A Nationwide Culture of Inclusion Promotes Happiness

Researchers have examined what makes people happy across the globe, within countries, within groups, within our minds, and in our biological functioning. Harvard researchers followed sophomores from the class of 1938 for nearly eighty years and researchers in New Zealand followed over 800 people over 32 years to find out what made people more likely to grow into happier adults. All of these studies uncovered a key to making people happy: social connection.

Close, secure, and supportive relationships foster human happiness. Yet our environment facilitates social connection for some more easily than others. Children with disabilities have lower levels of social inclusion than many of their peers, face more social exclusion, and are at higher risk of being bullied or isolated. A socially inclusive environment for children with disabilities is more than a feel-good, nebulous idea; it is a key construct that the United Nations, the World Bank, the World Health Organization, and several other organizations and researchers define and emphasize as a fundamental domain of quality of life for people with disabilities. Even the Declaration of Independence guarantees our right to happiness. A perfect place to start is fostering an inclusive environment for our youngest learners.

The federal government recently released an updated policy statement on the inclusion of children with disabilities in early childhood programs. The statement outlines the many academic benefits of inclusion for young children with disabilities. Notably, it also emphasizes the positive impact inclusion has on all children in the classroom. Children with and without disabilities learning together have the opportunity to strengthen their social emotional skills, build new friendships, learn about human diversity, and participate in creating a sense of belonging.

Including children with disabilities wherever children learn is a core tenet of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Before IDEA, children with disabilities had no guaranteed access to school, let alone to learning alongside their nondisabled peers. Yet data shows that this number has stayed stagnant over the past four decades. As recent as 2021, more than half of early learners with disabilities attended preschool in separate settings from their nondisabled peers. Even when young children are included in classrooms with nondisabled peers, they are disproportionately removed from the classroom through suspension and expulsion, causing further exclusion.

Although inclusion is a key part of IDEA, the Americans with Disabilities Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, the Head Start Act, and the Child Care Development Block Grant Act, there is a vast divide between the letter of the law and what actually occurs in early learning programs across the country. As disability inclusion researchers Ruth Luckasson and Robert Schalock wrote, “Rights…are not sufficient if they are not accompanied by opportunities to exercise those rights.” The federal policy statement includes guidance for increasing opportunities for inclusion, including ten recommendations for states and ten for localities on how to strengthen policies and practices, and bright spot examples from a variety of states. Recommendations emphasize family engagement, culturally and linguistically responsive programming, and more equitable access to high-quality inclusive services for Part C and Part B Section 619 services under IDEA (see graphic below). To update this statement from the previous 2015 version, the U.S. Departments of Education and Health and Human Services incorporated input from families, researchers, and early childhood professionals.

The statement calls for a nationwide “culture of inclusion,” entailing a commitment to shifting the country’s paradigm about what children with disabilities can achieve, and creating better policies, practices, and budgets within a comprehensive system. That is no easy task, and each component will require states and localities to closely examine their current state of inclusion through data collection, learn from bright spots, and commit to meaningful change. Making changes is particularly difficult in light of an early childhood education workforce crisis and ongoing funding uncertainty. Programs will need more resources and guidance, as we heard in our expert roundtable. Providers in different settings across the mixed delivery early childhood system will have different levels of need, which policymakers must take into account. Doing so can finally improve preschool inclusion data after a plateau and provide all learners with the learning environments they deserve. Researcher Stacy Clifford Simplican and her colleagues put it best when they wrote about children with intellectual disabilities:

So, who is social inclusion for? Social inclusion is for all of us: an individual with an intellectual or developmental disability; for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities as a group; for members of society who will benefit from their inclusion; and for nation states who can benefit from the participation of people with all levels of abilities.

In our ongoing series on young children with disabilities, we will continue to examine how federal, state, and local policies can improve inclusion.