and implement individualized and culturally inclusive education and transition plans that include goals that are standards-based, include appropriate accommodations, modifications, and fair grading practices that are aligned with students’ intersectional needs.

HLP 11: Identify and prioritize long- and short-term learning goals.

Educators prioritize what is most important for students to learn by providing meaningful access to and success in the general education and other contextually relevant curricula. Educators use grade-level standards, assessment data and learning progressions, students’ prior knowledge, and IEP goals and benchmarks to make decisions about what is most crucial to emphasize, and develop long- and short-term goals accordingly. They understand essential curriculum components, identify essential prerequisites and foundations, and assess student performance in relation to these components.

HLP 12: Systematically design instruction toward a specific learning goal.

Educators help students to develop important concepts and skills that provide the foundation for more complex learning. Educators sequence lessons that build on each other and make connections explicit, in both planning and delivery. They activate students’ prior knowledge and show how each lesson “fits” with previous ones. Planning involves careful consideration of learning goals, what is involved in reaching the goals, and allocating time accordingly. Ongoing changes (e.g., pacing, examples) occur throughout the sequence based on student performance. 

HLP 7: Establish a consistent, organized, and responsive learning environment.

To build and foster positive relationships with students, educators should establish age appropriate and culturally aware expectations, routines, and procedures within their classrooms that are positively stated and explicitly taught and practiced across the school year. When students demonstrate mastery and follow established rules and routines, educators should provide age-appropriate positive specific feedback in meaningful and caring ways. By establishing, following, and reinforcing expectations for all students within the classroom, educators will reduce the potential for challenging behavior and increase student engagement. When establishing responsive learning environments, educators should build mutually respectful relationships with students by demonstrating respect, cultural awareness, and accepting and valuing diverse learners.

HLP 16: Use explicit instruction.

Educators use explicit instruction to make learning new content, skills, and strategies accessible to students. When using explicit instruction, educators explain concepts by highlighting essential content, anticipating common misconceptions, and strategically choosing examples, non-examples, and language to facilitate understanding. They model and scaffold processes to enhance student understanding, readiness to apply skills, and completion of tasks. Educators provide students opportunities for supported and independent practice with feedback to learn, maintain, and generalize newly learned knowledge and skills to other relevant settings and situations. They choose when to model and scaffold steps or processes so that students can understand content and concepts, apply skills, and complete tasks.

HLP 9: Teach social behaviors.

Teachers should explicitly teach appropriate social (how to interact with others), emotional (how to regulate and express thoughts and emotions), and behavioral (how to manage myself) skills and behaviors. Skills should ideally be aligned with classroom and school-wide expectations. Similar to explicit instruction in academic skills, social, emotional, and behavior skills are taught through a tell (when to use the skills), show (provide examples and non-examples of the skill under specific social contexts), and practice (students engage in role plays) format. As highlighted throughout the HLPs, cultural inclusive pedagogies and practices (CIPP) is especially key when teaching social, emotional, and behavioral skills as students often learn these skills under different contexts. Students who master key social behaviors are ready to function within organized, consistent, and responsive learning environments.

HLP 14: Teach cognitive and metacognitive strategies to support learning and independence.

Teaching cognitive and metacognitive strategies promotes learner self-regulation and independence. Explicit instruction in cognitive and metacognitive strategies begins with the recognition of challenging learning tasks that require a strategic approach and moves to systematic instruction, multiple opportunities for student practice with feedback, and guidance related to using the strategy effectively in multiple settings and situations. Teaching and learning cognitive and metacognitive strategies involve not only understanding content but also using cognitive processes to solve problems, regulate attention, organize thoughts and materials, and monitor one’s own thinking. Cognitive and metacognitive strategy instruction is delivered in stand-alone lessons or integrated into lessons on academic content through modeling and explicit instruction. Students learn to monitor and evaluate their performance in relation to specific goals and make necessary adjustments to improve learning. 

HLP 21: Teach students to maintain and generalize new learning across time and settings.

When students with disabilities learn new information or skills but are unable to apply them to novel situations or settings, the utility of that instruction must be called into question. Educators and IEP teams carefully consider the various times, places, and situations in which students’ skills and knowledge might be needed and providing explicit instruction and other opportunities to practice in those situations. Educators use feedback within authentic learning settings to help students develop capacity to generalize their learning and skills. 

HLP 13: Adapt curriculum tasks and materials for specific learning goals.

Adaptations are changes, which can take many forms, including accommodations and modifications. To adapt tasks and materials, educators may prioritize content coverage, simplify task directions, alter the difficulty level of material, reduce the amount of material provided, highlight relevant information, or present information using multiple and different examples. Educators make decisions about adapting tasks and materials based on the stated learning goals, the student’s individual needs, and the criteria for student success. Educators should identify areas within their explicit instruction to design and incorporate adaptations. In addition, there are opportunities for educators to incorporate culturally inclusive pedagogies and practices into their teaching.

HLP 15: Provide scaffolded supports.

Scaffolded supports provide assistance to students so they can complete tasks that they cannot yet do independently and with a high rate of success. Educators select powerful visual, verbal, and written supports; carefully calibrate them to students’ performance and understanding of learning tasks; use them flexibly; evaluate their effectiveness; and gradually remove them once they are no longer needed. As a critical partner to explicit instruction, providing scaffolded supports requires understanding student characteristics, breaking down complex skills and strategies into smaller instructional units, and identifying ways to provide scaffolds during supported practice. Some supports are planned before lessons, while some are provided responsively during instruction. Scaffolds can be technology-based. Educators should work with the IEP team to identify which scaffolds are needed, use data to evaluate impact, and decide when they are no longer needed.

HLP 17: Use flexible grouping.

The use of student groupings of various sizes and for a range of purposes is part of every educator’s repertoire. Educators deploy student groups to provide a setting for new instruction, group work, review activities, and everything in between. As some students require intensive instruction to support their needs, they can expect to be placed into targeted instructional groups. The use of flexible groupings offers educators options for designing and delivering instruction or promoting student active learning/ demonstrations to suit specific goals. However, it is not merely the size of the group that makes the difference in learning or other performance. In addition to the reduced number of students, educators must provide evidence-based or other effective teaching practices (such as explicit instruction) for meaningful outcomes to occur. Group configurations and sizes should be the result of deliberative educator collaboration, informed by data and student goals, to ensure a tight match between demands of the curriculum and student learning or other needs.

HLP 18: Use strategies to promote active student engagement.

Educators must have specific strategies and practices ready to deploy when teaching to ensure student engagement, and thus, learning. Student engagement is core to the development of knowledge and skills in academic and behavioral domains to ensure increased opportunities for learning and practice. In addition, educators who develop positive relationships with students based on mutual respect, trust, and consistent expectations are in a position to succeed. Successful teachers seeking to engage students forge connections between content and students’ lives, and use a range of culturally inclusive pedagogies and practices (CIPP) including teacher-led, peer-assisted, and student-regulated options throughout lessons. Student engagement is carefully monitored, and educators deliver positive and constructive feedback to sustain performance. Educators who use explicit instruction have a leg up for fostering student engagement thanks to the regular opportunities to respond, provide feedback, and engage in a student-centered teaching process inherent to that pillar HLP.

HLP 19: Use assistive and instructional technologies.

Assistive and instructional technology are everywhere in our world – especially within the field of education. Every IEP is required to have a statement of needed assistive technology supports and these can also be included amongst the list of formal accommodations or modifications. Instructional technology can also be useful for supporting student learning. Guided by the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) instructional design framework and equity lens, educators select and implement assistive (AT) and instructional technologies (IT) to support the needs of students with disabilities. The process of AT selection and evaluation should follow the Student-Environment-Task-Tool (SETT; Zabala, 2005) approach. Educators, in collaboration with AT specialists, select and use augmentative and alternative communication devices and assistive and instructional technology products to promote student learning and independence. They evaluate new technology options given student needs; make informed instructional decisions grounded in evidence, professional wisdom and experience, and students’ IEP goals; and advocate for administrative support in technology implementation.

HLP 8/22: Provide positive and constructive feedback to guide students’ learning (HLP 22) and behavior (HLP 8).

The effective provision of feedback is one of the most important instructional practices for teachers. Feedback is used to guide student learning and behavior and increase motivation, engagement, and independence. Effective feedback must be strategically delivered and focused on tasks, processes, or self-regulatory actions. Feedback should be goal directed and is most effective when the learner has a goal, and the feedback informs the learner how to improve performance toward reaching that goal. Feedback may be verbal, nonverbal, or written, and should be timely, contingent, genuine, meaningful, age appropriate, and at rates commensurate with task and phase of learning (i.e., acquisition, fluency, maintenance). In equitable and inclusive classrooms, educators take care to provide meaningful feedback to all students and recognize the potential for unconscious bias that may prompt lowered expectations or deficit thinking toward historically marginalized students. Educators must consider age, cultural background, learning preferences, and classroom dynamics when providing public or private feedback. 

HLP 20: Provide intensive instruction for academics and behavior.

Educators match the intensity of instruction to the student’s learning and behavioral needs. Intensive instruction involves working with students with similar needs on a small number of high priority, clearly defined skills or concepts related to academics and/or behavior. Educators group students based on common needs; clearly define learning or behavioral goals; and use systematic, explicit, and well-paced instruction grounded in culturally inclusive pedagogies and practices (CIPP). They frequently monitor progress using validated measures to assess students’ responsiveness and make adjustments as needed. Within intensive instruction, students have frequent and varied opportunities to respond and receive immediate, corrective feedback with educators and peers to practice what they are learning. 

HLP 10: Conduct functional behavioral assessments to develop individual student behavior support plans.

Creating individual behavior plans is an essential skill for all special educators. Key to successful behavior support planning is to conduct a functional behavioral assessment (FBA) to identify what occasions or triggers and what maintains behavior that is problematic in certain contexts. A comprehensive FBA results in a hypothesis about the “function” of the student’s problem behavior. Once the function is determined, a behavior intervention plan is developed that (a) teaches the student a pro-social replacement behavior that will serve the same or similar function, (b) alters the environment to make the replacement behavior more efficient and effective than the problem behavior,(c) alters the environment to no longer allow the problem behavior to access the previous outcome, and (d) includes ongoing data collection to monitor progress.