Integration, self-contained classroom: What’s the bottom line?
December 26, 2007 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
The Manatee school district (Florida) plans to cut a specialized program, the Language Learning Impaired Delivery model, the December 26th Bradenton.com reports. 10-year-old Brent has thrived in the special program that is team-taught by a teacher and a language pathologist; the school district is pushing for more students to be integrated into regular classrooms:
“We’re constantly being hammered by the feds and the state to eliminate segregated classes, to put back in regular classes and zoned schools, especially in the last couple of years,” said Ron Russell, Manatee school district’s director of exceptional-student education.
If the district fails to integrate the classes, it faces increased audits from state and federal officials and decreased federal funding.In Manatee County, almost 20 percent of the school district’s 42,000 students are labeled students with disabilities. Most of them attend their neighborhood schools.A special-education student gets the district between $2,000 and $16,000 more this school year, depending on the severity of his disability.
For example, a school will receive $4,324 a school year for an average first-grader. That increases to $6,675 for a first-grader with certain disabilities.For a first-grader with a more severe disability, the district can receive $14,956.
Is integration always the answer for every student’s education, or is, rather, integration in some things and not in others? My own son is in a self-contained classroom in a public school in New Jersey and I do think that this placement has helped him to succeed academically and otherwise. On the top of my list of Things To Do in the New Year is to contact the school’s music teachers and start to talk about including Charlie in music class, if that might be possible: It’s time to try.
The best schooling experience Maizie ever had was in a classroom with eight other children of similar skill levels. This was in New Jeresy. I think it is a terrible plan to get rid of these smaller more specialized classrooms. Not all children can handle being mainstreamed nor should all children be.
Too bad congress has never fully funded IDEA and school districts are struggling because no one wants to pay property taxes. If the IDEA was fully funded as promised, the educational opportunites for our children would be exceptional, like them, I have no doubt.
There are rumblings from our district’s new superintendent to do more integration and remove many of the self-contained classrooms.
Never mind that one self-contained program was created by a set of determined parents. Or that while my son did do mainstream in elementary, his placements in regular language arts and social study classes were abysmal failures (he gained those credits by retaking the classes in modified Learning Disabled classes).
It is sometimes like they forget that IEP is short for Individual Education Plan.
Ooops… still recovering from Christmas… My son did okay in a mainstream elementary class, but he had pull outs for language arts.
In middle school and high school all of his classes were regular ed, EXCEPT language arts and social studies. During the first semester of senior year he was put into all regular classes, but failed. So he repeated his language arts and social study class back in the modified learning disabled class.
His community college classes are so far college prep catch up classes. He can learn, but at slower pace than the average student especially for language heavy subjects.
Must go get more coffee.
My son is mainstreamed with an aide and has pullouts for reading, OT, and social skills. The mainstreaming is a bit on the edge of success for him, and I do wonder whether or not a different model would be better for him.
Good luck with the music. I hope he enjoys it completely.
My son (with Asperger’s and ADHD) is in a partial-inclusion model which is self-contained (7 boys with similar skill levels) for 40 – 60% of the time (all reading and math) and integrated with aides for the other activities like science, social studies, gym, music, lunch. This has worked wonders for him and he is only about one year behind for reading and math. I am positive if he was not self-contained for reading and math that he would be much further behind. I am glad that he has some inclusion but he is not ready to acquire his core academic skills in a larger setting (not even if they have him a one-to-one aide.)
It’s going to get worse before it gets better. There is a big push on to restrict self-contained classrooms to students with retardation in my district; additionally, even kids with behavior problems are being kept in the schools. Federal/state audits an issue? Absolutely. The mandatory reporting of statistics to the state and the state’s reports to the Feds are driving this latest stuff.
Never mind that it might not be the best thing for the students.
IDEA supports the Least Restrictive Environment. What is “least restrictive” and how an environment “restricts” a student is different for each and every student. One example, my oldest is pulled out for reading services, but the regular ed teacher noted that he really enjoys reading in small group. So the pullout happens at a different time to accomodate him. He is also pulled out for “social skills” and while I think much of what they learn and how they learn it in that ’self-contained’ environment isn’t helpful to him, he FEELS confident and successful in the class with the few kids in there with him and has made some friends (who he wouldn’t meet otherwise because they aren’t in his grade level) and for that reason alone I think it’s worth him being in the small ’self-contained’ environment for 20 minutes everyday. You don’t have to be all self-contained or all included. You meet the needs of the student. I get aggrevated when schools make it seem like it has to be all or nothing. But I also think people need to write their legislators to push the funding issues (the funding Christschool mentions). Just complaining to the school is not enough.
It seems the “I” in “IEP” getting forgotten (very large sigh).
I would like to receive recommendations for integration to a regular class. My son, 7 years old, has been trying to integrate to a first grade regular class since September. He has not been that sucessful because he gets distracted very easily. The teacher tells me that a shadow (aid) is not recommended because he needs to do the things by himself. If somebody has gone through this, please let me know. I will have my EIP meeting in a few weeks and I would like to receive mails to defend my son.
I commend all of you parents for fighting the good fight. I am a teacher with 14 years of experience, but this is my first year teaching children with learning disabilities and other disabilities including behavioral in a self-contained classroom. My students and I meed during the first part of the morning and range from first grade to sixth grade. I agree with the comment about the various ages interacting positively. Today a sixth grader was helping a first grader read directions. They both felt positive. I also have lots of retired individuals that come and volunteer each day. My program’s biggest strength is that of building confidence. Once this is established, students thrive. Students need to know that they have wonderful talents and gifts. I want to encourage parents to read their parent’s rights. This is usually a state mandated practice to give parents a packet of rights. Parents have a lot of power because you are advocating for your children. Make a noise.
Good Bless