Jessica Yoakum
Education Specialist

• Focus on Exceptional Children

  • Supportive Educational Context- planning, instructional methods, curriculum, materials, and assessment-> short-term outcomes( attainment of standards)->long-term outcomes (completion of the sequence of required courses).

  • Major Findings- administrators stated they wanted to help SWD’s be successful 8/10 schools had no policy of inclusion. 7/9 had no designated services providing support. 70% of teachers stated the frequently adapted curriculum. Parents cited little collaboration among general and special education teachers.  

  • Significance- These results are cause for concern because they indicate that, in most of the participating schools, SWD’s are not receiving the benefits of the results of 25 years of research in the secondary education field.

 

• Barriers and Facilitators in Scaling Up Research-Based Practices

  • Scaling up- “activity meant to increase the use of an educational innovation that has been proved effective and practical by careful experimentation.” A bottom-up model that involves researchers devising innovations, testing and refining these innovations in a few alpha sites, and then implementing the innovations across multiple sites.

  • Procedures- Partner reading, collaborative strategic reading, making words, phonological awareness.

  • Professional development designed to facilitate the sustained use of research-based practices in heterogeneous general education classrooms most worked with students with disabilities.

 

• Caught in the Continuum: A Critical Analysis of the Principle of the Least Restrictive Environment

  • The Continuum- The LRE principle has been defined operationally in terms of a continuum, an ordered sequence of placements that vary according to the degree of restrictiveness.

  • Residential Continuum The residential continuum runs from institutions as the most restrictive environment to independent living as the least restrictive environment.  Special Education Continuum The special education continuum envisions a sequence of placement options ranging from homebound instruction and residential schools on the most restrictive end and regular class placement on the least restrictive end. Day vocational Services Continuum In the day/vocational continuum, segregated day training or day treatment programs stand at the most restrictive endpoint, with competitive employment at the least restrictive endpoint.

  • Pitfalls-  The LRE principle legitimates restrictive environments.- The LRE principle confuses segregation and integration on the one hand with intensity of services on the other.- The LRE principle is based on a "readiness model.”- The LRE principle supports the primacy of professional decision making.- The LRE principle sanctions infringements on people's rights.

 

• Sorting and Segregating

  • Equal educational opportunities had specific meaning and interpretation in the Equal Protection Clause, distinguishing between equitable and equal treatment. According to McDonald (2010) “equity is not the same as equality … equitable treatment in education may conflict with what constitutes equality depending on the particular interpretations as well as how we choose to measure it” (p. 266). Moreover, “Inequity always implies injustice … Persons may be treated unequally but also justly” (Green, 1983, p. 324 as cited in McDonald, 2010, p. 266).

  • While IDEA established the right to a free and public education for children with disabilities, it also introduced a number of stipulations that have, over time, become tools of segregation through which children from minoritized populations were (a) identified as having educational disabilities as opposed to having lacked adequate opportunity to learn (Artiles et al, 2010); (b) placed in more segregated settings than their White counterparts (Harry & Klingner, 2014), and/or (c) subjected them to discipline at higher rates than their White peers (Skiba et al., 2014).

  • Policymakers at the local level need to accomplish two kinds of work. The first is to develop programs that reward multiuse, multifunction, integrated public spaces for libraries, museums, schools, and playgrounds. A second, simultaneous effort need to be expended to identify the most troubling policies that maintain the status quo.

 

The continuum of placements, common way of representing the LRE continuum is a straight line running from the most to the least restrictive alternative or alternatively a hierarchical placement options. Most restrictive placements are also the most segregated and offer the most intensive services; least restrictive placements are the most integrated and independent and offer the least intensive services. The assumption is that every person with a developmental disability can be located somewhere along this continuum based on individual needs. If and when the person develops additional skills, he or she can "transition" to a less restrictive placement.  This is a component of special education which begins when the child is first identified with a disability. Although many schools have tried to sort and segregate students in the general education setting, the IDEA and many court cases have become the foundation to be an advocate for these children and adults. The most commonly held facts surrounding the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision are that de jure segregation was “inherently unequal” and that the doctrine of “separate but equal” as established in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) had no authority in public spaces, particularly in schools (Graff & Kozleski).  Since the Brown v. Board of Education teachers and implanters of special education have invested much research through which practices are most effective in the classroom when teaching students with disabilities. With this research, many of these practices are slowly making their ways into the general education classroom through differentiation, adapting, and modifying assignments.

 

• Schumaker, J. B., Deshler, D. D., Bulgren, J. A., Davis, B., Lenz, B. K., & Grossen, B. (2002). Access of adolescents with disabilities to general education curriculum: Myth or reality?Preview the document Focus on Exceptional Children, 35(3), 1-16.

• Klingner, J. K., Ahwee, S., Pilonieta, P., & Menendez, R. (2003). Barriers and facilitators in scaling up research-based practices.Preview the document Exceptional Children, 69(4), 411-429.

• Taylor, S. J. (2004). Caught in the continuum: A critical analysis of the principle of the least restrictive environment. Research and Practice for Persons with Severe Disabilities, 29(4), 218-230.

• Graff, C. S., & Kozleski, E. B. (in press). Calcifying sorting and segregating: Brown at 60Preview the document (pp. 1-40).