Ashley Barlow | Perfectly Imperfect Advocacy
Think Inclusive: Season 10 Episode 12
For this episode, I speak with Ashley Barlow, a special education attorney advocate and host of the podcast Special Education Advocacy with Ashley Barlow. In a former life, she was a German teacher in Jefferson County Public Schools and Cincinnati Public Schools, having taught nearly every grade from K to 12. Ashley practices statewide in Kentucky and also operates a business to empower and inspire parents and advocates in special education, which can be found at www.ashleybarlowco.com. She is also the Director of Education at the National Down Syndrome Congress.
We did something a little different for this episode. Ashley and I interviewed each other and are posting the same interview on our respective podcasts. Cool right? We discuss several things related to inclusive education, including … what inclusive ed really means and using Dear Colleague Letters as a strategy in IEP meetings.
Thanks for listening, and if you haven't already, please give us a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Otter.ai Transcript: https://otter.ai/u/JiXRvYh8mFPHeFaGzeV6mM7Z5pk
PDF Transcript: https://3bd6e695-b492-4878-afa9-f79d8b09e0c4.usrfiles.com/ugd/3bd6e6_5b131ba558eb4a168d1623daddbfaa29.pdf
Cover Art Image Description: black background; think inclusive logo in the top left; rainbow-colored waves overlayed with a headshot of Ashley Barlow; text reads: Ashley Barlow, Perfectly Imperfect Advocacy; S10E12; MCIE logo in the bottom right
Mentioned in this episode:
Credits
Think Inclusive is written, edited, and sound designed by Tim Villegas and is produced by MCIE.
Original music by Miles Kredich.
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Audio Transcript
Tim Villegas
It's 2023 Y’all, I don't know about you, but my year has got off to a bit of a rough start. I got COVID Last week when I was supposed to be catching up on all the work I didn't do over the break. And our family got a new puppy. Say hi Jupiter. And sleeping at night has been a challenge. But otherwise I can't complain. We've got a great episode for you today, an interview with a slight twist.
My name is Tim Villegas from the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education and you are listening to think inclusive, a show where with every conversation we try to build bridges between families, educators, and disability rights advocates to create a shared understanding of inclusive education and what inclusion looks like in the real world. You can learn more about who we are and what we do at MCI e.org. For this episode, I speak with Ashley Barlow, a special education attorney, advocate and host of the podcast, special education advocacy with Ashley Barlow. In a former life she was a German teacher in Jefferson County Public Schools and Cincinnati Public Schools, having taught nearly every grade from K to 12. Ashley practices statewide in Kentucky and also operates a business to empower and inspire parents and advocates in special education, which can be found at Ashley Barlow. koco.com. She's also the Director of Education at the National Down Syndrome Congress. We did something a little different for this episode. Ashley and I interviewed each other and are posting the scene interview on each of our respective podcasts. Cool, right. We talked about a number of things related to inclusive education, including what does inclusive Ed really mean, as well as using dear colleague letters as a strategy in IEP meetings. Thank you so much for listening. And now my interview with Ashley Barlow.
All right, Ashley Barlow. Welcome to the thick inclusive podcast.
Ashley Barlow
Thank you, Tim. And welcome to you to the special education advocacy with Ashley Barlow podcast.
Tim Villegas
I love this already.
Ashley Barlow
It's fun, see everything. You can do anything differently. That's what I like about this.
Tim Villegas
Right, right. Okay, so just to not confuse anyone.
Ashley and I have decided we are going to interview each other for each other's podcasts at the same time. So this is like a very special episode of Think inclusive in the Ashley Barlow podcast.
Ashley Barlow
Yes. And what I like about this as I always confuse people when I suggest it because my podcasts are more like conversations than interviews, I think. And so when I say let's have a conversation and publish it on both of our platforms, people are always like, Oh, I don't know. I'm a little nervous. I like it. I like you know, kind of switching it up a little.
Tim Villegas
Yeah, this is fun. This is fun. All right. So the listeners to think inclusive may not know who Ashley Barlow is. So, Ashley, would you tell us a little bit about you and your podcast?
Ashley Barlow
Sure. Let's do it. So hi, my name is Ashley Barlow. I am a special education attorney. I practice in the Greater Cincinnati area. I am currently licensed in Kentucky and Ohio. New news, I will probably let my Ohio license, go into escrow or go inactive whatever they call that.
I am also a parent in the disability community. I have a little boy named Jack who has Down syndrome. I am a selfie advocate myself, I broke my back when I was 15 years old and I have a physical disability. I used to be a teacher. And I taught German before I went to law school, and then I own a business called Ashley Barlow company. And what we do and Ashley Barlow company is we provide much more reasonably priced resources to parents and special education. I really advocate through the lens of special education law, the federal law, the state regulations, guidance documents, that sort of thing. And I have found through my practice, that having a more collaborative approach and really kind of focusing on the IEP team has been quite successful. And so after thinking about this for many many years, I decided to open Ashley Barlow company in 2020. They have two digital courses. says one that is geared more towards parents, one that is geared more towards people that desire to become advocates or to grow their advocacy process or their business.
And then finally, I am the Director of Education at the National Down Syndrome Congress as well. I just took that full time job in October 2022. So it's a new job and scaling back my law firm and, and going full time with ndsc.
Tim Villegas
That's fantastic. And you have a beautiful family that you're very, very busy with?
Ashley Barlow
Oh, yes. Well,
I have a very full family life as well. My, my son Jack is 12. He's like, super involved in all sorts of activities and and just trying to keep him engaged is a full time job. Particularly we're recording this over his Christmas break. And that is quite a challenge.
And then my eldest son, Griffin is a swimmer. And so I'm driving him all over the town for swimming. And my husband works in finance. Tim, why don't we do the same thing? Why don't you do an introduction for my audience as well?
Tim Villegas
Absolutely. Well, hello, everyone. My name is Tim Villegas. I am the Director of Communications for the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education, which is a nonprofit.
And I'm also the founder of thinking inclusive, which is MCIE's official blog and podcast. So I was a special education teacher for 16 years. I taught for years in California, and the rest in Georgia, which is where I live right now. And in 2012, I started a blog called think inclusive in a podcast.
And it was really to, it was really to learn more about inclusion. I had been a self contained, special education teacher the whole time, I had been a teacher, and gone through various
thoughts about inclusion, I started off as a skeptic, I didn't really think it was the right thing to do. But once I saw it, it you know, with my own eyes, and in my own experience, and I started to learn more, and really developed as an educator, I realized, yes, it is, it is the right thing to do, and is the best thing for all children, authentically, and supported inclusive education. So once I started to do that, and write and contact people, and, you know, I met a lot of people, self advocates, people with disabilities, and interviewed them, the more and more committed, I was to the concept of inclusion, inclusive education. And then I realized that a lot of people feel that way too. And so that's how we got our audience. That's how we got so many people wanting to know more. And in 2020, it actually became my full time job because I contacted my my boss, right now, as our CEO, Carol quirk, who's been with MCI e since the late 80s, early 90s. They've been doing this work of partnering with school districts. I'll say a little bit more about that in a second. But she said, Hey, we have a position open for a communications person, just why don't you just come on board and bring everything with you. And you can do this work alongside of us. And so that is how I get to do this full time. And talk to great people like Ashley. Yeah. So so yeah. So that's, it's such a change. I'm going through that change right now. It's crazy. Yes, it's, it's like, it's like the thing that you did for fun. And it was, you know, a little bit. I mean, it's still advocacy, but it's, it's fun. It's like, that's what I want to do, right. I think that I that I did on the side. And just for fun, and just to kind of keep me going is now the thing that I'm doing. And it's yeah, I'm still having to pinch myself after almost three years.
Ashley Barlow
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So should we dive in?
Tim Villegas
Sure.
Ashley Barlow
Let's do it. Let's do it. Is it my turn NASA question.
This is the way we're doing this friend, is we both have questions He's kind of written up, and we're gonna see where the conversation takes us. But for right now, our plan is to alternate. If you listen to my podcast regularly, you know that the agenda oftentimes goes out the window, and we just started talking. So sure, however, let's let's go, Tim, hit me with the first question.
Tim Villegas
Okay, so how I got introduced to your podcast actually was? Well, I don't remember exactly. But I do remember going through and looking at episodes. And I think I just happen to click on the one that you talked about dear colleague letters. And that was so interesting to me, because while I am familiar with your colleague letters, I couldn't tell you, Oh, these are the ones that you should read, or you should use in your advocacy. But you had a plan, like you had, like, if you want to do this, if you if you want to bring this Colleague Letter, Dear Colleague letter to an IEP meeting, this is how you could use it. And I thought it was so it was so clear, and a way for a family could reference your information. And it was very useful. So I'm wondering, could you explain what is a Dear Colleague letter? And how can families or educators use them in IEP meetings with regard to inclusion?
Ashley Barlow
Yes, and I'm happy that you found that episode helpful, you know, sometimes is you do too, I'm certain.
When you are developing material, no matter what it's for, whether you're speaking at a conference, or it's a PDF download that I'm developing for Ashley Barlow company or something? I'm always like, is this what people want? Is this too? micro level? Is it too? One? On one level? Is it too nerdy? Is it like not even close to being at the center of the onion? Enough? You know, like, you're kind of always thinking, what is it? And I think that that episode in particular was pretty micro level, right? And so the feedback is good. So dear colleague letters are, and let's also throw in policy documents. So dear colleague, letters and policy documents are things that the United States Department of Education and or State Department of Ed will publish in order to tease out the law. So we're gonna go back to high school government for a second, and we're gonna remember that there are four branches of government, and there's this like, weird pseudo fifth branch of the government. So I'm sorry, there's three, did I say four? There's three branches of government, holy cow. And there's this weird pseudo fourth branch, okay. So you have the legislative body, they make the laws, and we lawyers are always like, don't blame me for the law. If you if you've got a problem, talk to a policy person. And those policy people, the lobbyists can go talk to the legislators and get it changed, right. So go talk to Congress, you, I just deal with what the law says. And then you've got the judicial branch that judges the court system, and the court system interprets those laws, and we get case law from that. And then that also becomes the law. And then we have the executive branch. And those are the administrative bodies. So the executive branch, is the President United States, the governor of the state, the mayor of the town, those those people, and of course, they can make law as well, they can do executive orders and make rules as well. Then what we know about this kind of pseudo fourth branch of government is that the executive branch can make cabinets. So we get these administrative agencies like the Department of Defense, Department of State, and what's important to us in education is the Department of Education. So if the legislators make the laws and that legislative branch, then what happens with the Department of Ed is they get to make things called regulations. And the regulations kind of tease out the law. So the big federal law and special education as Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, ide a, and Ida is really, really, really broad, really broad. Like, if you look at what Ida says about inclusion, that is an eight, an eight point font. It is probably about four lines long, it's not very long at all that provision about least restrictive environment. And so if you want to try to figure out Least Restrictive Environment inclusion, by reading the federal law, good luck Have at it, what are you going to do? There's lots of little clauses, but what we have to have is we have to have these regulations that break down the laws, but still even Then the regulations are still really broad. So what teases out the regulations? What helps us to understand the regulations are these policy documents and dear colleague letters, policy documents are going to be like, Oh, usually 30 or 40 page documents where the Department of Ed is going to say, this is how we interpret blah, blah, blah. This is inclusion, Allah, Georgia Department of Ed, or this is dyslexia intervention, ala Alabama Department of Ed, the dear colleague letters are more than that's your like, Finally, she's getting to the point where the dear colleague letters, I like to start real, real broad and get real good. We're tracking. So so the dear colleague letters are letters that take the questions of individuals and answer them according to those policy documents, regulations, and the federal law and the state law. So it might be somebody that's found a loophole, or it might be somebody that has seen a pattern of something that has happened time and time and time again. And so they say, I'm a special education attorney, or I'm a teacher, or I'm a parent, I'm a superintendent. And I've noticed this pattern, or I've noticed this injustice, what do you do about blah, blah, blah. I've looked at the case law. I've looked at the guidance documents, I've looked at the federal and state law. And I don't know what it is, so inclusively. I'm going to go just a little bit deeper in answering your question, Tim, because what when we look at inclusion, the guidance document is you know, there's plenty of guidance documents on inclusion. But specifically as we look at dear colleague letters, there are dear colleague letters that deal with things like a student's right to supplementary aids and services. There are dear colleague letters that talk about how is child's educational placement is not to be determined by things like disability categories severity of disability, and configuration of the Service Delivery System, I'm literally quoting letter to Margolis of 626 2003. Those sorts of things. There are dear colleague letters that talk about how the individual needs of the student have to be considered in the placement decision. Another category of guidance that we get in these dear colleague letters is how the placement of the child how inclusive the placement is, is to be determined. And so we have, for example, a letter to baso, which is dated 823 of 2010, that says that the decisions have to be made by the entire IEP team, people that are knowledgeable about the child. Lots of people want to know about that homeschool thing. Like there's, there's, you know, oh, I know that somewhere in the law, it says that children with disabilities have to be educated in their quote, unquote, homeschool, or there's guidance documents, dear colleague letters on that as well. And the last category that I have broken down in my inclusion workshop is modifications to general education. So we've got, for example, and I think this is an actually the guidance document from OCERS that says that students can't be excluded from the gen ed classroom solely on the basis of the need for modifications to the Gen Ed curriculum. So they're just a wealth of information. Yeah, that was a big long answer, but I get real excited about it.
Tim Villegas
Yeah. Well, and also you so you have some sort of training or package for people to learn more. Is that right?
Ashley Barlow
I do. Yes. So I have a product called the inclusion workshop. It is about an hour and a half of video content. And it walks you through this document, this PDF document that is 25 pages long. And that is called the inclusion workshop workbook. And what we do is we kind of like focus on the law. And then we look at the regulations. And then we look at those guidance documents. And I also give an example of a case because I just like for people to see what happens with real students, real kids in real life situations. And then I have several pages and several minutes of the content that talk about practical strategies to advocate for inclusion. So one of those, for example, is to really kind of focus on the schedule, like what what classes are available, or if it's Elementary School. What's the day look like in the gen ed classroom and And then how can we capitalize on that? Like, how can we find time when we can push in services? Or if we think this child might need some pull out resource time? Where can we find time? That's great for that, that we aren't taking away from other meaningful time? And, you know, what kind of factors should we consider when we look at the schedule and that sort of thing. So I have some practical strategies, and also kind of some lists of criteria that the case law says that we need to consider when we are determining a student's placement. And that list actually is a compilation of discussion points that I've had when talking to other special education attorneys and advocates over the years, I literally just started pressing record, when a friend would call me and say, Hey, I have a kid with Down syndrome. I have a kid with an intellectual disability and, and we've got an inclusion discussion. I'm like, okay, okay, great. Let me hit record, because I might be able to pull something out. Like once I start talking to people, I get good ideas.
Tim Villegas
That's great. That's great.
Ashley Barlow
Oh, do you have a follow up?
Tim Villegas
No, no, I was just saying that. That's, that's great information. I think that I think that our listeners would definitely want to look at that.
Ashley Barlow
Yeah, thank you. It is I'm, I'm very proud of the inclusion workshop, and probably that, and my negotiation strategies course, are the two that I'm most proud of. Because, again, like I advocate, you know, from within the framework of within the framework of the law. And so that is something that, I think is quite important. Tim, I was super interested in the good work that you all do there. And super interested in what kind of how, if we could dive into this discussion about the definition of inclusion, right, because I, you know, I think anybody that puts themselves out there as an inclusion expert, or someone that's more than curious about inclusion, and evidently the conversation comes up, like what is inclusion? And so I think my first question, and that is, you know, maybe you could talk about, like, the the kind of mentality that inclusion doesn't necessarily have a definition. And in fact, it can be interpreted so many different ways by so many different people.
Tim Villegas
Yeah, I can, I can speak to that. So inclusion is a big word, and especially inclusion, like with a “Big I”. It's more like freedom, or justice. They're, they're hard to, they're hard to define in a way that's useful, I guess. But how I define inclusion is really more how I would define inclusive education. So in the context of what we do at MCI II, and when I say inclusion always works. What I mean is that when inclusive education is supported, and authentic, that it always works. And if it does, if it doesn't work, as a lot of people like to say, well, it didn't work for this kid, you know, inclusion didn't work for my student, or inclusion didn't work for my child. When you look at why it didn't work, it's because it wasn't supported. And it wasn't authentic. So how we describe inclusive education is really with four things. And we draw a lot on the work of Michael MC Shin, and Cheryl Jorgensen in their beyond access model, so I always want to give them credit for this framework, but membership, participation and learning and we emphasize one more of those and I'll explain all of those, but placement, you can't be included without being there. And I think that that gets that gets missed a lot when we're having the discussion of inclusion I just had this conversation with with some people from the TASH conference. I was just recently at Are you familiar, Tash? Yes, okay. So I We were talking about how when we talk about inclusive education, you know, what should be emphasized. And since I was a special education teacher in a segregated special education classroom for students with, you know, multiple disabilities. I thought that well, you know, I was having high expectations for my kids, I was trying to push them out into general education as much as possible. I was giving access to general curriculum standards. I mean, that's like, what else do you want? You know, that's inclusion, right? Well, what I didn't realize was that, when we're really looking at authentic inclusion, you can't be a member of a community without actually being in the community. And that includes general education classrooms. Like, you know, it, the very nature of the segregated classrooms, being in a school means that some kids are excluded. And that that community has decided this is okay. So that to me, as I've really evolved and kind of gone to and really understood what that inclusive education means. It means that, that absolutely has to be minimized as much as possible. And now, there's certain students that we may not have figured out how to include, and they, we may need to make arrangements for them. And those arrangements may be may need to be separate as alternate placements. But that doesn't mean that we create programs, disability specific categorical programs that we create for students. Because I don't think that that is the spirit of Ida. I don't think that's what LRE really means. I think that when we talk about inclusion, we talked about everyone in first, and then we decide on the needs of the student. And so again, some inclusion this don't like that, I bring that up, that there may be separate places. But I also feel like we have to be realistic and think about how we're constructing and that the goal is 100% No, play, no separate placements.
Ashley Barlow
That is that is that is if you get a child just to a classroom, but the classroom is ineffective, then we aren't doing the child a service. So I completely agree with you. I mean, you know, in an ideal situation, is it absolutely possible and is it absolutely best practice? Yes, but if the people and the systems don't have the structure in place, yet, all we can do is continue to advocate for that structure to be in place, but we can't place a child without good. Without good systems in place. Right. So yeah, I mean, I I agree with you entirely. And I think anything else, anything to the contrary, if anybody says anything to the contrary, they they aren't really looking at what the school looks like. Because if you look at the school, heck, even even our own houses, sometimes when I have parents that say no, I don't want one minute of pullout, or I don't want one second of anything that that anybody else doesn't have. I say okay, I completely validate that. But do you ever go out to dinner with just you and your significant other? Or do you ever say, you know, like in my family do it. So in my family, I'll just tell you the little story because the questions are silly. But, you know, Jack has a really, really, really hard time going to his brother's swim meets the sensory environment is just not good for Jack and it makes him very, very anxious. And if I was a really strict inclusion, as I would say, Jack's got to go to the swim meet because the whole family is going to show up at everything we do. Right and that is not right for Jack. Would that be great? Yes. What his brother love for him to see him swim? Absolutely. Do we find ways for him to see his brother's swim? 100% Because we know that that is part of our inclusive family environment. But we don't cram him into the placement of the General Education swim meet that's hot and loud and crowded and make him endure that because there aren't supports for him. There aren't adequate supports for him. There. Yeah.
Tim Villegas
Yeah, that's, that's a great example of, you know, if you if you were to have, right? Just said, Okay, he's in, and, you know, he's, he's being tortured, because he's in there, you know, and and then and then go back and say well includes inclusion didn't work, you know, didn't work. It's not that it didn't work, it's just that the supports and the accommodations you do the best that you can you know, in that and environment and you you make decisions that our very unique and personal interval individualized for that, you know, but so there is some, there is some nuance there, right? There is some nuance, it's not 100% in 100%, out, you know, type of thing, or 100% in without figuring out what that looks like. Right? And so, going down the list, right of the four things placement, or being there, I guess, physically physical presence, is what we talked about. And then we also talking about membership, participation and learning. So in the school context, if, if a learner is in a classroom, are they a member of that classroom? Are they part of the community? Are they missed? If they are gone? Do they feel like they have friends? These are all important aspects of being authentically included. And then for participation, what
Ashley Barlow
is something about that? Like I, you know, in dei be discussions, we would call that belonging, right. So that feeling of being a part of the group, something that I've really grown with as a parent is. And you said this Well, so do they feel that, because I can't tell you how many times both of my kids have done things. And I've thought, oh, you know, like, Jack wasn't really included, or Griffin wasn't really having fun. Let me tell you something, Jack, nine times out of 10 will feel very included, he'll tell you all about his friends and everything else, he might have really only actively engaged with somebody for 12 minutes, and a two hour long birthday party. But he will talk about those 12 minutes and those friends and that one thing that he was able to regulate himself to participate in, like, he went down that the bouncy house slide five times everybody else did it 38 times. He did it five times. And he will think that that is the greatest thing in the world. And I have to get rid of my type A, you know, straight A student vibe and be like, You did a great job. That was really fun. I'm so happy that you had fun with your friends and that sort of thing. If he thinks he, if he feels like he had a great time. Case closed, that is awesome. We can always push for more. That's my personality, but we don't have to. And same thing like my son Griffin, who is neurotypical. Um, he is very stoic. And I like turn cartwheels and jump up and down. When I'm excited. You can hear it in my voice. Griffin does not. And I have to tell myself all the time, Griffin is having fun. Griffin is showing that he is having a good time differently than I would and that is not only okay, it is beautiful. So that belonging piece we have to make it student centered or person centered, and kind of take ourselves out of it or at least separate ourselves from those emotions.<