I remember 20-plus years ago when I was getting my graduate degree in Special Education. A buddy of mine getting his elementary education degree told me that his father, a school principal, said I probably shouldn’t waste my time getting a master’s in Special Education. He said that Special Education would eventually fade out of public Education. I was almost done with my master’s, so I figured I would have to take my chances with it. Besides, what other choice did I have anyways at that point?
I got a Special Education job and taught for about ten years. There were a lot of ups and downs over those ten years, and eventually, I decided that I wanted a change, so I got certified and switched over to high school history. At this point in my career, I remembered what my friend had said a decade ago and wondered if I was ahead of the curve on schools no longer needing special education teachers, even though it was ten years later. I asked if my job was now safe in my newfound home in the history department.
I loved teaching history, but life has funny ways that aren’t aligned with us and what we want. After a decade of teaching history, I got a first-class education on budget cuts, and my job was eliminated. Thankfully, I landed on my feet back in Special Education, believe it or not. It had been more than two decades since my old graduate school buddy told me that the need for special education teachers was disappearing. During the previous two decades, my friend had gone from graduate school to elementary school teacher to assistant principal to principal, just like his father had.
I went from graduate school to special education teacher to history teacher to back to special education teacher, as nobody else I know had done. And believe it or not, many particular education jobs were still available when I landed there for a second time. There was plenty of employment because there was a shortage of special education teachers in 49 of our 50 states. Imagine that… Two decades after, I was told that Special Education was going away, and I found that they still can’t seem to get enough special education teachers.
Fast-forward a few more years to today, and there is a new and exciting twist affecting Special Education called full inclusion. Now inclusion isn’t a new thing in our schools. Inclusion has a long, fascinating history in our schools. Six decades ago, there was the Supreme Court Case of Brown v. Board of Education. In 1954 the new law of the land became integrated schools for all races. Four decades ago, the ground-breaking law of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) began to take effect and help ensure that more than six million students with disabilities have the right to free and appropriate Education, which means they, too, get to be included in with the general education population.
To help this happen, schools create a Planning and Placement Team (PPT) that meets and discusses a student’s Individual Education Program (IEP) and then places the student in the appropriate educational setting based on the student’s needs and the law. The placement must also be in the least restrictive environment (LRE). I still remember my college professor describing the least restrictive environment in a short story that one would not bring a machine gun to care for a fly. Instead, one would get a fly swatter to care for a fly. In other words, if a kid’s disability can be dealt with in the neighborhood school, the kid doesn’t have to be sent across town or even to another town’s particular school.
Today, many schools are trying to improve this inclusion model and the least restrictive environment by going from a partial to a full-inclusion model. Los Angeles School District schools have moved most of their students out of their special education centers within the last three years and into neighborhood schools, fully integrated into elective classes like physical education, gardening, and cooking. They are also integrated into regular mainstream academic courses, but it’s usually not the same degree as electives.
Some school districts in Portland, Oregon, are a little further along than the Los Angeles schools that are just bringing special education students back from special schools and Michigan schools that are just beginning to try full integration of their students and eliminating most special education classrooms. Michigan schools say they want to break down the walls between general Education and Special Education, creating a system where students will get more help when needed. That support doesn’t need to be in a separate special education classroom.
Being a little further along, Portland makes an interesting case study. Many parents who initially supported integrating special education students into regular education classrooms in Portland now worry about how the Portland Public School System is doing. Portland is aiming for full inclusion by the year 2020. However, some of the teachers in Portland say, “Obviously, the special education students are going to fail, and they are going to act out because we are not meeting their needs… If there’s no right support there, that’s unacceptable, not only for the child but also for the general education teacher.”
Sadly, many parents and teachers have left the Portland School District, and many more are fantasizing about it because they feel the full-inclusion model isn’t working there how they pictured it would. A Portland parent said, “I would rather have my child feel successful than for them to be ‘college-ready.” She further states, “I want my children to be good, well-rounded human beings that make the world better. I don’t think they necessarily need to go to college to do that. Children are individuals, and when we stop treating them as individuals, there’s a problem.”
How schools should integrate special education students is the burning question of the hour. In my experience, some integration is not only possible but also a must. Many special education students can be in regular education classrooms with some support. A few years ago, I even had a non-speaking paraplegic boy in a wheelchair on a breathing respirator sitting in my normal social studies class. Every day his para professional and nurse rolled him in and sat with him. He always smiled at the tales I told of Alexander the Great marching across 11,000 miles of territory and conquering much of the known world at that time. By the way, Alexander the Great also practiced his inclusion model by encouraging kindness to the conquered and his soldiers to marry the captured territory’s women to create a lasting peace.
Other essential factors to consider in unique education inclusion are the much-needed socialization and the saving of money integration offers. Kids learn from other kids, and money not spent on Special Education could be spent on general Education, right? Hmm. If you noticed, I said earlier that many special education students could be integrated, but I did not say all or even most should be incorporated. Some students are going to take away too much of the teacher’s time and attention from other students, such as in the case of students with severe behavior problems. Putting severe behavior problems in regular education classes is unfair to all the other children there. Similar cases could be made for other severe disabilities that demand too much of the primary-stream teacher’s time and attention.
I’m not saying to try out a kid with a severe disability in a general education setting. But I am saying that schools need to have a better system of monitoring these placements and quickly remove students that aren’t working out and taking precious learning time away from other students. Furthermore, schools need to do this without shaming the teacher because the teacher complained that the student wasn’t a good fit and was disrupting the educational learning process of the other students. Leaving a kid in an inappropriate placement isn’t suitable for any parties involved. Period.
Over the last two decades, I have worked with more special education students than I remember as a special education teacher and a regular teacher teaching inclusion classes. I have learned to become highly flexible and patient and thus have had some of the most challenging and needy kids placed in my classes. I have worked miracles with these kids over the years, and I know that I am not the only teacher there doing this. There are many more out there just like me. But, I worry about that because teachers are so dedicated and pulling off daily miracles in the classroom, districts, community leaders, and politicians may be pushing too hard for the full-inclusion model, thinking that the teachers will have to figure it out. Setting up teachers and students for failure is never a good idea.
Regardless of how the financial and educational pie is sliced, the bottom line is that the pie is just too small, and our special education teachers and students shouldn’t be made to pay for this. Furthermore, I hope it’s not just the money they are trying to save while pushing this full-inclusion model forward because we should be trying to protect our children. As Fredrick Douglas said, “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”
In addition, I have been a teacher for too long not to be a little skeptical when I hear the bosses say that they are pushing for the full-inclusion model because socialization is so important. I know it’s essential. But, I also know that too many people are hanging their hats on that socialization excuse rather than educating our special needs students and providing them with what they need. There is no absolute socialization taking place here. I have seen special education students whose abilities only let them draw pictures sitting in honors classes. It just doesn’t make sense.
