Students\' Civil and Social Rights

¶ … students' civil and social rights as central to their experiences of schooling, we have pro-vided a potential place where theory and practice can meet. (Skilton-Sylvester & Slesaransky-Poe, 2009, p. 36)

The term mainstreaming is described as the inclusion of students with disabilities into a traditional classroom on a full time basis but there are many levels of inclusion, which are often developed by tailoring traditional classroom offerings and supplementing them. The language used to describe the type of individual tailoring done is the provision of the, "least restrictive environment," based on the needs of the student. This language allows the trend toward full inclusion to be variable for the sake of the real needs of a student and most frequently this means students with special challenges, be they physical, developmental or psychological. The ability to be inclusive of all students in a general education classroom requires skill and possibly special training, depending on the need level of special needs children and this LRE standard allows as much inclusion as is possible for both the child and the classroom, when it is applied correctly. It is also the response to real and perceived obstacles for teaching special needs children in an inclusive setting, and unfortunately it is sometimes used as an excuse for non-inclusion. (Sailor & Blair, 2005, p. 503) One obstacle in education, with regard to inclusion, a consistent trend across the U.S. since the 1970s, is creating a system of continuing or supplemental education for teachers that will assist them in developing the skills they need to successfully teach children with special needs. (Paulsen, 2008, pp. 313-315) but more important to not allowing the LRE ideology to become a reason to exclude special needs children from general education is reducing and/or eliminating perceptions of barriers that might be created by inclusion. One of the valuable intentions of the No Child Left Behind legislation enacted in 2000 and applied in 2001 is to force general education to challenge perceptions and stop making excuses based on fear rather than evidentiary research and standards. According to Sailor & Blair this should be seen as an opportunity to redress inclusion and LRE through accountability and most importantly the defined designation of ALL students as general education students. (2005, p. 504) Most importantly as a special education administrator the needs of students need to be paramount, but they are not divorced from the needs of the school to broaden, expand and alter the inclusive environment and to continue to see and sell change processes as opportunities for improving and building inclusive environments.

The least restrictive environment, trend or the defining ideology of inclusion for children with disabilities is just that an ideology and if inclusion is the best option for students there is a clear need for the development of a plan that best meets the child's needs and meets the expectations and desires of teachers and families. Coupled with the ideals of NCLB and the 20 years of research that has been developed in part from the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) the experiential standards are fully available to both the special education professional and the general education educators. (Sailor & Blair, 2005, p. 505) This work will discuss the ideology and briefly address the legal and ethical reasoning behind LRE and then develop an overview of recommendations and suggestions, according to the experts that support and assist teaching children with disabilities in inclusive settings. Finally the work will briefly address the manner in which the NCLB and the re-envisioned IDEA have affected the real classroom since their enactments.

In the early years of inclusion, many ideas regarding the teaching of children with disabilities just as we teach "normal" children was ideology and theory. The ideology was based on years of ignorance with regard to the potential of such children as they were frequently offered no education, as programs for special needs children were almost non-existent. Parents and educators began to band together to challenge the system to provide special education that would allow children educational as well as limited social engagement, beyond the family. The emphasis on a separate system for special needs children was largely based on the idea that there were serious advantages to separate systems as educators could be specially trained, class sizes were small (therefore created opportunity for greater individuation of instruction and a greater focus on social and vocational needs) and the environment was homogenous, meaning that students went to school with like students or others with challenges to learning. In many ways the separate system also answered the need to reduce the conflict many perceived as inevitable if classrooms were mixed. (Kavale & Forness, 2000, p. 279)

It was discovered through this process, and through many years of this separate classroom schema, that there were still many things about this separate system of education that restricted students' learning and a trend based on the ideology of providing the "least restrictive environment" (LRE) for such children began. (1975) First with section 504 of the ADA Rehabilitation Act in 1973 and then expanded through the IDEA Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (1990, 1997) and the Education for All Handicapped Children act of 1975. All of the years of legislation have set in motion developments that are ideally settled on the ideal of inclusion within the LRE partly in response to anecdotal evidence suggesting that such children had greater potential when they were exposed to more educational opportunities and partly in response to expanded ideologies the "mainstreaming" or inclusive trend began. (1980s) (Russoa, Osborneb, & Borreca, 2005, pp. 111-112) the trend moved forward to development and began to be offered as a secondary alternative in the 1990s. From then to now the ideology and practice has been partly refined (often by individual schools and/or educators who have a strong desire to see such systems succeed) and in many schools and districts full or partial inclusion is a primary option, rather than a secondary option for families. Odom in fact notes that through most of the U.S. nearly 50% of all special needs children are in some form of inclusive program, yet Odom does not claim as some do that all inclusive programs are equal or effective. It might not be full inclusion (100% of the school day) but offers the student inclusion for a good portion of the school day, with supplemental special education (resource room) time added. (2000, p. 20)

Kavale & Forness stress in their article on inclusion that anecdotal evidence and ideology will only get any trend so far and that what is needed today regarding the inclusion debate is real analysis of empirical evidence and the development of best practices based on what we know works and what we know does not. These researchers further stress that leaving the debate in ideology limits the ability of the trend to do anything but debate the hypothetical and conflicting ideologies. This ideology and conflict, though based on caring and need is split, according to Kavale & Forness, by those who wish to forward the inclusion movement to full inclusion, despite the lack of empirical evidence and others who would like to see empirical evidence drive best practices. (2000, p. 279) Kavale & Forness are not alone in their concern regarding establishing practices without proof that they work, as the greatest potential conflicts include but are not limited to student failure and/or the laying of responsibilities squarely on the shoulders of the classroom teacher, who may be ill prepared and/or even fearful or resistant to the demands that might be asked, from an already demanding situation in the classroom. (Filler & Xu, 2006, p. 92) This is consistent with a fact that Odem points out; that children with more sever and obvious special needs are less likely than others to be in partial or full inclusive programs, even where they are available, and these are the constituents of the remaining 50% of disabled students who are identified but who remain in separate programs. (2000, p. 20) According to Filler & Xu this has not changed a great deal since NCLB and IDEA, but the new emphasis on real, rather than perfunctory individual learning plans or IEPs has become a dominant trend since these legislative changes. This in and of itself demonstrates a significant change, as educators in general and special education are taking IEPs far more seriously and therefore potentially redressing past wrongs which might have allowed perception and prejudice to rule the day for many special needs children. (Filler & Xu, 2006, p. 94)

The resulting system supports and embraces the development of specialized instruction, individualized for specific students that clearly details real ability and desired progress, and can serve as a guide for the classroom teacher. The document produced is known as an IEP or individual learning plan and is hopefully developed in accordance with the most pressing needs of the student and by those who are specially trained to develop IEPs. IEPs then functionally define the LRE for each student on a per student basis, utilizing expert observation and the desires of students, parents and educators with regard to the educational and social needs of the child. The teacher is then given this goal oriented time specific goal development document to aide in supplementing or altering instruction to meet the needs of the specialized student in inclusion and seclusion. (Filler & Xu, 2006, p. 92) This document and its development are created whenever and individual child is observed and then designated to need such assistance based on his or her inability to meet age appropriate developmental goals, in large part based on standardized developmental scales that designate age appropriate ranges for physical and cognitive skill development and though they have been around almost since the inception of IDEA and the LRE they were not always developed or used to their fullest extent for any given child. (Filler & Xu, 2006, p. 92) Filler & Xu also stress that inclusion is not successful if a child with special needs is simply placed in a classroom with average learning students in his or her age group, instead they stress that meaningful interaction is the key to success and that such interaction does not occur without care planning and implementation of these plans. The IEP goes a long way to address the planning aspect but is not all inclusive of the reality of how meaningful interaction occurs, though almost as important the IEP lays the groundwork for the development of LREs for each student. (Filler & Xu, 2006, p. 92)

In recent years much more research has been done on inclusion, regarding best practices and advocacy. One example: Odom, Wolery, et al. (1999). entitled Preschool inclusion: A review from an ecological systems perspective, is summarized and further developed in a review of works, by Odem. The summary article also utilizes a substantial list of seminal works by other researchers to develop a set of what is known about inclusion and what is yet to be learned or improved upon. (Odom, 2000, p. 20) From this a list of observations supported in empirical literature has been developed and expounded upon and fundamentally paid attention to with regard to best practices and accountability. This again is proof of the trend for IDEA serving as a catalyst for experiential change and now for change implementation. One of the most significant changes to the IDEA legislation is the manner in which IEPs have become more fluid, in other words IEPs can be amended, midterm without the time cost of convening the IEP committee and with the approval of parents, teachers and administrators when the real classroom needs of the student must be taken into consideration. (National Collaberative on Workforce and Disability, 2004, pp. 1-4) Another fundamental change that has allowed the fear of GE teachers to be set aside is the language in the law that perceptually gave GE teachers and other educators only very limited alternatives for destructive behavior interventions. Where the old law gave the special needs child almost cart blanc to act in whatever manner they felt necessary, including but not limited to physically harming others. Teachers and others now have the authority to remove these students when such event occur and then review the manner in which either the student's particular disability affected behavior or if there was some fault of the educational environment that contributed or caused such behavior. This aspect of change has allowed educators a far greater ability to both psychologically and functionally address serious harmful behavior. (National Collaberative on Workforce and Disability, 2004, p. 3)

According to Odom the outcomes of inclusive classrooms are for the most part positive as children with disabilities do as well as they might do in special education classes and some research suggests better performance on developmental skills. In addition to this the researcher claims that the research also supports the fact that disabled children tend to have better behavioral performance in LRE settings as they model the behavior of normally developing children and lastly typically developing children seem to develop better attitudes with regard to disabled children and gain greater knowledge of different types of disabilities. (Odom, 2000, p. 20) One of the most consistent findings among researchers on the subject, according to Odom is that disabled children have less social interactions than do typically developing peers in inclusive classrooms. This indication is likely in part do to fear of rejection of experiences of rejection of disabled children in inclusive classrooms.