After the note I posted about access trumping success, I’ve had some back-channel correspondence with colleagues who also lament the situation. Some of that correspondence focused on how important it is to determine students’ special education needs (i.e., complete an IEP) before determining the students’ placement (i.e., special school < --> full-inclusion). The discussion reminded me of a diagram that has appeared in each edition of Better IEPs by Barbara Bateman and Mary Anne Linden.
I created a slightly different version of that diagram and I’ve reproduced it here. The logic of the law, as Bateman and Linden explain, is that the parents and school people need to complete a sequence of tasks in order:
- Determine eligibility for special education services;
- If the student is eligible for special education services, create an IEP based on the student’s unique educational needs; and
- Then determine in what mix of least restrictive environments, those unique educational needs can be met.
Establishing a policy of, say, full inclusion for all students, and then setting out to determine how to deliver special services within that environment is simply bass-ackwards.
Link to the earlier post about access and success.
In thinking about the importance of student outcomes, I’m reminded of something philosopher Susan Neiman wrote in her excellent book:
“This is important: Not everything that’s thinkable is genuinely possible, and distinguishing between the two is what allows us to distinguish between demands for utopia and for responsible social change” (Neiman, 2008, p. 142).
Perhaps a problem for us in special education (as a field or discipline) is that we’ve become confused on this point made by Neiman—-confused our thinking about change with the responsible social change that is genuinely possible—-and let ourselves demand utopia rather than the responsible but much more modest social change we can actually achieve.
In Mother on Fire, Sandra Tsing Loh says of children with severe disabilities attending a special education school, “In a universe darker than ours, no one would give two figs for these kids. These children would be the discards” (2008, p. 240). Maybe we should be celebrating these kids’ education in a special school, not brooding about the fact that they’re not included in general education in a utopian universe. We might even come to terms with the fact that, if we’re not careful, lots of kids with less severe disabilities will become the discards of general education for whom the general public won’t give two figs.
I’m not suggesting that we give up dreaming, just that we get better at telling the difference between a dream and reality.
Loh, S. T. (2008). Mother on fire: A true mother’s story about parenting. New York: Crown.
Neiman, S. (2008). Moral clarity: A guide for grown-up idealists. New York: Harcourt.