For over 20 years the Co-op has hosted an annual conference for local educators focused on strategies for improving instructional practices in DC’s charter schools. Our “ELEVATE” conference has always been well attended and highly rated, but a few years ago we decided to change our approach to this signature event to focus less on delivering content and more on engaging participants in meaningful discussion. As former special education teachers and leaders, we know that our member community is made up of deeply committed educators with a lot of expertise to share. By shifting the focus from a traditional conference to a discussion-based, community-centered event, we’ve created a platform for our members to share and build on each other’s knowledge, ask questions, and design solutions together to tackle common challenges.
Earlier this month, we brought together educators from 27 LEAs to explore what is and isn’t working when it comes to Specially Designed Instruction, a key component of every individualized education program or IEP. Specially Designed Instruction (SDI) is adapting the content, methodology, or delivery of instruction to meet the unique needs of a student. While it’s an integral part of the IEP, planning and delivering high quality SDI in practice can be challenging for many school teams. Using the World Cafe model, our conference participants engaged with peers to share their experiences and approaches for SDI.
These community conversations identified common barriers to high quality SDI, including lack of infrastructure to support collaboration among staff, inconsistencies in data literacy and use of technology, and inadequate PD for both general and special educators. But we didn’t stop there! Our goal for the day was to get to solutions and begin planning our next steps. Participants ended the day working in small groups and school-based teams to develop concrete action items their LEAs can take to move SDI forward in the quest for equitable educational outcomes for students with disabilities.
In our event feedback survey, 95% of respondents said they had at least one actionable next step for improving SDI at their school after attending the ELEVATE conference. Participants highlighted that the best part of the day was “the opportunity to hear from people with multiple perspectives in the education field” and to “speak candidly and learn from others.”
High Quality Instruction, and particularly high quality specially designed instruction, is one of the Co-op’s strategic priorities. We’ll be keeping our focus on SDI over the next several months as we continue to develop resources and opportunities for our members to share ideas and learn from each other.
Special thanks to our conference sponsors: Law Office of Lauren E. Baum, PC, FundEd, Sterling Speech Associates, for making ELEVATE 2026 possible.