Inclusion: The key is individualization

Inclusion can be extremely rewarding for general education teachers, but it can also be challenging and sometimes downright difficult.

At one recent meeting, the inclusion of special-needs students was described as one of the top concerns of classroom teachers today.

For some students, appropriate inclusion might mean sitting in a general education class with a special education teacher or an instructional aide nearby. For other students, appropriate inclusion might mean special day class, with the exception of lunch, recess, art, music or assemblies.

"The key is to meet the individual needs of each student," says Patty Arvin, a special education teacher in Fairfield and a member of the Solano County Education Association.

"There is a tendency for people to define the 'least restrictive environment' as equaling full inclusion. I would prefer that we use the term 'appropriate inclusion' because that's what best meets the needs of the individual child."

When it comes to inclusion, there is no "one-size-fits-all" approach. For it to work, schools need to provide:

• Adequate support and services for students;
• Well-designed, individualized education programs;
• Professional development for all teachers - both general education and special education teachers - in the areas of cooperative learning, peer tutoring, adaptive curriculum, varied learning styles, etc.;
• Time for teachers to plan, meet, create and evaluate the students together;
• Reduced class size based on the severity of the student needs;
• Collaboration between parents, teachers and administrators;
• Sufficient funding so that schools will be able to develop programs for students based on student need instead of the availability of funding - or lack thereof.

While inclusion should always be appropriate, based on the needs of the individual child, that is not always the case. Some reasons include a shortage of credentialed special education teachers, fear of being sued by parents and lack of funding.

A child who was "inappropriately" included in a classroom made teaching extremely difficult for one sixth-grade teacher in Southern California, who wishes to remain anonymous. "The student's parents pushed and pushed the idea that he be included in a general education classroom," she says. "Even though the district administrators didn't think it was an appropriate placement, they went along with the parents because they were afraid of being sued."

The student, who had a severe cognitive delay and cerebral palsy, had a full-time aide who helped him go to the bathroom and fed him at lunch. Still, he made scenes in class when he needed to go to the bathroom and there were times when he didn't make it there in time. Other students didn't want to socialize with him because he wet his pants and drooled.

"His mother wanted him to do the same work as the other kids in the class, and be treated exactly the same way, but he couldn't hold a pencil or communicate effectively," says the teacher. "We'd be doing fractions and he would be scribbling."

The teacher got no training in how to deal with the situation. "I had more than 30 kids in my class, so all I could do was tell the aide what I wanted her to do." If she had had the proper support, training and resources, she figures she would have had a fighting chance to help him in a general education environment.

Such inappropriate inclusion is not an isolated incident. Teachers commonly refer to this practice as "dumping" or "dump and pray."

"Placing students in general education classrooms without the proper support and resources is happening a lot," says Arvin in Solano County. "Some people believe that full inclusion means putting special education students in a general education classroom and letting them go. But appropriate inclusion takes a great deal of planning, collaboration, sensitivity, skills training, resources and strategies. And lots of districts are not providing these things."

Inclusion - even when successful - isn't easy, says Arvin. "It increases the amount of work that a teacher has to do. And it increases the number of resources and paraeducators that are needed." On the plus side, she adds, if inclusion is done correctly, it can give teachers an opportunity to learn how to accommodate differences and modify programs so all children have a better chance at learning.

"It's very difficult when regular classroom teachers have not had special education training," says Sandy Pope, president of the Las Virgenes Education Association and a member of the state superintendent of public instruction's IEP Task Force. "Teachers may not know how to accommodate and modify. In many school districts, the approach has been, 'Here's your class list, and oh, by the way, you have this student who is going to be included. The IEP is in your mailbox. Please sign it.' Teachers don't have a clue how to even begin to do the job."

"I'm not anti-inclusion, but I'm against doing it poorly," says Pope, who has observed that inappropriate inclusion may occur more frequently in higher socioeconomic school districts because parents are savvier. "In higher-wealth districts, parents can afford to hire professional education advocates, who counsel parents on their rights. Their demands upon the system are far greater than in other districts - and they win because there is no clear definition in the IDEA about what constitutes a 'fair and appropriate education,' which is required by law.

"A parent can say, 'I want my child to be in a regular classroom and have a full-time aide sitting with him all day long,' and there is nothing the district can do to say no, even if it is unwarranted, out of fear of litigation. A parent can say, 'My child has poor motor skills and needs after-school arts classes paid for by the district.' It's gotten as silly as that. It's a very emotional, complex issue."

It is also extremely costly, says Pope. "In some circumstances, exorbitant, unfounded costs have caused districts to cut programs in regular education to balance the budget. Our special education budget is so huge that we've had to cut other programs to balance the budget. One of the proposed cuts is after-school tutoring."

In some cases, parents have claimed that the school has not met the needs of their child and requested that the district pay for private school. "In our district, we have had the district become responsible for paying full private school tuition - out of state - as well as paying for parents to visit the school in that state," says Pope.

The high costs can be self-perpetuating. "When a district settles out of court to avoid costly litigation, it creates the belief that the district has deep pockets to pay for special education. By word of mouth - and the Internet - parents hear about it. We have seen an increase in the numbers of new special education students moving into our district. In trying to hold the line, you can create worse problems."

Recently, the Los Angeles Unified School District voted to keep 17 special education centers open for students with severe disabilities rather than integrate nearly 5,000 students into the district's regular schools. In September, a federal judge approved a request by parents to keep the centers from being changed to regular schools, so the children could remain in the "protected" environment of special schools.

"I'm not against inclusion for kids who have mild learning disabilities, but some of my kids have to be diapered," says Rebecca Thomas, a member of United Teachers Los Angeles who works at the Salvin Special Education Center. "Who is going to do that?"

Thomas believes that in many cases of inclusion, the aide - rather than the general classroom teacher - becomes the teacher of the disabled child. This, in her view, defeats the purpose of mainstreaming.

"In my classroom, the kids don't need aides to give them one-on-one assistance, because the material is on their level," she says. "At our schools, we have full-time psychologists, nurses and speech therapists. Will the staff at regular schools be trained to help these kids?"

While advocates of inclusion say it fosters compassion and empathy in mainstream students, this is not always the case, says Thomas. "We've had children mainstreamed at the middle school level who were bright enough to be in regular classrooms, but it hasn't always worked out," she says. "For one girl who went to a middle school, it was very difficult. The kids made fun of her, stole her lunch money every day and called her a 'retard.' She understood these things. Eventually she came back to this campus. She and her mother just couldn't take it anymore. Here, she has friends and no problem mixing on campus."

The gap between special education and general education students tends to widen as students get older, says Ed Amundson, a special ed teacher at C.K. McClatchy High School in Sacramento and a member of the Sacramento City Teachers Association. This can make inclusion more challenging in the middle school and high school years.

"When you have a severely disabled child in an elementary school environment, the curriculum tends to be more holistic," explains Amundson. "Students are learning fundamental skills such as how to read, add and subtract. There are more similarities than differences between kids.

"By the time they get to middle school or high school, there is more emphasis on academic content than fundamentals. Older students are doing algebra and it is assumed students know how to read. Teachers may have to make accommodations for a high school child who reads at the third-grade level. As the gap increases, it becomes more problematic. Differences in social skills and abilities become much more pronounced."

Even if general ed teachers modify curriculum, the pace can be too rapid for special ed students. "In some classes they pick up bits and pieces, but they aren't getting as much information as they need. It's hard, because special education students really benefit from higher-level thinking skills provided in the general education curriculum. If you only give them vocational education, it's not fair to them. It presents quite a dilemma."

Traditionally, special education students tend to take more vocational classes in high school to prepare them for earning a living after graduation.

Now that most special education students will have to pass the High School Exit Exam to graduate from high school, there will be less incentive for special education students to stay in school and their dropout rate will most likely increase, worries Amundson. The test, which reflects the high academic standards adopted by the state, includes algebra. Of disabled students who have taken the exam, 90 percent have failed.

CTA and the Oakland School Board have filed papers supporting a lawsuit against the state by Lawyers with Disability Advocates Rights Inc. on behalf of the state's 173,470 disabled students. The suit charges that the exit exam discriminates against students with disabilities and seeks to delay the test until the state can ensure all students are being taught the standard curriculum and until there are alternate tests for students with disabilities.

As it is, "chances are that special education students won't pass the exit exam," says Amundson. I'm very worried about the effect this will have on the lives of my students."

Maybe, he suggests, inclusion has been taken too far.