Inclusionary Education for Students with Disabilities: 
Keeping the Promise












                  National Council on Disability
                                 










National Council on Disability

Inclusionary Education for 
Students with Disabilities:
Keeping the Promise

Publication date: December 30, 1994

National Council on Disability
1331 F Street, N.W.
Suite 1050
Washington, D.C.  20004-1107

(202)  272-2004 Voice
(202)  272-2074 TT
(202)  272-2022 Fax


The views contained in the report do not necessarily represent 
those of the Administration, as this document has not been 
subjected to the A-19 Executive Branch review process.





                            LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL

December 30, 1994

The President
The White House
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

The National Council on Disability is pleased to submit to you 
this report entitled, Inclusionary Education for Students with 
Disabilities:  Keeping the Promise.  This report details progress 
to date in achieving the goal of education in the least 
restrictive environment for students with disabilities in the 
Nation's schools, continuing barriers to meeting the letter and 
spirit of the law, and recommendations for increasing 
opportunities for students with disabilities to be educated 
alongside their non-disabled peers in regular neighborhood 
schools.

As you know, the right of students with disabilities to receive a 
free and appropriate education in the least restrictive 
environment is solidly rooted in the provisions of the United 
States Constitution, particularly the guarantee of equal 
protection under the law granted to all citizens.  This fact was 
recognized in 1975, when the federal Education for All 
Handicapped Children Act was enacted in response to a growing 
number of State-level court decisions which mandated this 
protection in the States.  This federal law was intended to 
provide financial assistance to the States in meeting their 
obligations under the United States Constitution and guidance in 
the delivery of special education and related services.  Since 
this time, the federal government has invested billions of 
dollars in this area and has substantially improved opportunities 
for millions of Americans with disabilities to become 
self-sufficient, tax-paying citizens.

We are confident that this report will enable policy makers at 
all levels of government as well as practitioners, parents, and 
students with disabilities themselves in reducing barriers which 
continue to impede more inclusive educational opportunities.  In 
addition, the report will serve as a vehicle for the 
dissemination of strategies for making inclusive education work.  
We believe that this will serve to further your goal ...to shift 
disability policy in America away from exclusion, towards 
inclusion; away from dependence, towards independence; and away 
from paternalism, and towards empowerment.  It remains an honor 
to serve you and to serve America in this vital work.

Sincerely,


Marca Bristo
Chairperson

(The same letter of transmittal was sent to the Senate President 
Pro Tempore and the Speaker of the House of Representatives).

NATIONAL COUNCIL ON DISABILITY MEMBERS AND STAFF

Members

Marca Bristo, Chairperson
John A. Gannon, Vice Chairperson
Linda W. Allison
Ellis B. Bodron
Larry Brown, Jr.
Mary Ann Mobley Collins
Anthony H. Flack
Robert S. Muller
Bonnie O'Day
Mary M. Raether
Shirley W. Ryan
Anne C. Seggerman
Michael B. Unhjem
Kate Pew Wolters

Staff

Speed Davis, Acting Executive Director
Billie Jean Hill, Program Specialist
Ramona Lessen, Executive Assistant
Mark S. Quigley, Public Affairs Specialist
Brenda Bratton, Executive Secretary
Stacey S. Brown, Staff Assistant
Janice Mack, Administrative Officer

Authors

Nancy L. McTaggart  and  Edward P. Burke


                          Acknowledgments

The National Council on Disability wishes to express its sincere 
appreciation to the members of its Education Committee for their 
hard work and valuable suggestions; to  Nancy L. McTaggart and 
Edward P. Burke, who analyzed thousands of pages of hearing 
transcripts, reports, court decisions, etc., in authoring this 
report; to Martin Gould, Ed.D., who provided valuable suggestions 
for organizing and editing the report; to Mark S. Quigley for 
report management and production; and to Diane Lipton for her 
technical review of the manuscript.  Most of all, the National 
Council wishes to thank the many consumers, parents, advocates, 
professionals, and other interested citizens who took the time 
from their busy schedules to share their experiences and concerns 
with us.


Members of the Education Committee as of August 1993

Mary M. Raether, Chairperson
Anthony H. Flack
John A. Gannon
Robert S. Muller
George H. Oberle, P.E.D.
Shirley W. Ryan














 
     By eliminating segregation in our schools, we are teaching 
     kids that it is okay to be different and, in fact, there is 
     beauty in diversity.  They will see that we all have 
     individual gifts and talents that we bring to life's table 
     and that this country's founding principles of life, 
     liberty, and pursuit of happiness apply to all of its 
     citizens.
                                        - Debbie Rodriguez














                         TABLE OF CONTENTS

Executive Summary............................................xiii

Introduction....................................................1

     Why Inclusion?.............................................4
     What Is Inclusionary Education?............................6
     
Examples of Successful Inclusion Across the Age Span............9

     Success in Early Childhood Inclusion.......................9
     Elementary School Success.................................11
     Secondary School Success..................................14
     Systemic Success..........................................14
     Inclusion in Assessment...................................16
     Findings..................................................18

Specific Strategies for Making Inclusion Work..................19

     Focus on the Whole School.................................19
     Curricular Changes........................................20
     Grading Policy Changes....................................20
     Instructional Changes.....................................21
     Creative Use of Resources and Personnel...................22
     Collaborative Planning....................................25
     Changes in Relationships..................................25
     Training and Staff Development............................26
     Time......................................................27
     Peer Preparation..........................................27
     Opportunities to Celebrate Accomplishments................28
     Findings..................................................30

Supports for Inclusion:  The Role of Individual Plans, Assistive 
Technology, Personal Assistance Services, and Other Supports...31

     Individual Plans..........................................31
     Assistive Technology......................................33
     Personal Assistance Service Providers and Paraprofessionals35
     Social Support............................................36
     Managing Support Services.................................37
     Findings..................................................39

Continuing Barriers Experienced by Parents and Students Seeking 
Inclusion......................................................41

     The Federal Government....................................41
          Legal Incentives to Segregate........................41
               Consolidated Applications.......................42
               Accounting Requirements.........................42
          The Failure of the Law's Enforcement Mechanisms......43
               The Role of Parents as Enforcers of the Law.....43
                    Due Process Hearing Rights.................44
                    The Complaint Process and Appeal to the 
Secretary......................................................48
               The Role of the Federal Government as Enforcer of 
the Law........................................................49
                    State Plans................................50
                    Monitoring.................................50
                    Annual Reports.............................52
     State Government..........................................54
          Finance Policies.....................................54
          Teacher Certification Requirements...................54
     School Districts..........................................55
          Some Districts Require Students with Disabilities to 
"Prove" That 
               They Belong in Regular Education Classrooms.....56
          Some Districts Arbitrarily Limit the Number of Children 
with 
               Disabilities Assigned to a Regular Education 
Classroom......................................................57
                    Collective Bargaining Agreements...........57
                    District Policies..........................58
          Some Districts Give Teachers the Final Decision About 
Whether 
               Particular Students with Disabilities Are Placed 
in Their                                                         
Classrooms.....................................................58
          Some Districts Restrict the Availability of Assistive 
Technology to 
               Students with Disabilities and Limit Its Use to 
Segregated 
               Special Education Programs......................59
          Some Districts Limit the Availability of Special 
Education Services 
               and Supports to Segregated Special Education 
Settings.......................................................60
          Some Districts Urge Parents to Agree to Segregated 
Settings Due to 
               a Belief That Children with Disabilities "Will Not 
Benefit" 
               from a Regular Education Setting................61
          Some Districts Refuse to Modify Programs and Practices 
to Accommodate Students with Disabilities......................62
     Informational and Emotional Barriers Facing Families......63
          Parents Have Little Information About the Failure of 
Segregated 
               Special Education Programs to Educate Their 
Children.......................................................64
          Parents Have Little Information About the Benefits of 
Inclusion......................................................64
          Parents Might Believe That Their Children Will Be 
"Safe" in 
               Segregated Settings.............................65
          Parents Often Lack Information About Their Child's 
Potential......................................................65
          Parents Might Believe That Children Will Receive Less 
Services 
               If They Are in a Regular Education Setting......66
          Parents May Be Reluctant to Move Their Children from 
Segregated                                                       
Programs to Regular Education Programs Perceived as 
               Having Problems of Their Own....................66
          Parents Lack Information to Challenge School District 
Decisions....................................................  67
          Parents Are Reluctant to Challenge Educators.........67
     Particular Barriers Facing Minority Individuals in Seeking 
Inclusionary                                                
          Education............................................67
          Children from Minority Groups Are Disproportionately 
Identified 
               as "Disabled"...................................68
          The Classification of Children from Minority Groups as 
"Mildly 
               Disabled" Is Often Erroneous....................68
          Children from Minority Groups Who Are Misclassified as 
Mildly 
               Disabled Do Have Problems in Learning and Require 
               Assistance in School............................69
          Children from Minority Groups Who Are Labeled "Mildly 
               Disabled" Are Often Harmed, Not Helped..........69
     Findings..................................................72

Financing Inclusive Education:  Barriers and Opportunities.....75

     The Creation of Incentives for Segregation in Illinois....76
          Decisions Illinois Has Made About Funding Policy.....76
               Only Larger Districts Can Get Direct Funding....76
               Private Schools Are Guaranteed a Certain 
Percentage of 
                    Federal Funding............................77
          Decisions Illinois Has Made About What It Will Fund..78
               State Funding of Special Education Personnel....78
               Transportation..................................78
          Policies Which Tie the Portion of Special Education 
Costs Allowed 
               to the Child's Educational Placement............79
          The System of Financing as a Whole Encourages 
Segregation....................................................80
     A System of Funding That Facilitates Inclusion in 
Pennsylvania...................................................80
          Pennsylvania's System of Funding Special Education 
Increased the                                                    
Inclusion Rates of Children with Disabilities..................81
          When Neighborhood Schools Have Control over Funding, 
They 
               Choose to Include Students with Disabilities....81
     A Flat-Rate System of Funding Is Not More Expensive Than a 
Categorical                                                      
Funding System.................................................81
     Findings..................................................83


Professional and Consumer Training in Inclusionary Education...85

     Professional Training.....................................85
          Specific Changes Needed in Teacher Preparation 
Programs.......................................................86
               Needed Structural Changes.......................86
               Needed Changes in Student Teaching Settings.....86
               Needed Content Changes in Teacher Preparation 
Programs.......................................................87
                    Instructional Methods......................87
                    Subject Matter Expertise...................88
                    Respect for the Human Rights of Children...88
                    Communication Skills.......................89
          Proposals for Systemic Change........................89
               Strengthen Special and Regular Education Teacher 
                    Preparation................................89
               Eliminate Differentiated Training...............90
               Create "Master" Teachers........................90
          Effecting Change.....................................91
               The Lack of a Federal Mandate...................91
               Needed Changes by States........................91
               Needed Changes by Universities and Colleges.....91
     Consumer Training.........................................92
          The Inclusive Classroom..............................92
          New Instructional Methods............................93
          The Educational Planning Process for the Inclusive 
Classroom......................................................93
     Findings..................................................95

The Effect of Inclusion on the Total School....................97

     Inclusion Can Improve the Performance of Students Without 
Disabilities...................................................97
          Changes in Teaching Methods..........................97
          Delivery of Related Services in the Classroom........98
          Restructuring Schools to Serve Children as Individuals99
     Preparation for Inclusive Adult Life.....................100
     Findings.................................................101

Recommendations...............................................103

     Implement Strategies for Success.........................103
     Improve and Expand Student Supports......................103
     Remove Administrative and Policy Barriers................104
     Remove Financial Barriers................................106
     Improve Consumer and Professional Training...............107


Appendices....................................................111
     
     List of Witnesses........................................113
     Definitions of Acronyms..................................121
     Hearing Agenda...........................................123
     Mission of the National Council on Disability............131


                         EXECUTIVE SUMMARY


     When Congress passed the Education for All Handicapped 
Children Act (P.L. 94-142) in 1975, it sought to bring students 
with disabilities into our educational system  who had previously 
been excluded, segregated, and underserved.

     It is the purpose of this Act ... to assess and assure the 
     effectiveness of efforts to educate handicapped children.[1]

     The right of students with disabilities to receive a free 
and appropriate education in the least restrictive environment is 
solidly rooted in the provisions of the United States 
Constitution, particularly the guarantee of equal protection 
under the law granted to all citizens.  This fact was recognized 
in 1975 when P.L. 94-142 was enacted in response to a growing 
number of State-level court decisions which mandated this 
protection in the States.  This Federal law was intended to 
provide financial assistance to the States in meeting their 
obligations under the United States Constitution and guidance in 
the delivery of special education and related services.  Since 
that time, the Federal government has invested billions of 
dollars in this area and has substantially improved opportunities 
for millions of Americans with disabilities to become 
self-sufficient, tax-paying citizens.

     P.L. 94-142 clearly required States to ensure that children 
with disabilities be educated with children who were not disabled 
and that other educational placements be considered only when the 
nature of the disability was such that education in regular 
classes with the use of supplementary aids and services could not 
be achieved satisfactorily. P.L. 94-142's successor, the 
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA, P.L. 102-119), 
contains similar provisions.  However, after nearly twenty years 
of requiring that students with disabilities be considered for 
removal from regular classrooms only after every resource has 
been considered to support them in these classrooms, it is still 
the case that extremely high numbers of students with 
disabilities are placed in segregated environments, often with 
minimal (if any) consideration of how they might be supported in 
the regular classroom.  

     One possible explanation for this is that these students are 
"too handicapped" to be served in regular classrooms.  Such an 
explanation may have had some currency in 1975.  However, since 
this time there has been a vast increase in knowledge regarding 
inclusive educational practices, an explosion of technology, and 
a vast expansion of civil rights afforded to persons with 
disabilities.  People who might have been considered "too 
handicapped" for an education twenty years ago are today working, 
living independently, and raising families.

     The notion that some students are "too handicapped" to be 
served in a regular classroom with supports is also belied by the 
wide variation in placement data from State to
State or even from school district to school district.  Why is it 
that 60% of the students with the label of mental retardation are 
served in regular classes in Massachusetts while only 1/4 of 1% 
do so in the neighboring state of New York?  Unless there is 
evidence of the fact that mental retardation is more serious in 
New York (and there is not), one must conclude that factors other 
than the nature and severity of the disability are involved here.  
A more fundamental question, however, is how-after so many 
years-can the government continue to allow Indiana, Louisiana, 
Florida, California, New York, Rhode Island, Illinois, and New 
Jersey to serve more than 90% of their students with mental 
retardation in separate classes and schools?

     It is clear that since 1975, the law of the land has been 
that students with disabilities should be provided with the 
opportunity to be educated "to the maximum extent appropriate" 
with non-disabled students, yet high levels of unnecessary and 
unwanted segregation persist.  In recognition of this disturbing 
fact, the National Council on Disability decided to explore this 
issue through direct hearings and a review of documents.   In 
August 1993, members of the National Council on Disability 
convened hearings in Chicago on the subject of "Making 
Inclusionary Education Work:  Overcoming Barriers to Quality."  
John Gannon, the Council's Acting Chairperson, was clear about 
the goals of the hearing in his opening remarks:  

     Our purpose ... is not to debate whether inclusion is a good 
     idea.  It is to discover that for students and families who 
     want inclusive education whether they can receive what they 
     want and how we might ensure that the education they receive 
     is of the highest possible quality. 

On August 4th and 5th, 1993, thirty witnesses presented 
information on a variety of complex topics relating to 
inclusionary education.  Numerous others concerned about the 
issue shared their thoughts and experiences during the open 
microphone sessions that followed each panel of witnesses.  The 
testimony was thoughtful, substantive, and useful in the 
Council's continuing deliberations about the implementation of 
inclusionary education.  This report presents our findings.  From 
the outset, it should be noted that this report is concerned with 
barriers to-and opportunities for-inclusive education for those 
students and families who wish to access the promise and 
provisions of the Individuals with Disabilities Act regarding the 
opportunity to be educated in the least restrictive environment 
with appropriate and individualized supplementary aids and 
services.  A survey of each chapter follows.

     Examples of Successful Inclusion Across the Age Span.  
Students with disabilities are being included at every level of 
the education system as a result of efforts by all of those 
concerned about them:  parents, advocates, teachers, and 
administrators.  In addition, the effectiveness of inclusive 
education is increasingly being evaluated by including children 
with disabilities in assessments of school performance. 

     Specific Strategies for Making Inclusion Work.  Much has 
been learned about the strategies that make inclusion work from 
the experience of others.  School staff that focus on changes in 
the school as a whole-curricular, grading policy, instructional 
strategies, use of
resources-have been successful when given time for training and 
collaborative planning and opportunities to celebrate their 
achievements. 

     Supports for Inclusion:  The Role of Individual Plans, 
Assistive Technology, Personal Assistance Services, and Other 
Supports. Some students with disabilities require additional 
supports in class-assistive technology, related services, and 
personal assistance providers-to receive an appropriate 
education.  In order for these supports to complement classroom 
activities, planning for students should include the scheduling 
of supports at appropriate times.  Students who will need 
assistance in later life will benefit greatly from learning to 
manage support services early in life.  

     Continuing Barriers Experienced by Parents and Students 
Seeking Inclusion.  The fact that students with disabilities are 
included in some schools is all the more remarkable given the 
vast number of barriers that exist from the Federal government on 
down.  In addition to the barriers faced by most students with 
disabilities, minority students with disabilities face even 
greater barriers to inclusion.

     Financing Inclusive Education:  Barriers and Opportunities.  
Of all of the barriers to inclusion, the single greatest factor 
seems to be the system of financing special education.  While 
Federal policy contributes to the problem, the real obstacles lie 
in State financing rules.  States vary in their approaches to it, 
though, and some formulas have resulted in increased inclusion of 
students with disabilities in regular schools.

     Professional and Consumer Training in Inclusionary 
Education.  The traditional division of teacher education 
programs between "special" and "regular" education perpetuates 
the segregation of student populations in schools.  New teacher 
education programs need to prepare teachers who are skilled in 
working with all kinds of students, knowledgeable of effective 
teaching strategies, and competent in the content matter they 
will teach.  Such programs would be of great benefit to the 
Nation in view of the ever-changing diversity of our culture.

     The Effect of Inclusion on the Total School.  One of the 
most striking effects of the implementation of inclusionary 
education is the contribution it makes to the education of all 
students.  Inclusionary schools improve the academic performance 
of all students because of improved teaching methods, a focus on 
meeting the individual needs of all students, and a redeployment 
of skilled personnel throughout the building where they are 
available to assist students who need their help.  Furthermore, 
students without disabilities are better prepared for their 
future in an inclusive world.

     Given the above, the National Council on Disability has 
developed the following findings and recommendations for making 
inclusionary education work.

                 Implement Strategies for Success

     When properly planned and implemented, inclusionary 
education improves the academic performance of all students, 
those with and those without disabilities.  In addition, it can 
provide benefits to children that go beyond the academic skills 
they acquire, preparing them to live and work in a diverse world.  
As schools implement inclusion, they should use the process as an 
impetus for school-wide changes that benefit all students.  
Schools should:

     1.   Adopt a school-wide curriculum and make modifications 
for all children who need them;

     2.   Employ experiential, interactive educational methods 
          proven to facilitate the learning of all students;

     3.   Redeploy personnel as needed to meet the needs of the 
          entire student population, and engage all staff in 
          working to ensure the success of all students;

     4.   Engage in collaborative planning with all of the 
stakeholders in the 
          education of children with disabilities;

     5.   Provide time for training, team-building, and planning 
so that staff and parents can work together for the changes that 
will benefit students;

     6.   Treat students with disabilities as much the same as 
          other students as possible (for example, having all 
          students begin school on the same day); 

     7.   Enroll children with disabilities in educational 
programs with their non-disabled peers at the earliest point 
possible, preferably in preschool;  

     8.   With the provision of reasonable accommodations, 
include students with disabilities in all system-wide assessments 
of educational performance and public reporting of the results, 
at the same time ensuring that their scores can be disaggregated; 
and

     9.   Publicly celebrate accomplishments.

                Improve and Expand Student Supports

     The successful inclusion of students with disabilities 
requires careful individualized planning regarding services and 
supports.  These may include assistive technology, peer 
preparation, personal assistance services, paraprofessional 
support, or social integration planning.  Schools should:

     1.   Create plans which include:

          a. needed adaptations of curricula;

          b. the provision of supports and other accommodations 
             such as sign language interpreters, accessible 
             formats, etc.; and

          c. the careful scheduling of the above in order to 
             enhance, not disrupt, the educational program of all 
             students in the classroom; 

     2.   Identify and develop/acquire assistive technology for 
those students who need it, making it available for their use at 
home and in school;

     3.   Prepare peers for the inclusion of a student with 
disabilities carefully, on an individual basis.  (Note:  
Sometimes, such "preparation" may actually hamper integration);

     4.   Plan the roles of necessary support personnel so that 
they do not foster dependence or segregation, and, where 
possible, assign the service                                     
provider to the classroom or the teacher, not to individual 
students;

     5.   Engage the families of students with disabilities in 
planning to facilitate the social integration of their children 
inside and outside of the classroom; and,

     6.   Teach students with disabilities to manage their 
support services so they can achieve independence.

             Remove Administrative and Policy Barriers

     In spite of the legal requirements that students be educated 
in the least restrictive environment, major barriers to the 
inclusion of students with disabilities in classrooms with their 
non-disabled peers still exist.  

In order to reduce these barriers, the Federal government should:

     1.   Significantly increase the monitoring and enforcement 
          of current laws and   regulations through State plan 
          reviews, consumer-oriented monitoring visits and 
          reports, issuance of appropriate sanctions for 
          non-compliance, Annual Reports to Congress, and the 
          establishment of a fair and effective parental appeal 
          process to the Secretary of the Department of 
          Education;

     2.   Disallow joint grant applications from multiple 
          education agencies, a policy which tacitly endorses 
          segregated special education programs;

     3.   Modify current accounting requirements in order to 
          eliminate incentives to place children in segregated 
          educational placements because of the ease of          
          compliance with current reporting requirements;

     4.   Clarify and publicize IDEA regulations which require 
          school districts to pay the legal expenses of parents 
          who exercise their due process rights to secure an 
          appropriate education for their children with 
          disabilities and prevail at the due process hearings;

     5.   Require districts to pay all related costs for 
surrogate parents who exercise due process rights to secure an 
appropriate education for a child with a disability;

     6.   Review the results of all due process hearing decisions 
related to inclusion and use these results as a guide to 
improving and enhancing inclusionary education policies and 
practices;

     7.   Develop standards and procedures for processing appeals 
by parents to the Secretary of the Department of Education.
 
State governments should:

     1.   Alter school finance policies to eliminate provisions 
          which encourage  segregation;
     
     2.   Amend their laws and regulations governing teacher 
          certification to require that all teacher candidates be 
          qualified and competent to teach all students at their 
          certification level; and

     3.   Prohibit local school districts from entering into 
          collective bargaining agreements which result, de 
          facto, in violations of the rights of students with 
          disabilities provided by Federal law. 

School districts should:

     1.   Rescind policies and practices that place and keep 
students in unwanted segregated placements;

     2.   Provide parents information about their rights to 
          inclusive placements for students with disabilities;

     3.   Eliminate the disproportionate identification of 
          minority children as needing special education and 
          rectify the disproportionate segregation of these 
          children by race and disability classification; and

     4.   Provide educational support services to children with 
disabilities who need them without requiring them to be labeled 
and placed in special education programs to obtain services.

                     Remove Financial Barriers

     Perhaps the single greatest barrier to the implementation of 
inclusionary education is the financing practices and policies of 
the various States.  Because States distribute both State and 
Federal dollars for special education, they have a great impact 
on the practices of local educational agencies.  Through a 
variety of funding mechanisms, they create disincentives to the 
inclusion of students with disabilities in regular classrooms 
and, in fact, often create incentives for districts to place 
students with disabilities in segregated educational programs.   
With changes in laws and regulations States can reverse those 
incentives in order to facilitate inclusion.  States should:

     1.   Send funding directly to the local school district, not 
          to intermediate level educational agencies where it is 
          often used to support segregated education;

     2.   Require the involvement of parents and persons with 
disabilities
          in local decision making;

     3.   Eliminate all requirements that funding be tied to 
          particular kinds of placements, expenditures, or 
          categories of personnel;

     4.   Remove discrepancies in funding allotted to local 
          educational agencies for children with disabilities 
          based on the educational placement-neighborhood school, 
          segregated special education facility, or residential 
          school;

     5.   Require districts to provide the neighborhood school 
          that enrolls a child with a disability the same amount 
          of money that would otherwise have been spent in a 
          segregated placement;

     6.   Ensure that principals have the discretion to use 
          funding as needed to improve educational programs in 
          their school and are held accountable for the 
          educational outcomes the child achieves, not just the 
          expenditures they have made; and

     7.   Allocate funding according to a "placement-neutral" 
          process, whereby funding is tied directly to a 
          student's needs, not to specific placements.  For 
          example, the option of a funding model based on a 
          presumption of a proportionate incidence of children 
          with disabilities in a school population rather than on 
          the labeling and counting of individual children with 
          disabilities might be appropriate in many districts. 

The Federal government should:

     1.   Consider allowing States the option of allocating funds 
          according to a "placement-neutral" process, whereby 
          funding is tied directly to a student's needs, not to 
          specific placements.  For example, the option of a 
          funding model
          based on a presumption of a proportionate incidence of 
          children with disabilities in a school population 
          rather than on the labeling and counting of individual 
          children with disabilities might be appropriate in many 
          districts.

            Improve Consumer and Professional Training

     Inclusion requires parents, teachers, and other school staff 
to work together in new ways.  Parents need to change their 
expectations for their children, both in terms of goals and 
individual programming, when they enter an inclusive classroom.  
Teachers need to work with a more diverse population, relying on 
support from parents and others to assist them and all their 
students.  Additional school staff, previously accustomed to 
others being responsible for students with disabilities, need to 
learn how to assist and support them.  

     Unfortunately, existing preservice teacher preparation 
programs are most often divided into special and regular 
education sections.  They perpetuate teacher attitudes, skills, 
and confidence which make inclusion difficult at best.  In order 
to change this situation:

The Federal government should:

     1.   Modify regulations relating to a Comprehensive System 
          of Personnel Development in order to require plans for 
          preparing teachers and related service personnel for 
          work in inclusive educational environments; and
  
     2.   Condition its grants to institutions of higher 
          education for personnel development on the elimination 
          of the division between special and regular education 
          teacher preparation programs and, instead, support the 
          preparation of all teachers for inclusive classrooms.

States should:

     1.   Change bureaucratic teacher certification requirements 
          which make it difficult and, in some cases, illegal for 
          some teachers to work with students with different 
          (dis)abilities;

     2.   Eliminate the linkages between funding allocations and 
          teacher certification; and

     3.   Monitor and reward colleges and universities for the 
          quality of the training they provide to teachers and 
          administrators in the area of inclusion.

Professional training programs should:

     1.   Require all teacher candidates to demonstrate 
          competency in teaching in inclusive classrooms.

     2.   Prepare all teacher candidates to:

          a. Use instructional methods which enable children with 
             and without                                         
             disabilities to learn efficiently and effectively;

          b. Understand when to use particular methods with 
             children with disabilities;
     
          c. Engender a high level of respect and safeguard the 
human and civil rights of all children;
     
          d. Be skilled in communicating and collaborating with 
parents; and

          e. Be knowledgeable of the subject matter they are 
             expected to teach.

     3.   Eliminate the division between regular and special 
education preparation programs.

Parent training programs should:

     1.   Assist parents in learning how to be effective 
advocates for their children in seeking inclusive placements and 
skilled collaborators when planning with educators for their 
children; 
 
     2.   Educate parents about the advantages of inclusion and 
how it relates to their child; and 

     3.   Familiarize parents with the instructional methods 
available to assist their children.

     With the passage of P.L. 94-142 in 1975, a new era of 
opportunity dawned for students with disabilities.  In response 
to the exclusion and abuse of children with disabilities, 
Congress promised quality education provided to the maximum 
extent possible in the presence of other non-disabled children, 
from their neighborhoods, from their families.  This promise has 
been broken in far too many instances.  It is our hope that the 
information contained in this report will assist Congress, as 
well as Federal, State, and local education officials, teachers, 
parents, and students with disabilities themselves in ensuring 
that the promises of quality inclusionary education can and will 
be kept.



                           INTRODUCTION

     We have to look around and see that there are no "special 
     needs" McDonald's, no "special needs" malls, no "special 
     needs" hotels.  In fact, there are fewer and fewer "special 
     needs" work sites and institutions.  It is an integrated 
     world in terms of ethnicity, language, and also ability.  
     What better place to start than when children are young and 
     in schools?                        
                                        - Dr. William Henderson

     In 1990, Congress declared that "the Nation's proper goals 
regarding individuals with disabilities" were "full equality of 
opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic 
self-sufficiency." [2]  In so doing, it affirmed its commitment 
to full equality of opportunity made almost twenty years ago when 
it found that 

     More than half of the [eight million] handicapped children 
     in the United States do not receive appropriate educational 
     services which would enable them to have full equality of 
     opportunity.[3]

To ensure the achievement of full equality, Congress in 1975 
enacted the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EHA),[4]  
creating a new Federal guarantee of "a free appropriate public 
education" to every child with a disability in need of special 
education.  To accomplish this end, it allocated and appropriated 
hundreds of millions of dollars, required integrated educational 
settings "to the maximum extent appropriate," created a 
preference in the law for integrated educational settings, 
prescribed a mechanism for planning each child's educational 
program, gave parents extraordinary powers to advocate for their 
children, and directed what is now the U.S. Department of 
Education to monitor the implementation of the law, to enforce it 
when it was violated, and to report back annually to Congress on 
its status.

     Almost twenty years have passed since the EHA was passed and 
an entire generation of children with disabilities, entitled to 
the "free appropriate public education" Congress promised, has 
completed school.   In spite of the law's existence, the goal of 
"full equality of opportunity" is far from being achieved.  

       Students with disabilities graduate at lower rates than 
        students without disabilities: 

          83% of all students complete school; 56% of students 
          with disabilities do so;[5]

       students with disabilities leave school with skills that 
        are inferior to their non- disabled peers: 

          Even those students with disabilities who took the 
          Scholastic Aptitude Test for college admission 
          consistently scored below students without 
          disabilities;  similarly, students with disabilities 
          who took the National Assessment of Education 
          Performance State Math Test consistently scored below 
          students without disabilities;[6]

       and, not surprisingly, students with disabilities are far 
        less likely to find a job: 

          The unemployment rate of people with disabilities 
          remains at 67%.[7]

     The improvement of special education policy has been a 
long-standing priority for the National Council on Disability.  
In 1991, the Council initiated the study, Serving the Nation's 
Students with Disabilities:  Progress and Prospects, to assess 
the status of special education.  Among its findings was 
irrefutable evidence of the failure of America's schools to 
educate children with disabilities "to the maximum extent 
appropriate ... with children who are not disabled," a 
requirement which has been in the law for more than fifteen 
years.

     In [the Office of Special Education Programs'] monitoring of 
     26 states for the period April 1989 to February 1992, 143 of 
     165 local education agencies visited were cited to be in 
     varying degrees of noncompliance with Federal and State 
     least restrictive environment[8] mandates.[9]

     Consistent with the original intent of Congress, the 
National Council on Disability believes that students with 
disabilities must have every opportunity to be educated with 
non-disabled students in order to achieve full equality in 
education and throughout life.  Thus, the Council undertook two 
additional efforts to study inclusive education.[10]  First, it 
conducted public hearings regarding inclusionary education.  
Second, in conjunction with the Pathways Awareness Foundation, it 
funded a study by the Education Development Center to explore 
in-depth the policies and practices of two states, Massachusetts 
and Illinois, as they relate to inclusion.[11]  

     In August 1993, members of the National Council on 
Disability convened hearings in Chicago on the subject of "Making 
Inclusionary Education Work:  Overcoming Barriers to Quality."  
John Gannon, the Council's Acting Chairperson, was clear about 
the goals of the hearing in his opening remarks:  

     Our purpose ... is not to debate whether inclusion is a good 
     idea.  It is to discover that for students and families who 
     want inclusive education whether they can receive what they 
     want and how we might ensure that the education they receive 
     is of the highest possible quality. 

On August 4th and 5th, 1993, thirty witnesses presented 
information on a variety of complex topics relating to 
inclusionary education.  Numerous others concerned about the 
issue shared their thoughts and experiences during the open 
microphone sessions that followed each panel of witnesses.  The 
testimony was thoughtful, substantive, and useful in the 
Council's continuing deliberations about the implementation of 
inclusionary education.  

     It should be noted that this report is concerned with 
barriers to-and opportunities for-inclusive education for those 
students and families who wish to access the promise and 
provisions of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act 
regarding the opportunity to be educated in the least restrictive 
environment with appropriate and individualized supplementary 
aids and services.  There continue to be individuals and groups 
who feel that the least restrictive environment for them is a 
separate placement. For example, some students who are deaf and 
their families believe that separate placements are preferable 
due to communication and cultural barriers that might exist in 
regular classrooms for deaf students.  However, even within the 
deaf community there are those who would prefer an inclusionary 
education.  All too often, these individuals have difficulty in 
obtaining inclusive
placements because of the failure of school districts to provide 
the supplementary aids and services that might make an inclusive 
education an option.  Insensitive and inflexible school district 
practices can result in the practice of "dumping," whereby 
districts refuse to provide appropriate and individualized aids 
and services to students with disabilities within regular 
classroom environments. This is a grave disservice to students, 
families, teachers, and other professionals. While this report 
details the widespread and continued ignorance regarding the 
rights of students with disabilities to be educated in the "least 
restrictive environment" and calls for a vast increase in 
inclusionary educational opportunities for students with 
disabilities, it in no way supports the elimination of services 
and supports which are both appropriate and individualized and 
result in the highest level of achievement for students with 
disabilities in the Nation's schools.

     The National Council on Disability supports the principles 
embodied in the IDEA which create a positive presumption that 
students with disabilities should be educated in regular 
education classrooms in their neighborhood schools.  
Unfortunately, inclusionary education as envisioned in the law 
remains an elusive option for a great number of students with 
disabilities.  The present report reflects the findings of its 
hearings, additional research it has commissioned, and its 
commitment to full implementation of the laws of this country 
consistent with the national policy goals articulated in both the 
IDEA and the Americans with Disabilities Act.

     The current administrative, financial, and political 
pressures which result in the unnecessary segregation of children 
with disabilities in the country's schools represent both an 
unintended distortion of the law and an unacceptable substitute 
for the provision of a free appropriate public education required 
by law.  The National Council on Disability strongly urges the 
Administration and Congress as well as Federal, State, and local 
officials, parents and students to implement the many 
recommendations made in this report in order to promote full 
equality of opportunity in America.

                          Why Inclusion?

     I don't want to leave this school.  It is not a good feeling 
     to know that you don't learn right.... Other people will 
     know because you have to ride that bus with the other 
     children who don't learn right or can't walk right.  That 
     tells everyone you are an empty moonhead.  It hurts to be 
     called names.
                                   - Shawn, as quoted by Carol 
Melnick

     Witness after witness testified to the pain and shame that 
segregation has caused people with disabilities over the years.  

     We need to understand, as a society, the tragedy that goes 
     on every day in our country when we segregate people through 
     our educational systems and through institutionalization, 
     just because they have disabilities.  We cut people's lives 
     short because they believe they have nothing to live for.
                                        - Max Starkloff

     For some, the above statements provide sufficient reason to 
end the practice of segregated education for students with 
disabilities.  However, there are other reasons as well:  
     The system of segregating children with disabilities from 
others in their school-age years perpetuates barriers throughout 
life.

     Each day I experience what exclusion has done.  People my 
     age see my wheelchair and cannot relate to me as another 
     human being.  The wheelchair is an assistive device that 
     increases my mobility, yet strangers who are otherwise very 
     intelligent and personable people panic and become 
     dumbfounded if they have to interact with me.  I'm seen as 
     special, exceptional, brave, and courageous just by 
     existing.
                                        - Kathleen Winter

     And when examined in terms of its value as an educational 
practice, segregated special education is extremely limited in 
its contribution to the achievement of our national policy goals.

     Kids with disabilities are expected to have upon graduating 
from high school ... these three things:  a job, friends, and a 
place to live.

     When we looked at the seven special ed schools [in Vermont], 
     we found that most of those kids ... "dropped off the cliff" 
     after graduation and became non-participatory in their 
     communities, where they did not have any friends, where they 
     did not have a job.  
                                        - Rick Douglas

Could those students have achieved more?  Larry Gorski from the 
Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities in Chicago explained 
the difference education in a regular school made for him. 

     In my graduating class of 1965 [from Lane Tech High School 
     in Chicago], there were 973 graduates.  Ninety percent of us 
     went to college and a lot of us graduated. 

     Now when I went to Lane Tech, I did not have a disability.  
     I became disabled a few years later in college.  Had I been 
     disabled at birth or early in life in the '60s, there was 
     only one high school in Chicago that I could have gone to [a 
     segregated high school]....  If you go back, you'll look at 
     their graduation records....  Out of about 90 or 100 
     graduates in 1965, one graduated from the University of 
     Illinois and one went one semester to the University of 
     Illinois, and that was it.

     What's the difference?  It was only by virtue of the 
     difference in the opportunity available to them and the 
     choices that they had and the options
     they had for their education and their future.  I wouldn't 
     be sitting here today, quite frankly, in this position were 
     it not for the choices and opportunities I had in my 
     educational background.  Unfortunately, many of my age 
     cohorts who have disabilities do not have those options 
     because they were disabled earlier in life.  That is 
     blatantly unfair and that's the reason why inclusionary 
     education has to be the primary goal of our educational 
     system.

                  What Is Inclusionary Education?

     Inclusionary education is the name given to the 
implementation of the requirement that children with disabilities 
be educated with children who are not disabled "to the maximum 
extent appropriate," as stated in the Individuals with 
Disabilities Education Act.[12] 

     In practice it means that the discussion of every child's 
education should begin with the assumption that the child should 
attend the neighborhood school he or she would attend if he or 
she were not disabled.

     What should happen is that you look at this kid and you say, 
     "You are in the intended zone for the Booker T. Washington 
     School.  That is where you are going to go.  What do you 
     need to be able to make that successful?"
                                        - Mark Partin

     Only if "education in regular classes with the use of 
supplementary aids and services cannot be achieved 
satisfactorily,"[13] may a placement outside of the child's 
regular class be considered.  And then more questions need to be 
asked in order to ensure that the decision made about the child's 
place of education is truly the appropriate one for him or her 
and not merely based on past practice and habit.  Finally, 
parental and/or student involvement is critical.  The decision to 
place a student in any setting other than a regular classroom 
needs to be based on an informed choice and non-prejudicial 
information.

     How would [the child] better be served in another setting?  
     What are the problems?  What are we not doing to make that 
     child succeed in the way you want?
                                        - Catherine Bushbacher

     Congress was wise in its formulation of the law.  Children 
are well served by focusing an individualized inquiry on the 
provision of specific supports and services needed to ensure each 
child's success in the regular classroom, rather than on the 
identification of an existing location which claims to have the 
services the child needs, necessitating his or her subsequent 
move to a segregated placement.

     When we sit down at the table to develop the IEP, we develop 
     an IEP with the child as a regular ed child first.  Then we 
     decide what specialized services they need outside of that 
     regular curriculum or whether somebody needs to come in and 
     assist this child to stay in that environment.  That is 
     inclusion!
                                        - Charlene Green

       EXAMPLES OF SUCCESSFUL INCLUSION ACROSS THE AGE SPAN

     A friend of mine has a child with Down syndrome.  It was 
     difficult for her to have the child go into an inclusive 
     classroom.  She was very nervous and concerned about it.  
     The first day that her Jennifer came home, she came in just 
     bubbling and said, "Mommy, I'm a real second grader now!"  
     That's the whole point: to let children like Jennifer know 
     they're regular kids, too.  
                                        - Margaret C. Daley

     Throughout the two days of hearings in Chicago conducted by 
the National Council on Disability, witnesses told stories about 
the successful inclusion of individual children with disabilities 
in their neighborhood schools, cited statistics measuring 
inclusion, and described successful programs which schools, 
districts, States, and the Federal government are implementing to 
ensure inclusion.  

     One of the most remarkable discoveries concerning the 
implementation of inclusion at this time is the remarkable 
variety of ways in which inclusion is being achieved.  In some 
situations, individual parents and educators are pressing 
individual schools to change to enroll a single child with a 
disability.  In others, educators are working together to make 
comprehensive changes in their individual schools to welcome and 
educate all children.  State and Federal governments and 
nonprofit organizations are also making major contributions to 
bring about systemic change.  All of these approaches to 
inclusion are occurring at every level in public education. 

               Success in Early Childhood Inclusion

     One of the most striking aspects of the brief story about 
Jennifer [above] is the fact that even by the beginning of second 
grade, she already believed that she was not a "real" student.  
Throughout the hearings, witnesses repeatedly stressed the 
importance of early childhood programs to ensure later successful 
integration.  Young children accept differences easily:

     You can put a kid with a disability in with a group of other 
     kids when they are all three or four [years old], and the 
     other kids will just think he's another kid.
                                        - Mark Partin

When children with disabilities receive the supports they need 
from a very young age in inclusive classrooms, their potential to 
develop the physical, psychological and social skills required to 
be full participants in their communities is greatly enhanced. 

     When I first met Joseph, he was a charming preschooler with 
     an exceptional vocabulary and an inquisitive mind that 
     needed nurturing.  Like any child, Joseph needed an 
     opportunity to explore his environment.  His mom fought and 
     won the battle to secure a motorized wheelchair for Joe at a 
     very young age.  A means of independent mobility not only 
     has practical aspects:  it can go a
     long way in fostering self-esteem and promoting 
     socialization.  His ability to keep up with the gang and, of 
     course, his wonderful personality helped him to form 
     friendships and prompted his first grade sweetheart to write 
     a wonderful story about "the magic wheelchair."  
                                        - Mary Beth Gahan
     
     The significance of early preparation for integration was 
reinforced by one mother's testimony about her child's 
educational experiences from an early intervention program 
through sixth grade. 

     My own daughter was born to Dave and I on March 3, 1980, 
     with Down syndrome and congenital heart disease.  She was 
     lucky to be born in the early 1980s because she is the first 
     product of infant stimulation and early intervention 
     programs.  It is Vicki's generation of students with 
     disabilities who will be the benchmark for how successful 
     good quality educational experiences can and should be. 
 
     When she was seven years old, Vicki was socially integrated 
     into kindergarten, yet based in a special education 
     classroom.  For the past six years Vicki has been a regular 
     education student using special education supports.  The 
     success of this venture shows in Vicki's strong social 
     skills and in her academic needs continually being 
     challenged and met.  She is going to be in the sixth grade 
     this fall with the same students who have known her since 
     first grade.  She is part of their class and they are a part 
     of her class.
  
     Successful integration for Vicki has come rather easily ... 
     due to having open-minded and creative elementary school 
     principals in our neighborhood school who have embraced the 
     philosophy of doing what is best for every student.  Vicki's 
     academic and personal needs have the same value as every 
     other student enrolled in her school.  The integrated 
     educational opportunities that she experiences today will 
     lead to Vicki being included into an integrated community 
     for the rest of her life.  
                                        - Carol Reedstrom

     In recognition of the importance of inclusion in the early 
years, one State has funded a nonprofit organization to 
facilitate inclusion in the preschool years.

     In Arkansas, a firm commitment to least restrictive 
     environment mandates and the spirit of collaboration have 
     taken root.  In 1987, Project KIDS was initiated by the 
     Association for Retarded Citizens (ARC) through a 
     Developmental Disabilities Planning Council grant focusing 
     on providing integrated preschool experiences for children 
     with developmental disabilities, birth through five years 
     old.  The project provides placements into cooperating day 
     care centers and offers ongoing technical assistance to 
     these Center staff.  
                                        - Dr. Martin Gould

                     Elementary School Success
     
     A four-year-old girl became disabled when a bicycle she was 
     on hit a pot hole on the street and overturned, causing her 
     to sustain a spinal cord injury.  The administration and 
     faculty were excited about this young girl coming to their 
     school.  Their enthusiasm was based on the added diversity 
     they will have in their student population, the opportunity 
     to make their physical facilities accessible, and the 
     opportunity to be a leader in inclusionary education.
                                        - Max Starkloff

     Inclusion at the elementary school level occurs for a 
variety of reasons.  Sometimes the presence of a single child 
with a disability may cause school personnel to change their 
policies and practices in order to include him or her.  In other 
situations, outside organizations may help many students with 
disabilities gain admission to their neighborhood schools.  In 
St. Louis, Missouri, a nonprofit organization is facilitating the 
inclusion of students with disabilities in school and out of 
school.

     For about seven years, Paraquad has operated a youth and 
     family program for both disabled and non-disabled children 
     as a transition program to inclusionary education.  This 
     program has grown to serve more than 75 families, the vast 
     majority being families of children with disabilities.  The 
     philosophy is built around leadership development, which 
     includes career exploration, boat trips, systems advocacy, 
     dog sled trips, and testifying before legislative bodies.  A 
     majority of the children who are disabled were in special 
     schools prior to entering the program.  They have now been 
     successfully mainstreamed. 
                                        - Max Starkloff

     In some cases inclusion does not come through changes in an 
existing school, but is incorporated into the initial design of a 
school. 

     In Frederick, Maryland, a bold new step was taken in 1992 
     with the opening of Twinridge Elementary School.  Following 
     its initial design plans, Twinridge staff included 
     neighborhood children with special education needs in 
     regular classrooms with necessary aids and supports.  
     Twinridge's inclusionary education program serves children 
     with a diverse range of needs from kindergarten to grade 
     five.  Twinridge is gearing up for its next year of 
     operation during 1993-94, and there is every sign that the 
     program's momentum and the school's staff are fueled for a 
     second year of success. 
                                        - Dr. Martin Gould

     Individual principals with a commitment to inclusion can 
lead staff to transform schools which previously segregated 
students with disabilities.  Two such principals described the 
effect of inclusion in their elementary schools.  Dr. William 
Henderson of the
O'Hearn Elementary School in Boston shared the effects inclusion 
has had on his school's student population:

     We serve students from the age of three up through grade 
     five.  Our school reflects the ethnic and linguistic 
     diversity of Boston and we also have a diversity in terms of 
     ability.  Approximately 25% of our students are considered 
     to have moderate to severe disabilities.

     Most of our students have done very well in terms of looking 
     at indicators of whether they have obtained the goals listed 
     in their IEPs, whether we are talking about standardized 
     test scores or looking at students' portfolios.
     
     Before O'Hearn became a full inclusion school in September 
     of 1989, we had vacancies at every grade level.  Now going 
     into the school year, we are fully enrolled at every grade 
     level and some of our waiting lists are five times our 
     capacity.  We are clearly one of the most popular schools in 
     Boston, one of the schools with the lowest transfer rates.

Inclusion has been advantageous for all of the children in the 
school and is recognized as such by the community of people who 
have chosen to send their children-with and without 
disabilities-to O'Hearn Elementary School.

     Another principal, Catherine Bushbacher, spoke of the 
strategies used at her Chicago elementary school to implement 
inclusion and the benefits students have received:

     The Peter A. Reinberg School has 727 students.  Of these 
     students, 290 have some special needs....  Almost every 
     level you can imagine as labeled, we serve.  Our class size 
     in Chicago is 28 in the primary grades and 32 in the upper 
     grades....  I can't change those numbers.  So when we looked 
     at our large number of special education children and our 
     large number of children that we would call the typical 
     program, we knew that something had to give.  What we came 
     up with is to teach cooperatively.  We use the class size 
     that's mandated by our contract.  We use the demands that we 
     have upon us to make our situation work, and I feel it works 
     very successfully....  Children are totally included from 
     kindergarten on up.

     Many of our teachers will tell you stories where children 
     who have a disability would help someone else.  We also have 
     a very large Polish bilingual population.  We have one girl 
     specifically who is Polish bilingual and deaf.  She would 
     automatically translate for a new Polish immigrant the 
     teacher's lesson for another child next to her into Polish.  
     So it became a matter of one child helping another....  We 
     started realizing that we were the ones arbitrarily stopping 
     these children from dealing with each other.
                              
In both instances, these principals worked with their staff and 
communities to transform their schools.  They moved from 
practices which segregated students with disabilities to full 
inclusion.  Information concerning the strategies they used to 
accomplish this is included in later chapters.

     Private schools, too, are including children with 
disabilities and, like O'Hearn, are finding that inclusion does 
not discourage parents from sending their children with and 
without disabilities to them:
     
     In St. Louis, there is an example of a successful program in 
     inclusive education.  The Bell School has had a program of 
     inclusion for several years which has drawn a great deal of 
     attention.  It is in great demand by parents with both 
     non-disabled and disabled children.  It has a diverse 
     student population which has done an excellent job of 
     ensuring that disability is included within this diverse 
     school.  
                                        - Max Starkloff
             
     While many children with and without disabilities benefit 
from the successful implementation of inclusion in individual 
schools, the impact of those successes goes beyond the individual 
school.  Frequently, successful implementation of inclusion in 
one school results in its adoption in others. 

     In Forest Lake, Minnesota, a collaborative university-school 
     district relationship established the Achieving Membership 
     Program.  The program began by returning three students with 
     disabilities to their home school, Scandia Elementary, 
     beginning in the 1990-91 school year.  In the 1992-93 school  
     year, five other elementary schools in the Forest Lake 
     District are now welcoming students with severe disabilities 
     into general education classes.  Annual activities which 
     support this growing collaborative relationship include:  
     integration and social network checklists for each student; 
     peer observations; peer, parent, and support staff 
     interviews; stages-of-concern questionnaires, ongoing 
     training opportunities; and monthly updates about 
     achievements from the program.  
                                        - Dr. Martin Gould


                     Secondary School Success

     Some critics suggest that inclusion is more feasible in the 
early years than at the secondary school level.  Although 
inclusion at the earliest stages of education is desirable, it 
can also be very successful when the child is integrated in the 
later school years.  One parent described her daughter's 
experience:

     My daughter has just finished her freshman year [in high 
     school].  This is the fifth year that she has been in an 
     inclusive educational environment.  She is the
     first child at our high school with significant multiple 
     disabilities who has been totally included.  I can only tell 
     you it's gone beautifully because I come from a district and 
     a co-op that honors the individual program for my child.
                                        -Linda Effner 

     As students reach secondary school, the issues related to 
their education broaden to include planning for life after high 
school.  Some students with disabilities require more services in 
adult life than their peers without disabilities and, thus, more 
careful coordination with adult service providers.  In Nashua, 
New Hampshire, the school district has worked with State and 
private agencies to facilitate the transition of students from 
inclusive classrooms to integrated work and life within the 
community:                                   

     In Nashua, New Hampshire, the public school system has 
     demonstrated a progressive commitment to an inclusionary 
     educational system-at the secondary level-which is paired 
     with the notion of natural supports in the workplace.  Like 
     their counterparts at the State level, Nashua-based agencies 
     in general and special education, vocational education, and 
     vocational rehabilitation have developed interagency 
     agreements regarding youth  transitioning from school to 
     work.  These agencies are developing common administrative 
     procedures, a common data base, and a common vision for 
     quality jobs for all graduates.  In addition, generic 
     community organizations such as the Rotary, Chamber of 
     Commerce, Family Support Council, and Town Council are all 
     working with a local transition/employment consortium to 
     support the district-wide commitment to inclusionary 
     education at the secondary level. 
                                        - Dr. Martin Gould

Systemic Success
     
     Alaska serves 99.83% of all its students in neighborhood 
     public schools....  New Mexico serves 91.5% of its students 
     with multiple disabilities in neighborhood public schools.
                                        - Dr. Martin Gould

     Although many of the examples cited above describe inclusion 
in individual schools, it is important to note that they are not 
merely isolated local examples.  Children with disabilities are 
included in large numbers in neighborhood public schools 
throughout some States.  In those instances in which the Federal 
and State governments are supporting inclusion on a system-wide 
basis, it is successfully being implemented.
  
     The Federal government has awarded Systems Change Grants to 
foster inclusion in a number of States.  In California, a grant 
to the California Research Institute supported the creation of 
the Peers Project.
 
     The Peers Project assisted more than 3,000 students with 
     severe disabilities to transition from segregated special 
     education centers to either age appropriate general 
     education campuses or classrooms.  The Peers Project 
     developed and disseminated project products, including 
     collaborative manuals with the California Research 
     Institute, to the 250 local education agencies receiving 
     Peers training and technical assistance as well as to the 
     200 LEAs that did not receive direct assistance.
                                        - Amy Bennett

Dr. Barbara LeRoy, the Project Coordinator for Michigan's 
federally funded Systems Change Grant for Inclusive Education, 
described the progress the grant has fostered through its four 
years.

     To date, over 1,500 students with moderate and severe 
     disabilities have been supported in moving from segregated, 
     special education-only schools and classrooms to full-time 
     placement in same age regular education classrooms as a 
     result of the project's outreach training activities.  In 
     addition to that, another 3,000 to 4,000 students [with 
     disabilities] have moved into regular classrooms as a result 
     of the inservice training we have been providing to 
     teachers.  Twenty school districts throughout the State 
     serve as model demonstration sites, while an additional 35 
     districts have implemented inclusive education on a limited 
     basis.  More importantly, the project has been instrumental 
     in assisting the State Board of Education and the State 
     Department of Education in establishing policies and rule 
     changes that support one system of education for all 
     children.
                                        - Dr. Barbara LeRoy

     The State of Indiana has demonstrated its commitment to 
inclusion by offering small grants to support pilot programs.  
The response to the initiative suggests that interest in 
inclusion is growing.

     Indiana inclusion pilot sites have been in operation for 
     this past year.  In the 1992 session of the Indiana General 
     Assembly, $200,000 was appropriated for up to 10 special 
     education inclusion pilot sites.  We had over 30 
     applications for the 10 sites, and these initiatives 
     involved single buildings to initiatives for up to 24 
     buildings in two adjoining school corporations.
                                        - Paul Ash


                      Inclusion in Assessment

     Although the inclusion of children with disabilities in 
classrooms with their non-disabled peers is a necessary and 
significant step forward, more is needed.  For many years, the 
educational achievements of students with disabilities have 
neither been assessed nor
reported in State and Federal evaluations. Such information would 
be useful in a variety of ways, just as it is for students 
without disabilities.  

     One use of standardized assessment results would be found in 
measuring the effect of inclusion on students with disabilities. 
One statistical measure of the impact of inclusion on students 
with disabilities is the relationship between the rate that 
students with disabilities are included in regular education 
programs and the graduation rates of students with disabilities 
in the same state.

     How can we tell if inclusionary education is working well in 
     terms of student outcomes?  One way is by examining reported 
     inclusion rates and graduation rates for all 50 States and 
     Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia.  The most striking 
     detail about the information is the comparison between the 
     six States with the lowest rates of inclusion and the nine 
     States with the highest rates of inclusion.  The percentage 
     increase in graduation rates between the two groups is 
     proportionate to the percentage increase in inclusion rates.
                                        - Dr. Martin Gould

     Another use for assessment results is in the evaluation of 
school performance.  Over the last decade many of the efforts 
focused on improving schools in order to improve student outcomes 
have included strong assessment components, yet some States and 
districts have excluded students with disabilities from those 
assessments.  The State of Kentucky has found a way to include 
them:

     Kentucky has demonstrated that it can include students with 
     disabilities in its statewide system of assessments and 
     reports.  Of all students with disabilities, 98% participate 
     in the assessments provided to non-disabled students.  The 
     remaining students participate in alternative portfolio 
     assessments which allow students to demonstrate their 
     educational competence through real life activities such as 
     using community supports, maintaining friendships with 
     non-disabled peers, demonstrating actual work experiences, 
     and communicating with peers.
                                        - Dr. Martin Gould

     In addition, some districts are including students with 
disabilities so that the effect on students with disabilities 
resulting from the restructuring of schools can be assessed, just 
as it is for students without disabilities, and needed changes 
can be made to improve their success.

     Of the many school districts trying to include students who 
     receive special education into statewide assessments and 
     progress reports, a few are notable:  Pittsburgh, 
     Pennsylvania; Johnson City, New York; and San Diego, 
     California.  These districts are noteworthy because they are 
     developing standards for all students at each grade level.  
     The standards include a clear vision of the types of 
     knowledge, abilities and skills students need when they 
     graduate.  This vision provides a clear direction for 
     decisions about curriculum and instruction, professional 
     development, and assessment.  Pittsburgh, Johnson
     City, and San Diego possess a clear focus on learning and a 
     desire to make changes, either in individual teacher 
     approaches or in district policies, to help all students 
     achieve.
                                        - Dr. Martin Gould

The inclusion of students with disabilities in assessment will 
enable schools to document the success of inclusionary education 
and to enable students with disabilities to increase their 
success in the future.  In addition, such inclusion will provide 
a valuable bridge to ensuring the participation of students with 
disabilities in school reform initiatives such as Goals 2000.
                             Findings

1.   Inclusionary early intervention programs and other 
integrated supports provided at a young age facilitate the 
development and inclusion of children with                       
disabilities throughout their school years.

2.   Children with disabilities who begin school with their 
     non-disabled peers are more easily integrated and accepted.

3.   Inclusion can also be successful in the upper grades.

4.   Families of typical children are not reluctant to enroll 
their children in successful inclusive schools.

5.   Inclusionary education may be introduced at the initial 
planning stages of a 
     school or at any later date and still be successful.

6.   Schools build on the inclusion of students with disabilities 
as they assist them in     planning their adult lives as workers 
and participants in integrated communities.

7.   Inclusion may be accomplished one student at a time, one 
school at a time, or
     simultaneously at many sites.  

8.   Inclusion has been achieved through the efforts of many 
     different organizations and individuals.  The impetus for 
     inclusion in particular sites has come from nonprofit 
     organizations, individual parents and educators, State 
     agencies, and the Federal government.  Its successful 
     implementation requires the efforts of all of those whose 
     actions and attitudes affect children.

9.   Assessments and reports of student performance are 
     frequently used to monitor and alter the activities of 
     educators and schools, yet students with disabilities are 
     frequently not included in them.  This omission suggests 
     that their achievements are not considered to be 
     significant.  The improvement of their educational outcomes, 
     frequently achieved by changes in response to assessment, 
     does not have the same priority as it does for other 
     students.  Fortunately, some States and districts now 
     include students with disabilities in their assessment and 
     reporting of educational achievement.



           SPECIFIC STRATEGIES FOR MAKING INCLUSION WORK

     The best introduction to inclusion is ... a model that 
works.
                                        - Charlene Green

     In inclusionary education models, students from segregated 
special education programs and regular education programs are 
brought together in classrooms in typical neighborhood schools.  
Prior to inclusion, students, staff, and parents in the separate 
systems are oriented to differing approaches in curriculum, 
grading, instructional methods, personnel responsibilities, etc.  
Because the existence of separate systems has been justified as 
"necessary" to ensure the success of all students, many questions 
can arise about how the two systems can be blended in such a way 
that all students will benefit. 
 
     Fortunately, there are models that work to learn from.  
Educators, parents, and staff at these schools have already begun 
to identify areas requiring change and have found some solutions 
to meet their needs.  While the witnesses who testified at the 
hearings had different frames of reference for their remarks 
about inclusionary education, many of their recommendations had 
common elements.

     One common element was a vision of inclusionary education 
that went beyond the mere physical integration of students in a 
classroom.  Ruth Usilton shared strategies that have been used by 
many districts to ensure that "all students are welcomed and 
valued learners in the schools and classes they would attend if 
not identified as disabled." 

     As schools begin to include students who have historically 
been excluded,  planning frequently focuses on changes needed to 
accommodate individual students.  While some components of the 
planning process must be individualized, many of the changes 
needed to enable students to succeed are not.  "Although many 
districts begin development of inclusive education one student at 
a time, it is, in fact, a building-level commitment to all 
students" (Ruth Usilton).  

     The content of needed changes and the processes used to 
arrive at these changes go far beyond the practices of an 
individual teacher in a single classroom working to accommodate a 
new student with a disability.  

                    Focus on the Whole School 

     In considering current concerns about the quality of regular 
education programs in America, witnesses argued that inclusion 
must be used as a vehicle for bringing about whole school reform.  
Dr. Donald Moore offered an approach to school improvement 
through inclusion, premised on the existence of a "school-level 
decision making mechanism ... through which parents have a major 
voice in setting school improvement priorities."    

     [One approach] is to eliminate the classification and 
     labeling procedure entirely for children with mild 
     disabilities....  Each school would be granted an allocation 
     of funds based on a presumed incidence of mild disabilities.  
     Safeguards would be needed to ensure that these funds 
     reached the school in the form of dollars that are 
     supplementary to a fair allocation of basic funds.  The 
     school would then be free to use these funds to help 
     implement their overall school improvement plan, which would 
     have as its overriding goal providing high-quality education 
     to all the school's children.  However, the school would not 
     need to show that they were targeting the funds generated by 
     the presumed-incidence formula to particular children.  
                                        - Dr. Donald Moore

While the adoption of many of the changes described below would 
benefit students with disabilities, they would also result in 
changes beneficial to the whole school population.

Curricular Changes  

     Perhaps the most fundamental issue in education for all 
children is what they learn.  Parents of children with 
disabilities and those without disabilities are rightfully 
concerned about the curricula used in classrooms.  When children 
with disabilities are educated separately from their non-disabled 
peers, school systems frequently create two different curricula.  
Catherine Bushbacher, principal at Peter A. Reinberg School in 
Chicago, discussed the need to change those practices and to use 
a different approach to meet student needs:

     We had a special ed curriculum and a regular ed curriculum.  
     Our special ed curriculum at times tried to model the 
     regular ed curriculum and put it on a small scale.  What we 
     had to do is to say we needed one curriculum and we needed 
     to support that curriculum and modify that curriculum for 
     each child on an individual level, whether the child had an 
     IEP or not.  We modified the curriculum according to what 
     each child needs.

Grading Policy Changes

     When two previously separated groups of children are placed 
in a single classroom, working from a single curriculum, 
questions arise about how students should be graded.  Schools 
have previously used different approaches to grading students in 
special and regular education classrooms.  In an inclusionary 
school environment an examination of the disparities in judging 
student performance levels is needed.
     
     Grades were a major problem for us.  How do we grade 
     children?  We used to believe that a child with a disability 
     shouldn't be failed; a child with a disability shouldn't be 
     given a bad grade.  We started saying, "Wait....  If we're 
     including these children and truly expecting them to do 
     certain things, we need to demand of them some things, 
     realizing what is in the IEP."  If a
     child with a disability at Reinberg chooses not to do his or 
     her homework, like any other child they need to suffer the 
     consequences.  The consequence of not doing your work should 
     be having your mother called, if that's appropriate;  maybe 
     earning an "F."  That's a major change for many of our 
     parents.  
     
     The parents were used to good grades, but those grades in 
many cases were gifts.  The parents changed their thinking into 
saying, "I know my child earned that."  They started developing a 
sense of pride in what their child could do and started realizing 
what their child could do and where they could fit in to help. 
Then we had to educate the parents about what we were doing and 
every parent bought it.  
                                        - Catherine Bushbacher 

Instructional Changes

     As all students begin to work from the same curriculum, 
educators must decide how they will assist all students in 
achieving the goals and objectives embodied in the curriculum.  
While one of the prior justifications for separate educational 
systems was the presumed differences in how students with and 
without disabilities learn (and, therefore, how they need to be 
taught), research now shows that the best practices for all 
students are more similar than different.

     We know that you cannot take the student who has Down 
     syndrome, tell him to sit in row 5, to open up the book to 
     page 33, to listen to the lecture, to fill out the 
     worksheets, to answer the questions in the textbook.  That 
     is going to be a bust.  It is questionable whether that kind 
     of education is good for any student.
                                        - Dr. William Henderson

Dr. Henderson, a principal in the Boston Public Schools, 
explained that techniques which work for students with 
disabilities are more often used in regular education classrooms 
than in special education programs and are viewed as best 
practices by general educators:

     Some of the changes in curriculum and instruction that work 
     particularly well in inclusive programs are the following:  
     whole language and literature techniques; hands-on 
     instruction (particularly in math and science); active 
     learning vs. passive (not just sitting back and listening, 
     but getting involved in projects); multi-cultural content 
     and processes (exposing children to a range of diversity, 
     people from different ethnic backgrounds, people from 
     different linguistic backgrounds, people from different 
     ability backgrounds in literature and the role models they 
     see); and also in our sensitivity as to how we approach our 
     learners.  There needs to be much more thematic or 
     integrated curriculum where we are not taking 7, 8, 9, or 10 
     different subject areas, but we are looking at a subject and 
     we are trying to look at it much more holistically, with 
     much more in-depth instruction and a lot more  cooperative 
     learning.  

     There are aspects found in some special education programs 
that are proving beneficial to regular education students.  One 
of those is the special education practice of providing students 
with learning opportunities in the community.  

     For over a decade now, those of us who are involved in the 
     preparation of professionals to work with students with 
     moderate and severe intellectual and multiple disabilities 
     and autism have sought to provide our teacher trainees an 
     understanding of the importance of instruction in natural 
     environments, such as grocery stores, restaurants, and 
     competitive employment businesses and agencies....  Because 
     of the increased competence and understanding some of us 
     observed in children with the most significant challenges 
     who had received instruction in natural environments, we 
     recommended that not only should children who have 
     disabilities receive instruction within the community, but 
     so, too, should children who are not labeled.  

     In the DeKalb schools, some general and special educators 
     collaborated in providing all children in particular 
     classrooms with instruction in natural environments. Parents 
     with children not labeled reported that the time spent 
     learning in the community with children with disabilities 
     were the school days their children favored most.  Parents 
     instinctively understood how important that was to the 
     education of their children.  
                                        - Dr. Sharon Freagon

All students can benefit from changes in the instructional 
methods occasioned by the implementation of inclusionary 
education.

Creative Use of Resources and Personnel

     Whatever decisions are made about curriculum and 
instructional strategies, new ways of deploying existing 
resources and personnel are needed to meet the varied needs of 
children in the classroom. The adoption of inclusionary education 
may be seen as an opportunity to review the current use of all 
resources.  Ruth Usilton suggested consolidating all of the 
resources available in the building and looking at how they can 
be used most effectively for all students.

     Nowhere is this approach more evident than in the area of 
personnel.  When neighborhood schools include children who have 
previously been excluded, some States provide these schools with 
resources that previously were dedicated to segregated settings.  
These additional resources may be used to lower the adult-student 
ratio in the neighborhood school.   

     We have taken the monies from the private placements that 
     we've pulled back and we have used that for staffing.  The 
     $80,000 we saved for transportation out-of-district, we have 
     used that.  
                                        -  Dr. William Henderson

An expanded discussion of the use of financial resources appears 
in the chapter entitled, Financing Inclusive Education:  Barriers 
and Opportunities.

     While the addition of previously unavailable resources to 
increase student-staff ratios is an appropriate policy decision, 
some schools have found other ways to redeploy resources.  
Cooperative teaching is one approach taken at the Reinberg School 
in Chicago:

     We have two teachers who constantly teach for the full day 
     in the same room.  We have been able to achieve that through 
     opening up cross-categorical programs, so the range of 
     disabilities is in most of the rooms, and letting the 
     teachers work many things out.
                                        - Catherine Bushbacher

Dr. Barbara LeRoy echoed this finding.

     By establishing classrooms in which a regular education 
     teacher and a special education teacher share equally the 
     planning, instruction, and evaluation of students, we have 
     found that a diverse group of students can be accommodated.

     In addition to the instruction provided by the classroom 
teachers, some students with disabilities also receive assistance 
from other professionals.  Traditionally, these professionals 
have removed students from their classrooms to meet with them.  
Several witnesses specifically warned against the use of 
"pull-out" programs as a way to educate children with 
disabilities who are otherwise included in regular education 
programs.  One described the way the programs operate and the 
problems they may create:

     We start at a very young age pulling kids out from the 
     general education curriculum for repeated-type practice 
     things which they are very bored with in the first place.  
     Then what happens is they keep getting further and further 
     behind because they are not hearing the same things that the 
     kids in general ed are hearing, so they have no alternative 
     but to come up short on all of those tests.  
                                        - Patricia McGill Smith

     Dr. Donald Moore used the following example to call for a 
clear definition of inclusion that would protect children with 
disabilities from such programs:

     We know that pull-out programs in Federal Chapter 1 
     [projects] have marginal effects, unless they are 
     aggressive, time-limited efforts to give students specific 
     skills for returning to the mainstream.  Thus, it is 
     critical that inclusion advocates should not simply move 
     children labeled as having mild to moderate learning 
     problems from self-contained classrooms to part-time 
     resource rooms and call this inclusion.  [Such students 
     should be] educated entirely in the regular classroom, with 
     extra staff available to assist teachers, mildly disabled
     children, and other children with learning problems in the 
     regular classroom setting.  Any pull-out program for such 
     children must be aimed at returning the child to the 
     mainstream within a designated period or must be justified 
     based on particular needs of that child that are sufficient 
     to overcome the presumption of full-time attendance in the 
     regular classroom.

     Some educators have been successful in "moving both 
consultative and direct related services into the regular 
education classroom" (Ruth Usilton).  The chapter, Supports for 
Inclusion, provides several examples of how related service 
providers can be used to support student success in regular 
classroom activities.

     The introduction of related services personnel into the 
regular education classroom has additional benefits that result 
from the teacher's ability to observe the specialist:  

     Our therapists, our speech pathologist, and our occupational 
     therapist work in the classroom.  One of our teachers 
     commented that it was one of the most marvelous things that 
     could occur because the mystery of what a therapist does has 
     been solved in many ways.  She now knows how to get the 
     child to say the letter, the sound of "s," and recognize the 
     letter "s."  Because she is seeing a specialist do it, she 
     now is beginning to feel confident in working with the child 
     in the classroom.  They can then talk about it later when 
     someone can look at the speech pathologist and say, "You 
     worked with that child.  How can I work with this child?"  
     And they begin to build their communication.  
                                        - Catherine Bushbacher

As important as the decisions are about curriculum, instructional 
strategies, and use of resources, the key to the success of 
inclusionary education is the process for making those decisions, 
according to many witnesses.


Collaborative Planning

     The most commonly mentioned requirement for successful 
inclusion is collaborative planning.  Although much is already 
known about changes needed to make inclusionary education 
successful, much is still being discovered.  Collaborative 
planning teams are making the greatest gains.  

     Teams must include regular education teachers and parents as 
     well as administrators, special education teachers, and 
     related services professionals.  The most creative 
     strategies to support students with disabilities in regular 
     classes and other natural settings have been developed by 
     teams of professionals and parents working in concert to 
     solve problems and craft effective supports.  
                                        - Ruth Usilton

The actual steps in planning for individual students is described 
in the chapter, Supports for Inclusion.

Changes in Relationships

     In order for collaborative planning to be successful, 
educators, school support staff, and parents, who may never have 
worked together in the past, need to develop new relationships.  
Some schools have recognized the need to reach out to all of the 
adults with whom students interact.
        
     No longer can we talk about special education teachers or 
     professionals who work with "those students over there" and 
     regular education teachers who work with "these students 
     over here."  People need to collaborate to pull their 
     expertise together to serve all students.  And it's not just 
     the teachers.  The principal, the custodian, the secretary, 
     the lunch monitors all have to demonstrate a commitment to 
     having students learn and succeed together.  

     I remember the first year I was at this school.  The biggest 
     problem we had was in the cafeteria because when the 
     teachers were on break and we went down there, the lunch 
     monitors told me, "We don't have to serve the handicapped."  
     And they were right. In the forty years this woman had 
     worked in the Boston Public Schools, she had never had to 
     serve "the handicapped" because they always came with an 
     aide or they always came with a teacher.  They were always 
     "taken care of."  That relationship means a change for the 
     entire school staff.
                                        - Dr. William Henderson 

Inclusion also requires changes in the attitudes of staff toward 
parents.  Dr. Barbara LeRoy argues that the family is the key to 
inclusionary planning:

     In inclusive education, the family is central to the entire 
     process, as the team recognizes and affirms that the family 
     is the one entity that has a sustained relationship with and 
     knowledge of the student and his/her needs.

Because of that recognition, parents have a different role in the 
IEP meeting:

     We've looked at our parents differently from a staff point 
     of view, too.  We include them much more in our planning 
     simply because they really are part of the team.  We've had 
     to look at ourselves as educators and say, "Yes, we do have 
     the training, but that's the parent."  That parent knows 
     that child better than anyone else could.  That is the 
     person that has to assist us in setting our goals.  So many 
     times at an IEP conference or prior to one, we'll say to a 
     parent, "What do you want this year?  If you were to list 
     one thing you want to accomplish more than anything else, 
     what would it be?  How can we help you do that?"  So, we've 
     included them much more as being almost the decision maker 
     in many cases and we become the facilitator for their goals.
                                        - Catherine Bushbacher

Training and Staff Development

     Training and staff development activities need to occur in 
order to change attitudes and to foster new skills so that 
inclusionary education can succeed.  Changes in long-standing 
relationships require training and staff development activities.  
Ruth  Usilton reported that "a great deal of the technical 
assistance and training provided through our project is focused 
on this single issue."  In fact, most of the specific strategies 
described above require changes in the skills and attitudes of 
staff and parents.  Those changes generally occur through 
training.  Paul Ash, of the Indiana Department of Education, 
described training as one of the two factors that have led to 
success in Indiana:
     
     Training was provided for all stakeholders and service 
     providers to enable them to have the tools to implement a 
     different way of delivering services and ensuring that 
     services and resources follow a child.
                              
     Training has been found to make the difference in some cases 
in teachers' attitudes and confidence about including children 
with disabilities in their classrooms:

     We have found in working with regular education teachers 
     that they are very willing to implement inclusive education 
     and to support students with diverse needs in their 
     classrooms, if they have had the opportunity to be 
     adequately prepared.  In many instances, teachers need to 
     learn about specialized equipment and student positioning.  
     For example, in transitioning a student with severe, 
     multiple disabilities to a third grade classroom, the 
     teaching staff needed just such an inservice training.  The 
     occupational therapist and physical therapist trained the 
     staff and provided a set of photographs to accompany the 
     student which highlighted how Nate should look when he was
     properly positioned on and in his various pieces of 
     equipment.  That set of photos was most beneficial to the 
     regular education staff in the early days of the school 
     year, as they became comfortable with their new 
     responsibilities and learned how to interpret Nate's 
     nonverbal communications to them.
                                        - Dr. Barbara LeRoy

Training is discussed at greater length in the chapter, 
Professional and Consumer Training.

Time

     Essential to all of the activities that may result in 
change-team-building, planning, creating, and training-is the 
time to do it.  Successful inclusionary schools build in time for 
their teams.
 
     Where teams are functioning effectively, decision-making and 
     problem-solving will also be most effective.  Doing this the 
     right way requires that team members have time to develop a 
     team relationship as well as time to get together on some 
     regular basis to problem solve.
                                        - Ruth Usilton

Successful programs are also making time for teachers to plan 
together:

     Part of what makes it work is the planning time that we have 
     set [for the staff] to work together.  By cooperatively 
     teaching, they have the same preparation times, so they can 
     sit down for several hours a week and plan and modify and 
     work together and share ideas and whatever it takes.
                                        - Catherine Bushbacher

One of the challenges to changing current educational practices 
is that of creating adequate blocks of time for educators, 
parents, related services personnel, and other stakeholders to 
get to know each other and to work together.

Peer Preparation

     One tool that has been used in particular instances to 
further the social integration of some students with disabilities 
is the preparation of their non-disabled peers prior to their 
arrival.  Witnesses testified that children are generally 
accepting of each other, and that peer preparation is needed only 
in certain circumstances.  Dr. LeRoy described one set of 
circumstances when a student with a disability would benefit from 
having an adult prepare his peers for his inclusion:
     
     We have found that peers do not generally need any 
     preparation, nor do we believe that this is a good idea.  
     However, in some instances, there is a good reason to 
     provide some training and education to the peers in the 
     classroom. 
     In all instances we allow this decision of peer preparation 
     to be directed by the wishes and concerns of the family.

     To illustrate this I will talk a bit about Chris.  Chris is 
     a student with severe cognitive, physical, and behavioral 
     disabilities. He is nonverbal.  As he was entering the 5th 
     grade classroom, he did not have any alternative means of 
     communication.  Chris has uncontrolled seizures and could 
     have up to 20 seizures during the course of one school day.  
     It was with regard to Chris' seizure condition that his 
     mother wanted to share some information with the typical 
     students in his classroom.  She visited the classroom, 
     shared a videotape on epilepsy, shared information about 
     Chris and particularly how his behavior communicates his 
     needs and wishes to her, and answered the students' 
     questions in regard to epilepsy.  Of particular importance 
     to Chris' mother was that the students understood that they 
     could not cause Chris to have a seizure and that he was not 
     in pain when one occurred.  In other words, she did not want 
     Chris' seizures to serve as a barrier to student 
     interactions.

Dr. LeRoy went on to share the most effective strategy for peer 
acceptance:

     Finally, with regard to peers and preparation, we have found 
     that the best peer support for students with disabilities is 
     to ensure that they begin school on the same day and at the 
     same time as the typical students in the classroom.  To do 
     anything else communicates nonverbally the message that this 
     student is different and not like his/her peers.

     In addition, preparation and on-going support might be 
provided through the participation of adults with disabilities 
from the community (for example, through Centers for Independent 
Living) who might serve as role models. 

Opportunities to Celebrate Accomplishments  

     Finally, none of these changes comes without effort and 
commitment.  The challenge of change needs to be acknowledged:

     When people are experiencing difficulties in developing 
     inclusive education, they [need to be] able to sort out the 
     difference between, "I am feeling down in the dumps because 
     inclusive education is too difficult," or, "I am feeling 
     down in the dumps because I am going through a change 
     process."  One of the ways to help people get through that 
     is to help them sit back and realize what they have 
     accomplished, celebrate their accomplishments, and develop a 
     sense of community around their goals and their visions.
                                        - Ruth Usilton

In addition, steps need to be taken in order to ensure the 
long-term acceptance of the changes necessary for the successful 
implementation of inclusion.   Clearly, achievements in creating 
and maintaining educational environments in which all students 
are welcomed and valued need to be recognized and rewarded: 

     If we are looking at the move to inclusive education as 
     leading us into a future where diversity is valued, and only 
     systems, not students, fail, then we must take some time to 
     celebrate.
                                        - Ruth Usilton
                             Findings

1.   Inclusionary education can lead to a focus on school-wide 
     changes to benefit all students.

2.   Inclusionary schools move toward a unified curriculum and 
     make individual modifications for all children who need 
     them.

3.   Inclusionary education can provide the impetus to blend the 
     best experiential, interactive instructional strategies 
     currently used in regular and special education to benefit 
     both students with disabilities and their non-disabled 
     peers. 
 
4.   Inclusionary education provides an opportunity for the 
redeployment of personnel in schools to improve the educational 
experiences of all children in the classroom.

5.   Changes necessary to implement inclusionary education will 
     be facilitated through collaborative planning by all of the 
     stakeholders in a child's education.

6.   Relationships among educators, school support staff, related 
     service personnel, and parents have to change in order for 
     them to collaborate in planning for children with 
     disabilities.

7.   Staff and parents will need training and support to make 
     changes in their attitudes and skills.

8.   For inclusionary education to succeed, time should be 
     allocated for training, team-building, and planning.

9.   Peer preparation is rarely needed in order to ensure the 
     successful inclusion of a student with disabilities.  
     Instead, students with disabilities should be treated as  
     much the same as other students as possible, such as 
     beginning school on the same day as others do.

10.  Accomplishments should be celebrated in order to reinforce 
     successful inclusionary practices.
                     SUPPORTS FOR INCLUSION:  
       THE ROLE OF INDIVIDUAL PLANS, ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY, 
         PERSONAL ASSISTANCE SERVICES, AND OTHER SUPPORTS

        
     Key to the implementation of inclusive education is the 
     underlying philosophy that students remain in the regular 
     education setting while supports move in and out of that 
     setting as dictated by the needs of the student.  In 
     essence, special education becomes a support service, not a 
     program.
                                        - Dr. Barbara LeRoy 

     Central to the successful placement of students with 
disabilities in regular education classrooms is the provision of 
appropriate supports.  The law itself allows the "removal of 
children with disabilities from the regular educational 
environment ... only when ... education in regular classes with 
the use of supplementary aids and services cannot be achieved 
satisfactorily."[14]  These aids and services may be different 
for every student.  The issues related to providing these aids 
and services will be varied.  Supports may include assistive 
technology, peer preparation, personal assistance services, and 
social support.  Successful inclusion begins, though, with the 
individualized planning process for each child.

Individual Plans

     One of the strategies for making inclusion work is the use 
of collaborative teams that plan each child's educational 
program.  "The crux of the IEP meeting must be to determine what 
needs to be done to support the student in the regular ed 
environment" (Rene Leininger).  Through a careful examination of 
the classroom curriculum, the team plans adaptations to the 
curriculum and the provision of supports and other accommodations 
(such as an accessible school environment) that are needed to 
ensure the student's success.  Ruth Usilton, director of Project 
Choices in Illinois, described the sequence of inquiries to be 
used in planning the child's educational activities:

     In each instance, the first question should always be, "Can 
     the student do the same activity with the same materials as 
     all other students?"  If this is not the case, there are 
     several examples of the sequence of steps or questions that 
     a team might address in identifying the least obtrusive 
     adaptations and supports for the student: "Can the student 
     do an easier [task] within the same activity?"  For example, 
     doing single digit adding instead of double digit, or 
     writing fewer words for the spelling test.  If this is not 
     an effective adaptation, the team should ask, "Can the 
     student do the same activity with adapted materials and 
     expectations?"  For example, a student might use a 
     calculator to add, or match words to pictures rather than 
     spell, or have identified one or two concepts for which he 
     or she will be responsible on the test instead of twelve.  
     If this level
     of participation is not successful, the team asks, "Can the 
     student do a different task or activity that is similar with 
     adaptations in materials and/or expectations?"  For example, 
     spelling functional words from the environment.  Or using a 
     highlighter to trace a bus route rather than identifying 
     distances on a map.  If this is not successful, the final 
     question asked is, "Can the student do a different task 
     related to a different theme elsewhere in the room, but that 
     is meeting a goal on the student's IEP?"

     There has been great progress in creative problem solving to 
     minimize the times of day that any student, regardless of 
     the challenging nature of his/her disability, is engaging in 
     learning that is separate from all other students.  In fact, 
     I would state that if "different activity" has no point of 
     convergence with the schedule of activities of the other 
     students in the classroom, the team that is strategizing for 
     that student should look again for an accommodation that 
     allows the student to demonstrate competence to his or her 
     peers, such as handing out the papers or functioning as the 
     time-keeper within a cooperative learning group.  Finally, 
     if there is no parallel or convergence activity that can be 
     a meaningful part of the student's educational day, the 
     final question is, "Can the student do a functional activity 
     as part of the school or in the community?"

     Identification of the curricular adaptations needed is only 
one step in the planning process.  With a range of children in 
need of diverse supports in a classroom, the next challenge is 
the management of services and personnel in a way that does not 
disrupt the classroom activities, but instead contributes to 
students' successful participation in them.  A comprehensive 
approach to planning ensures that supports will be in place when 
needed. 

     Individual support is not only discussed and identified for 
     each part of the day, but a schedule is written for when 
     those supports will flow in and out of the classroom.   Just 
     as we are developing a daily schedule for the student, we 
     also identify what are the inservice training needs, the 
     room adaptations, and the peer preparation supports for the 
     students.  These needs are listed separately, and each need 
     is analyzed to determine who should participate, what 
     activities should occur, and who is responsible for ensuring 
     that those needs are addressed.  Often the activities and 
     timeline are written into the IEP to ensure that those 
     things occur prior to implementation of the program.
                                        - Dr. Barbara LeRoy

     Instead of determining student needs in isolation and 
scheduling sessions with specialists to address those needs 
outside of the context of the classroom and its activities, 
specialists enter the classroom to assist students in those 
classroom activities which require the skills the specialists 
teach:

     Individual support is provided to students as dictated by 
     the activities of the classroom.  For example, the 
     occupational therapist may support a student in
     art or home economics class; the speech therapist may 
     support a student in language arts or social studies; and 
     the physical therapist may support a student in physical 
     education class.
                                        - Dr. Barbara LeRoy

Careful scheduling becomes critical to the delivery of services:

     You have to have the occupational therapist coming into the 
     classroom, not when there is a spelling test, but when 
     children are doing some kind of art or reading activity.  
     The speech therapist needs to come and work with the 
     classroom when it is appropriate for some talking to happen.  
     This is a scheduling issue which has to happen up front, 
     before it has become a problem.  
                                        - Dr. William Henderson
     
Assistive Technology

     Developments in technology and its application to meeting 
the needs of students with disabilities have enabled some 
students with disabilities to be more successful in school and in 
life than ever before. 

     We have found that assistive technology ensures that the 
     student with disabilities can benefit from meaningful 
     participation in activities.  Students are utilizing 
     computers to do assignments, touch screens to complete 
     worksheets, and communication devices to share their 
     thoughts and feelings.
                                        - Dr. Barbara LeRoy

That success, however, is dependent on its availability in 
regular education classrooms, and, unfortunately, districts are 
sometimes reluctant to move assistive technology from segregated 
special education classrooms and schools.   

     One of the first issues related to assistive technology is 
the identification and/or development of equipment to meet the 
needs of individual students.  One parent discussed the problems.

     It's difficult to find it.  It's not coordinated, at least 
     in my State.  I think our Department of Rehab Services has a 
     grant and that's its part of IDEA.  School systems have some 
     money, but, again, it's piecemeal here and piecemeal 
     there....  [If] one agency could take over coordination of 
     all the monies that are coming in for assistive technology, 
     all the vendors that provide it, parents could maybe have 
     access to it and school systems, also.
                                        - Linda Effner

In addition to coordinating information about the available 
options in new equipment, there is also a need to track used 
equipment.

     There is a need for a mechanism to recycle equipment that is 
     no longer in use as children outgrow that particular piece 
     of equipment or no longer need it.  Perhaps there could be a 
     district or a Statewide database that could help 
     professionals keep track of what equipment is available and 
     match it with a student who has those particular needs.
                                        - Mary Beth Gahan

A second issue is its cost, as one parent pointed out:

     [My] daughter ... just received a new wheelchair that cost 
     $19,200, which we call her "Apollo" because it cost more 
     than the sticker price on our car.
                                        - Linda Effner
     
     Once assistive technology has been identified or developed 
and obtained, its use in the classroom needs to be thoughtfully 
planned:

     Equipment, as with other supports, should follow the student 
     into the regular classroom.  Very intentionally, the team 
     focuses on the physical environment of the classroom to 
     ensure that students who need adaptive equipment are not 
     merely inside the classroom door, but are comfortably within 
     the room and the activities of the classroom.  We have found 
     that assistive tech ensures that the student with 
     disabilities can benefit from meaningful participation in 
     activities.
                                        - Dr. Barbara LeRoy
     
     Assistive technology can enable students to develop and 
demonstrate skills that would have otherwise been impossible.  
The student's progress, though, is dependent on that of the 
technology available.

     When Joe enrolled in one of Chicago's Options for Knowledge 
     programs, he was the first little person with a severe 
     disability to attend that school.  Joseph had significant 
     speech articulation difficulties due to cerebral palsy.  He 
     happened to be particularly gifted in the area of language.  
     The school he attended was a language academy where the 
     children in that school studied foreign languages. The 
     acquisition of an augmentative communication system that 
     spoke Spanish was a tremendous benefit to Joseph in 
     participating in class activities.  As Joseph's academics 
     progress, it is essential that the technology advances with 
     him.  To meet his changing needs, he will need a 
     communications system that will be able to expand as his 
     vocabulary increases and his knowledge grows.
                                        - Mary Beth Gahan   

Personal Assistance Service Providers and Paraprofessionals

     When students with disabilities are placed in regular 
education classrooms, additional personnel are sometimes assigned 
to the classroom.  They may have a variety of duties,
ranging from supporting students with assistive technology to 
meeting health care needs.  Dr. Barbara LeRoy spoke clearly about 
the need to have such personnel in the classroom in some 
situations:
     
     For many students with physical needs, a health care 
     paraprofessional is an important individual support that 
     should be provided without question.  It is not the 
     intention of inclusive education that regular education 
     teachers assume non-instructional responsibility for their 
     students.

Dr. LeRoy warned, though, that if improperly used, such 
paraprofessionals can actually impede the inclusion of students 
with disabilities.  She cautioned against the assignment of 
instructional paraprofessionals to particular students and the 
assumption that individual students will need their own 
paraprofessionals to work with them.

     The paraprofessional should be assigned to the classroom and 
     not to the student.  Assigning the paraprofessional to the 
     student has the potential to foster dependencies, to isolate 
     the student from peer interactions, and to lessen the 
     support for school restructuring.  While the 
     paraprofessional may have initial responsibilities 
     indirectly supporting the student with disabilities, it is 
     important that the team identify criteria for when and how 
     that direct support can be reduced.  It is extremely 
     dangerous to equate inclusive education with unconditional 
     paraprofessional support.  Just to reiterate: financially, 
     it will limit access for all students with disabilities to 
     regular classrooms; socially, it will discourage peer 
     friendships; and educationally, it will minimize regular 
     education's ownership for the students' outcomes.

Certain personnel, such as interpreters, may need to be with 
students on a continuous basis.  However, even in these 
situations personnel should avoid becoming an unintentional 
barrier to student-to-student interaction.


Social Support

     One of the concerns expressed by opponents of inclusionary 
education is the fear of the possible social isolation of 
children with disabilities in regular education classrooms.  

     We need to make sure that students are included in every 
     aspect of student life in the most natural setting possible.  
     Numerous stories have been told to me that school districts 
     would not permit non-disabled peers to assist disabled 
     students on an elevator, in going to class, by carrying 
     books, and so forth, because of the fear that someone might 
     get hurt, or the insurance prevents the school from allowing 
     this to happen.  They would instead assign an adult to walk 
     to class with the students, to assist them on the elevator 
     or with their books.  This only separates the student with 
     disabilities from their non-disabled peers.
                                        - Max Starkloff

However, merely removing barriers between students with 
disabilities and their peers may not be enough.  Careful planning 
is often required to ensure full integration:

     A focus on instructional and environmental support without 
     an emphasis on social support may put the student at risk of 
     mere physical integration without ever realizing inclusion 
     in the life and activities of the classroom and community.  
     In Michigan, a collaborative team spends an equal amount of 
     energy addressing the social needs of the student.  As with 
     curriculum and instructional support, social support 
     strategies focus on best practices for all students before 
     seeking more intense individualized methods.
                                        - Dr. Barbara LeRoy

A variety of strategies are used to ensure social integration in 
school, including "cooperative base groups" and student welcoming 
committees.

     A cooperative base group is a heterogeneous mix of students 
     (4-5 students per group) who support each other for a 
     minimum of one year and a maximum of four years.  The group, 
     which is facilitated by an adult (teacher or staff), focuses 
     on academic and social problem solving activities.... These 
     cooperative base groups are ideal vehicles for supporting 
     students with diverse needs within the culture of the school 
     and the classroom.  They provide individualized assistance 
     to the student with disabilities, without singling out that 
     student based on his/her educational label.  In addition, 
     the groups help typical students to understand that the 
     students with disabilities have similar interests and issues 
     and that they are more like typical students than they are 
     different.
                                        - Dr. Barbara LeRoy

Some schools assign students peers to help orient the new 
students to the school.  In others, peers are invited to 
participate in the planning process:
     
     For example, in planning for Jamie to come to a fourth grade 
     classroom, her peer sponsors were helpful in identifying 
     age-appropriate clothing, the "in" styles of lunch boxes, 
     and the most useful types of backpacks for the program.
                                        - Dr. Barbara LeRoy

     While social support activities within the school are 
important for the in-school life of the student with 
disabilities, they do not always carry over into the student's 
integration into the larger community.  The family's active 
participation is needed.

     [Our] researchers found that good social networking 
     activities within the school setting did not readily 
     translate into good social networks in the community.  We 
     have found that intentional planning and activities are 
     needed to ensure that community peer integration occurs.  
     Central to this process is the family.  The family has taken 
     the initiative in creating an environment that encourages 
     friendship building.
                                        - Dr. Barbara LeRoy

Some specific examples were offered:  

     Marcie's mother enrolled Marcie in Girl Scouts and offered 
     her home for the meetings.  In that way the other girls and 
     mothers learned about how Marcie's family interacts with her 
     and became comfortable with her equipment and unique needs.  
     In Tom's family, Tom's parents offered to host the 
     sleep-overs, providing video games which were adaptive for 
     Tom, good snacks, and opportunities for modeling appropriate 
     ways of interacting.
                                        - Dr. Barbara LeRoy

Managing Support Services
     While much of the discussion about support services focuses 
on them as a means for students with disabilities to achieve an 
appropriate education in a regular education classroom, Mary Beth 
Gahan argued that they were just as important for other reasons.  
She explained that the provision of support services and 
assistive technology in school is necessary so that students can 
learn to manage them, a prerequisite for achieving their 
independence.

     Ms. Gahan contended that independence for people with 
disabilities is not always understood and gave some examples to 
make her point.

     Independence is not synonymous with self-sufficiency, but 
     rather it is the ability to control one's own life by making 
     responsible choices from acceptable options.

     All of us use technology everyday:  garage door openers, 
     microwaves, all sorts of things.  We could walk to the 
     grocery store-most of us live within a few blocks away-but 
     what do we do?  We jump into our cars and we drive.  We 
     consider ourselves self-sufficient.  However, a person with 
     a disability who may choose to utilize a motorized 
     wheelchair to conserve energy or to maximize safety might 
     not be considered brave or courageous.  If I lived in a 
     neighborhood where the property values were really high and 
     I had someone come in to clean my house, I would be 
     considered affluent.  But because I have a disability and 
     someone comes in to do house cleaning for me, some view me 
     as dependent.

Once the management of support services is perceived as a skill 
necessary for achieving independence, then the importance of 
providing opportunities for children to learn how to manage them 
is evident:

     Independence is not an event; it's a process.  Children 
     develop and grow over time.  They need age-appropriate 
     experiences and activities that will help them learn to make 
     decisions and manage their own affairs.
                                        - Mary Beth Gahan

Once again, the participation of adults with disabilities from 
the community in this effort might prove effective in providing 
students with disabilities with successful examples of 
independent living.
                             Findings

1.   Successful implementation of inclusionary education requires 
individual planning for students with disabilities to determine: 

     a. needed adaptations of curriculum,

     b. the provision of supports and other accommodations, and 

     c. the careful scheduling of the above in order to enhance 
        the educational program for all students.

2.   Inclusionary education requires that assistive technology be 
     identified or developed for those students who need it and 
     thoughtfully introduced into the classroom.

3.   Students generally do not need to receive special 
     information or instruction about how to relate to students 
     with disabilities, but it may be helpful in those instances 
     where students might keep from making friends with a new 
     student for fear of hurting him or her.
 
4.   While paraprofessionals and personal assistance services 
     providers must be provided in some instances to facilitate 
     the inclusion of a student with a disability in a regular 
     education classroom, their role in the classroom should be 
     carefully planned so as not to encourage dependency or 
     segregate the student with a disability.  Furthermore, they 
     should not be assigned to the individual student, but 
     instead to the classroom or the teacher.  

5.   The inclusion of students with disabilities in regular 
     education classrooms does not always carry over into the 
     community.  Families need to be involved in planning to 
     achieve the full social integration of their children with 
     disabilities.

6.   In addition to being a means to achieving an appropriate 
     education, support services must be provided to students so 
     they can learn to manage them, an important step toward 
     achieving independence.

CONTINUING BARRIERS
       EXPERIENCED BY PARENTS AND STUDENTS SEEKING INCLUSION

     I have heard testimony from a number of people today who 
     talked about "This is a long, lengthy process," "We have to 
     study it more," "We cannot rush into...."  Frankly, this has 
     been a hot item for me since 1987.  It has been for years, 
     and ... while we sit back and study and think about and 
     wait, each year that passes is another year that a child is 
     going to be denied the opportunity to be included with their 
     non-disabled peers.  
                                        - Harvey Burkhour

     During the hearing sessions, parents, advocates, and 
educators testified about the wide range of barriers hindering 
implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education 
Act's requirement that children with disabilities be educated to 
the greatest extent possible with their non-disabled peers.  The 
problems they encountered ranged from systemic ones, those in 
which policies and existing organizational and physical 
structures act as incentives for segregation, to purely human 
ones, in which administrators, educators, and parents favor 
segregated placements because of their fears and lack of 
information.   They testified that the obstacles to inclusion are 
found at every level, from the Federal government to individual 
attitudes.

                    The Federal Government[15]

     Problems exist at the Federal government level both in 
policy and in practice.  Speakers outlined flaws in existing 
policy and current practice that obstruct the integration of 
children with disabilities in regular education classrooms. They 
focused on legal and regulatory requirements that encourage the 
creation of segregated programs and on the inadequacy or failure 
of the mechanisms in the law intended to ensure its full 
implementation.

Legal Incentives to Segregate

     Witnesses testified about two areas in the law and the 
regulations which operate as incentives for districts to create 
large, segregated special education programs.  One is related to 
the applications that districts must submit to acquire Federal 
funds and the second to the accounting rules that they must 
follow once they have received Federal funds.



Consolidated Applications

     The provisions of the law providing for consolidated 
applications from two or more school districts amount to a tacit 
endorsement of segregated programs.  The requirement that State 
education agencies (SEAs) make grants to local education agencies 
(LEAs) only when the LEA is entitled to a "minimum grant" of 
$7500 has forced small districts to band together to form larger 
entities in order to submit consolidated applications.[16]  With 
these shared funds, districts often end up creating and 
supporting segregated special education facilities where they 
send students with disabilities.  

     Furthermore, larger districts are also deemed eligible to 
submit consolidated applications "if the agency is unable to 
establish and maintain programs of sufficient size and scope to 
effectively meet the educational needs of children with 
disabilities."[17]
The language of the regulation itself suggests that programs 
separate from regular education are necessary to meet the needs 
of children with disabilities, a presumption in conflict with the 
law's stated preference for integration.  Often districts use the 
funds from consolidated applications to create cooperatives or 
other jointly managed programs.  The result is segregation.

     Generally, if cooperatives are operating programs, ... the 
     cooperatives operate more segregated programming than do 
     individual school districts.  What typically happens is that 
     if a district belongs to a cooperative and that cooperative 
     has a segregated program for a certain type of label of 
     disability, virtually 100% of the students from that 
     district with that label are sent to that program.
                                        - Mr. William Peters

Accounting Requirements

The accounting requirements of the IDEA induce States and 
districts to create large, segregated programs.  Districts favor 
the creation of segregated classrooms, schools, and institutions 
because compliance with the accounting requirements relating to 
documenting "excess costs" is easier to document if the money 
funds separate programs than if it supports children with 
disabilities in regular education classrooms where excess costs 
are more difficult to attribute solely to those children eligible 
for special education.[18] 


          The Failure of the Law's Enforcement Mechanisms

     Congress has traditionally deferred to State and local 
governments in the area of education policy.  When it has 
legislated requirements, it has done so very respectfully, 
primarily providing funds to assist specific students or to 
achieve particular national goals while continuing to honor the 
primacy of State and local governments in the implementation of 
new requirements.  However, when presented with data in the early 
1970s that one million children were "excluded entirely from the 
public school system,"[19] and more than four million more did 
"not receive appropriate public educational services because of 
actual or presumed disabilities,"[20] Congress departed from its 
traditional role.  

     In the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, 
Congress outlined specific aspects of the "free and appropriate 
public education"[21] each child should receive, and created an 
unprecedented series of mechanisms that would enable parents and 
the Federal government to enforce the rights of those children 
should States and local school districts violate them.  
Unfortunately, States and local school districts have resisted 
including children with disabilities in classrooms with their 
non-disabled peers and the mechanisms intended to overcome that 
resistance have largely failed to do so.

The Role of Parents as Enforcers of the Law

     Parents of children with disabilities have unique rights to 
challenge school district decisions about the appropriateness of 
their child's education.  If parents are opposed to their child's 
placement and are unable to resolve the problem at the school 
level, they have two options.  They may ask for a due process 
hearing and go to court if they do not prevail at that level.  
Alternatively, when parents disagree with a school district, they 
may file a complaint with the SEA.  If the parent believes that 
the SEA has mishandled the complaint, they may request review by 
the Secretary of the Department of Education.  These mechanisms 
for securing an appropriate education for each child are rooted 
in the belief that each child has unique needs, that the parents 
know those needs best, and that they may be trusted to advocate 
for the best interests of their own child.  

     Witness after witness testified as to the importance of the 
due process provisions of the law in assisting parents to obtain 
a free and appropriate education for students with disabilities.  
However, many witnesses expressed frustration regarding the 
exercise of due process provisions for a variety of reasons.  
While no one supported a weakening of due process provisions, 
many witnesses offered suggestions for clarifying and 
strengthening these provisions.

     Ironically, when parents are forced to challenge a 
segregated placement, they are put in the very position the 
presumption of the law was designed to preclude:  having to prove 
their child's right to be educated with his/her non-disabled 
peers.

     Ultimately, what it comes down to is parents, if they truly 
     want inclusive education opportunities for their children, 
     have to utilize the due process hearing and/or Federal court 
     to accomplish it.  What they basically must do is to prove 
     their child has a right to be in their regular school, which 
     is not how I or many other people read IDEA and the least 
     restrictive environment (LRE) provisions of IDEA, but that 
     is, frankly, how it is implemented in reality.  
                                        - Harvey Burkhour

In addition to this fundamental inconsistency with the intent of 
the law, there are other serious problems with reliance on 
parents' use of their due process rights for implementation of 
inclusion.

     Due Process Hearing Rights.  If parents believe that a 
district's actions related to their child's evaluation, 
placement, or other educational issue are in violation of the 
law, they may request a due process hearing to overturn that 
decision.  For a variety of reasons, parents are often unable to 
exercise their due process rights.
 
     1. Parents often lack knowledge of their due process rights.  
Reliance on parents to secure inclusive placements for their 
children presumes knowledge about the law that many do not have.

     Another significant barrier, and this is perhaps one of the 
     most significant barriers, is that parents were forced to 
     utilize due process proceedings to get their children 
     included.  In order to do this, first parents have to be 
     aware that it is an option and opportunity for them.  Most 
     parents were not aware of that.  Many are certainly not 
     aware that this is the preferred option under Federal law.
                                        - Harvey Burkhour

A second witness explained that she could not rely on district 
personnel to make her aware of her rights.

     I think the most irritating barrier of all for me was the 
     "silence barrier."  These educators know my children's 
     rights and yet never mentioned one to me.  I had to get 
     trained on my own, learn about rights, and then quote to 
     them from the law before my rights were recognized or 
     respected.
                                        - Debbie Rodriguez

     2. The expense of using due process mechanisms prevents many 
parents from doing so.   Even when examined in terms of its 
effectiveness in enabling families who are aware of their right 
to secure appropriate educational placements for their children, 
the due process
mechanism provided by law is unavailable to many because of the 
financial costs of using it.  There are two principal issues 
here:

     a.  It is very costly to challenge educators who oppose the 
inclusion of a child with a disability in a regular education 
classroom.  The first step is often a relatively informal due 
process hearing before a hearing officer, but even that can be a 
very expensive undertaking.
  
     Schools ... are perceived as being the experts in the area 
     of how best to educate any given child.  And so, in order to 
     have even a prayer of winning when a parent challenges [a 
     placement decision], they must hire their own attorney, they 
     must purchase independent evaluations, pay for the expert to 
     come in and testify at the hearing, and so forth.
                                        - Harvey Burkhour

If parents do not succeed in securing their child's inclusion in 
the regular classroom at the due process hearing level, they may 
end their challenge at this point, paying the costs they have 
incurred.  If they choose to continue, they may proceed to court 
at even greater expense.  
      
     By example, in Michigan it is common for private attorneys 
     to charge a minimum of two to three thousand dollars in 
     retainer just to sit down and talk to the parent and take 
     the case.  Then, above that they charge $120 an hour.  A 
     friend of mine who had the financial resources or somehow 
     found them through re-mortgaging his house spent $90,000 to 
     get his daughter included.
                                        - Harvey Burkhour

Few parents can afford such expenses.  While lawmakers took that 
into consideration and provided that parents may be reimbursed 
for their costs in certain cases, their efforts have not resulted 
in the intended elimination of the financial barrier.  

     b.  The law and the regulations require that "Each public 
agency shall inform parents that in any action or proceeding 
under section 615 of the Act, courts may award parents reasonable 
attorneys' fees."[22]   Although the U.S. Department of Education 
has issued a letter interpreting this provision to apply to due 
process hearings,[23]  most parents believe this provision 
applies only to those instances in which parents prevail at 
court.  They may continue to be unaware of their potential 
reimbursement for attorneys' fees incurred in due
process hearing actions since the Department of Education has 
informed public agencies that they need only "cross reference the 
statutory provision at Section 615(e)(4)(A)-(G) in the parent 
notice" to comply with the law.[24]

     In describing the Michigan case (above), the witness 
demonstrated the general public understanding that attorneys' 
fees are available only when parents go to court.

     Fortunately, he prevailed by not winning at the due process 
     hearing, but rather at Federal court and was able to recover 
     most of those costs from the school district, who, in the 
     end, spent in excess of $300,000 between repaying the 
     parent's attorney, paying for their own attorney and all the 
     other costs involved with the hearing. 
                                        - Harvey Burkhour

Although the outcome was favorable in this situation, the 
effectiveness of the safeguards contained in the law must be 
questioned.

     At least one group of parents attempted to address the 
barrier that legal fees presented to parents' exercise of their 
due process rights.  Rene Leininger reported on this effort and 
the reaction it provoked:

     Recently, the Illinois Planning Council [on Developmental 
     Disabilities] was asked by a group of parents to develop and 
     distribute a request for proposal designed to assist parents 
     who desire inclusion with small stipends for attorneys' 
     retainer fees.  It is common practice for schools to retain 
     attorneys to handle due process cases.  Parents know they 
     cannot prevail without legal assistance;  they don't even 
     try.  In many cases, they opt not to exercise due process 
     because of the cost.  

     The response to this has been absolutely astounding.  
Complaints have been lodged with the Illinois legislature, 
Congress, the State Board of Education, the United States 
Department of Education, the United States Department of Health 
and Human Services, the Office of Civil Rights, and the 
Department of Justice.  The amount of dollars spent to deter this 
small project to assist parents surely outmeasures the amount set 
aside for this project itself.  Conversely, there is never a 
question about vast sums of public dollars being spent to keep 
children with special needs from being included in the schools 
and classes.  
     
     Parents are the customers of our schools.  They must be 
afforded the resources to impact meaningfully on the systems that 
affect their children. 

     In addition to the obvious public policy issues raised by 
the inability of parents to access the rights available to them 
under the law, Ms. Leininger raises a policy consideration about 
the way all of these resources are currently used.  A significant 
amount of money is spent annually by parents and educational 
agencies to bring and oppose lawsuits related to the placement of 
children in regular education classrooms.  As Harvey Burkhour 
said, "The dollars, I believe, would be far better spent on 
educating children than in paying attorney's fees."

     3. This mechanism provides even less protection to children 
who are wards of the State.  Reliance on individual case advocacy 
to gain placement for a child with disabilities in a regular 
education classroom is particularly ineffective for children who 
are wards of the State.  Although for nearly twenty years the law 
has required that the States assign these students surrogate 
parents to represent them in all educational matters, many 
children still lack this critical safeguard provided by Congress.  
     
     Unfortunately, in Michigan, here we are eighteen years after 
     the Education for All Handicapped Children Act.  For its 
     part, Michigan only recently, in February of 1993, 
     recognized that surrogate parents are a reality and 
     developed a policy.  The fact is few, if any, children in 
     Michigan who are State wards have surrogate parents today.
                                        - Harvey Burkhour

     Even when children who are wards of the State have surrogate 
parents to advocate for them in educational matters, they have 
less protection than other students.  Surrogate parents who 
represent them in educational decision-making are expected to pay 
the costs themselves to go to due process hearing.  Those 
expenses are a significant barriers to parents with very strong 
ties to their children and a long-term interest in the outcomes 
of their education.  To surrogate parents, whose relationship to 
the child is far more limited, this barrier may be 
insurmountable.

     4. While individual children may be helped through the due 
process mechanisms, large numbers of similarly situated children 
remain in segregated settings.  Paradoxically, the strength of 
this mechanism-the right of parents to advocate for their 
individual child-has also been its weakness in terms of the 
ability of advocates to secure redress of pervasive patterns of 
segregation in a school or a district. 

     You can get in there and duke it out with the school 
     district and you can fix it for a particular child.  The 
     problem is that you fix it for that kid and there are 400 
     other kids in that school district who did not have an 
     attorney or could not face the emotional trauma of going 
     through a hearing, so they don't get it.
                                        - Mark Partin

The requirement that families challenge segregated placements on 
a case-by-case basis has impeded implementation of inclusion 
because of the real-world barriers that prevent many parents from 
undertaking the procedural steps available to them.

     Once again, it is important to note that the frustrations 
expressed by witnesses regarding the exercise of their due 
process rights reflected a need to further clarify and strengthen 
these rights.  One possible vehicle for accomplishing this would 
be through further supporting the work of the Parent Training and 
Information Centers currently funded under the law.

     The Complaint Process and Appeal to the Secretary.  Because 
of all the barriers to using the due process mechanisms described 
above, some parents choose to use the other option available to 
them when they are dissatisfied with a school district's action:  
they file a complaint with the State education agency.  If they 
are dissatisfied with the SEA's response as well, there is an 
appeals process available to them.  They may request review by 
the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education.  According to 
witnesses at the hearings, this procedure has historically been 
ineffective and frustrating.

     In response to a Maryland Coalition for Integrated Education 
     (MCIE) Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, DOE 
     provided MCIE with 173 requests for Secretarial Review which 
     it received from 1981-1991.  Of these requests, only two 
     were accepted for review (1.2%).  Further, DOE revealed that 
     it has no standards, criteria, policies, or procedures for 
     granting or denying Secretarial Review.  For that reason, 
     DOE's decisions on these requests are ad hoc, arbitrary, and 
     capricious:  the two cases it agreed to review are, in terms 
     of the kind of issues presented, indistinguishable from many 
     of those it declined to review.  
                                        - Mark Mlawer

Mlawer went on to describe the damaging consequences of this 
practice of the Department of Education:

     Consider for a moment two requests for review.  In one 
     complaint the SEA did not investigate half of the 
     allegations; in the other, the SEA used LRE compliance 
     standards far weaker than those of the IDEA.  DOE denied 
     both requests for review without explanation.  Hence, DOE 
     has effectively taken one of the two dispute options away 
     from parents:  SEAs have no incentive to confront school 
     districts on behalf of the rights of students with 
     disabilities through the complaint process because there is 
     no sanction if they do not do so.

     A second witness described his experience in filing a 
complaint with the Department of Education about the SEA's 
failure to fulfill its responsibilities under IDEA.  The result 
was the same.

     Six months after I filed the complaint [about the SEA's 
     failure to comply with IDEA], I received a letter back from 
     [the Director of the Office of Special Education Programs], 
     informing me that there was no process for review by her 
     office and that she was reassigning the issue to the State 
     Department of Education to investigate itself.  The whole 
     concept strikes me as the fox watching the hen house!
                                        - Harvey Burkhour

     Because parents are effectively discouraged from using the 
procedural mechanisms designed to enable them to enforce the law, 
the complaint review process by the Department of Education is 
largely inoperative.  Indeed, witnesses described a U.S. 
Department of Education that is indifferent to violations of the 
law it is responsible for implementing.

The Role of the Federal Government as Enforcer of the Law

     Some of the strongest criticisms made during the hearings 
concerned the consistent failure of the U.S. Department of 
Education to enforce the requirement that students with 
disabilities be educated to the greatest extent possible with 
non-disabled students.  For some speakers, the sheer 
disproportionality of children with particular disabilities in 
segregated classrooms was conclusive evidence of the Department's 
failure to enforce the law.  Carol Reedstrom put it this way:

     Why is it that sixty percent of the students with the label 
     of mental retardation meet this test of inclusion in 
     Massachusetts when only one-fourth of one percent do so in 
     neighboring New York?  ... A more fundamental question is 
     how can the Federal government continue to find the eight 
     States who educate more than 90 percent of their students 
     with mental retardation in separate classes and separate 
     schools in compliance with IDEA?

Speakers argued that the Department's tolerance of high levels of 
segregation undercuts the force of the law's preference for 
integrated placements and has undermined the efforts of parents 
and advocates to obtain education for children in integrated 
classrooms.  

     By shielding the extent to which LRE noncompliance accounts 
for State-to-State variability in placement rates in the 
Thirteenth and Fourteenth Annual Reports, DOE effectively 
encourages noncompliance.  
                                        - Mark Mlawer

     The Department's monitoring and enforcement activities have 
several components:  (1) it reviews and approves each State's 
plan for special education every three years; (2) it makes 
monitoring visits to States, issues reports, and takes action on 
its findings; and (3) it collects data which it shares with 
Congress in its Annual Report.  Speakers testified about the 
Department's failure to take action in the face of clear 
violations in each instance.  

     State Plans.  With information concerning the status of 
segregation and inclusion in individual States and the power to 
withhold Federal funds if plans are unacceptable, the Department 
of Education is in a strong position to evaluate plans submitted 
by States every three years for their likely effectiveness in 
reducing or eliminating high rates of segregation.  The 
Department can insist on changes that would improve State 
performance.  In fact, it would seem that this provision of the 
law was intended to be used in just such a manner.  However, 
there is little evidence that the Department of Education has 
done so, according to Mark Mlawer of the Maryland Coalition for 
Integrated Education:  

     Every State education agency is required to submit to the 
     Department of Education a State plan for special education 
     every three years in order to obtain funding under IDEA.  Of 
     21 plans submitted for fiscal year (FY) 1991-1993, 17 did 
     not comply with the IDEA in some respect.  Of 14 plans 
     submitted for FY 1992-1994, all 14 did not comply with the 
     IDEA in some respect.  Yet SEAs, in theory, have been 
     implementing the Federal special education law for 15 years.  
     Why are the majority of plans still defective?... [The 
     Maryland Coalition for Integrated Education] has been unable 
     to find any evidence that a State plan has ever been 
     disapproved.  Where is the incentive for SEAs to have 
     policies and procedures which comply with the IDEA?  

The Department's failure to take strong preventive action through 
its review of State plans would be less harmful if its actions in 
other enforcement activities compensated.  Unfortunately, this 
does not seem to be the case.

     Monitoring.  Several speakers discussed the Department of 
Education's monitoring efforts.  While there was some 
disagreement about the adequacy of the Department's investigative 
practices, there was absolute agreement about the Department's 
failure to use the information it has to achieve full 
implementation of the IDEA.

     The Feds have come to Texas twice, and both times we 
     organized a very good public hearing.  We were able to turn 
     out 500 or 600 people who gave their testimony into the wee 
     hours of the night.  The Feds took it all down, except for 
     one-she fell asleep during the hearing.  [They] took it back 
     to Washington and actually wrote a pretty good report.  
     "Here are the problems we found in Texas; here are the 
     things you need to do to fix the problems," telling that to 
     the State education agency.  There was no follow-up, there 
     were no changes, not even cosmetic changes the first time.  

     When the Feds came back the second time, again we organized 
     a public hearing, had the people show up, and again we got a 
     good report from the Feds.  There was some give and take 
     between the State education agency and also the special 
     education programs.  It was almost like they were cutting a 
     deal.  "We found these 29 violations.  If you will comply 
     with these 10, we will drop 19."  That is bad, and as far as 
     I can tell, that is the way the process works. 
                                        - Mark Partin

Another witness described specific failures of the Department's 
investigation of State practices as they relate to integrated 
educational placements.

     The Department of Education (DOE) does an inadequate job of 
     monitoring for LRE compliance.  Several areas of crucial 
     importance for inclusive education are not even probed by 
     DOE in its monitoring of SEAs.  For example, compliance with 
     a very important regulatory requirement-that unless a 
     student's IEP requires another arrangement, the student 
     attends his or her neighborhood school (34 CFR  
     300.552(c))-is not measured by DOE....  Additionally some 
     States have special education funding formulas which 
     encourage segregation....  Yet DOE compliance monitoring 
     does not seem to probe this issue.
  
     Moreover, DOE does not use meaningful sanctions against 
     States found to be in noncompliance.  SEAs must agree to 
     corrective action plans, but if the required corrective 
     actions do not correct the violation, all an SEA need fear 
     is the same finding the next time it is monitored.  This is 
     not a system destined to produce compliance, and, in fact, 
     all that DOE monitoring practices have produced is endless 
     noncompliance. 
                                        - Mark Mlawer

According to the National Council on Disability's report, Serving 
the Nation's Students with Disabilities:  Progress and Prospects, 
from April 1989 to February 1992 DOE monitoring teams found 150 
of 165 public agencies visited were found to be in noncompliance 
with one or more LRE requirements.

     It has become a farce in my opinion.  The Office of Special 
     Education Programs comes to Michigan to review Michigan's 
     implementation of the Federal law, and they issue reports 
     that say [Michigan is] not doing it.  Then they do not do 
     anything to make them implement the law.  They continue to 
     send millions of dollars to the State of Michigan to provide 
     special education services, while they know full well that 
     Michigan is violating the law.  I have a hard time 
     understanding that. 
                                        - Harvey Burkhour

     Annual Reports.  In its Annual Report to Congress, the 
Department of Education reports on the implementation of IDEA.  
Speakers viewed these Annual Reports as documentation of the 
Department's overall failure to implement the law:

     The other thing that I think is uniquely bizarre is the 
     Annual Report to Congress.  It's two inches taller every 
     year and it collects just "beaucoup" data from every State:  
     what kind of kids, where they are, what the State is doing 
     with them.  They spend a lot of money collecting it and they 
     spend a lot
     of money publishing it.   Anyone who wants it can spend 29 
     cents to get the Feds to send this thing and nothing is done 
     with it.

     One of the things that is clear from the Annual Reports-each 
     one-is that the laws are not being complied with, they are 
     not being implemented, they are not being enforced, and the 
     Feds have done nothing about it.  
                                        -Mark Partin

     An examination of the Annual Reports revealed both the 
Department's awareness of the high levels of segregation still 
practiced and of its changing analyses of the causes of that 
segregation.  In 1992, as Mark Mlawer pointed out, the Department 
noted the disproportionate rates of segregated placements by 
disability groupings in its Annual Report and offered the 
following explanation:

     Placement patterns vary considerably across States.  This 
     State variability is likely due to a number of factors 
     including actual differences in the populations and needs of 
     students, the roles of private schools and separate 
     facilities in the State, different State reporting practices 
     and interpretations of Federal data collection forms, and 
     State special education funding formulas.  (Fourteenth 
     Annual Report to Congress, pp. 22, 24) [emphasis added]

According to witnesses, these explanations were uniformly 
unacceptable.  Some even contradicted explanations made by the 
Department itself in earlier Annual Reports.  As early as 1989, 
the Department noted that the wide variation in the rates of 
integrated placements of students with particular disabilities 
must be due to factors other than differences in student 
populations.

     It is reasonable to assume that the needs of students are 
     broadly similar across States, and that random variation 
     would be rather small in the summary data on the large 
     number of students served by a State.  Thus, the extent of 
     variability suggests that factors in addition to the 
     characteristics of students determine educational 
     placements, and that the decision-making power vested in the 
     Individualized Education Program (IEP) process has not been 
     sufficient to overcome these factors.  (Eleventh Annual 
     Report, p. 29) [emphasis added]

     In addition to its earlier rejection of differences in 
segregation rates because of differences in student populations, 
the Department is also on record for having observed similar 
problems due to "differing State reporting practices and 
interpretations of Federal data collection forms" as early as 
1982.  It has been a topic of discussion regularly since then.  
Mark Mlawer explained the situation as follows:

     In 1989, DOE asserted that it had worked extensively with 
     States during the past two years to improve the 
     comparability of data (Eleventh Annual Report, pp. 29-30).  
     In 1990, DOE wrote of its intentions to "provide 
     individualized technical assistance to reduce the incidence 
     of misinterpretation of instructions;
     clarify reporting instructions by defining terms more 
     precisely; distribute and update a data dictionary to 
     include terms that are subject to alternative 
     interpretations; and develop decision rules that cover a 
     wider range of possible student placement patterns."  
     (Twelfth Annual Report, p. 29).

He then commented,

     It is impossible to predict how long DOE will continue to 
     claim that data reporting problems may be involved in the 
     large variation in placement rates across States, and 
     continue to assure Congress that it is working on the 
     problem.  

     Other explanations offered by the Department were seen as no 
more valid than the two the Department itself had previously 
addressed, but the omission of the more likely problem was even 
more troubling:
        
     In light of the monitoring findings on LRE discussed 
     earlier, it is curious that an obvious possibility-that LRE 
     violations are a major cause of the 
     variation in placement rates across States-is not even 
     mentioned as a possible explanation. 
                                        - Mark Mlawer

Mr. Mlawer then explained that the consequences of the 
Department's failure to act, documented in its own reports, is 
one of the greatest barriers parents and advocates encounter to 
the proper implementation of IDEA. 
     
     When parents encounter these obvious violations, their most 
     frequent questions to us are, "How is it possible that my 
     school district can violate the law and get away with it?"  
     "Why is it that I have to go through the expense and pain of 
     a due process hearing to win a right granted my child a long 
     time ago?" 

They are still waiting for answers.


                         State Government

     Although IDEA creates broad requirements for special 
education, States have discretion in many of the policies they 
create to implement the Federal requirements.  Some have done so 
in ways that facilitate integration; others have encouraged 
segregation.[25]  The most significant areas of policy relate to 
State special education funding practices and teacher 
certification requirements.

Finance Policies

     The single most important administrative factor in the 
decision to place a child in a regular classroom or in a 
segregated setting seems to be a State's formula for funding the 
education of a child with a disability.  While the witnesses did 
not claim to present all funding pattern alternatives in use 
across the country, they provided information about a range of 
financial policies that created significantly different financial 
consequences for districts based on their educational placement 
decisions.  Because of the significance of the State finance 
factor on implementation of the law, this area will be more fully 
examined in a later chapter.

Teacher Certification Requirements

     There was also widespread discussion of the relationship 
between the preparation and certification of teachers to work 
with students receiving special education and the successful 
implementation of the IDEA's preference for integration.  The 
division of teacher preparation programs between "regular" and 
"special" education in colleges and universities is a reflection 
of State teacher certification requirements, which prescribe 
different courses of study for teachers who work with students 
with disabilities and those who do not.  Some States require even 
greater differentiation in the preparation of teachers of 
students with disabilities, mandating separate certification 
requirements for teachers of children with particular 
disabilities.  These policies reinforce the segregation of 
special education students.  One speaker clearly explained the 
practical consequences of the increasing specialization of 
certification as it relates to inclusionary education:
     
     If I wanted to add a resource to a general education 
     classroom, and in that classroom I had total diversity in 
     terms of population (I had not categorically removed 
     students so that within that classroom I would find students 
     with learning disabilities, children with different levels 
     of mental retardation, students with physical disabilities, 
     etc.), and I wanted to add a resource that could support all 
     kids with that environment, the teacher would have to have 
     over a dozen teaching certificates, unless that person had a 
     general education
     certificate and the services were considered non-special 
     education services.  So, in essence, we end up taking the 
     path of least resistance and we create a program for each of 
     those labels.  Then we move the child to go off to see the 
     different specialists with the different types of 
     certification.
                                        - Dan Hurd
 
The logistical barriers to inclusion produced by such complex 
certification requirements could be greatly reduced by changes in 
such requirements by State Boards of Education.  Those changes 
would then be reflected in the organization of teacher 
preparation programs in colleges and universities which currently 
create additional barriers to inclusion, as discussed in a later 
chapter.  

                         School Districts

     For most parents and students the line between barriers 
caused by school district policies and practices and those caused 
by schools and individual educators is unclear.  Whether the 
resistance to inclusion is due to a policy adopted by a local 
school board, a rule followed by an administrator, or the 
recommendation of a principal or a teacher, the words and actions 
of educators and administrators at the school and district level 
are particularly formidable barriers to parents seeking inclusion 
for their children.

     These individuals are the individuals to whom parents look 
     for expertise and guidance.  They are the people who make 
     the decisions and they set the standards and they develop 
     the policies that effect all children.  The school and its 
     methods are in their hands.  Schools have it in their power 
     to effect change and to overcome the barriers to make it 
     work.  Yet parents and students who seek inclusionary 
     education are met in too many cases with resistance and 
     criticism.
                                        - Rene Leininger

     The resistance is revealed through a variety of arguments 
made by school personnel.  While some educators argue that there 
should be no blanket presumption that each child should be placed 
in the regular education classroom and that, instead, the 
determination of a child's proper placement must be made on a 
case-by-case basis, districts often reveal through their policies 
and practices that their decision-making is not based solely on 
the needs of the individual child, but on the basis of other 
considerations.  The resulting actions are inconsistent with the 
requirements of the law and impede the inclusion of students with 
disabilities in classrooms with their non-disabled peers.
  
Some Districts[26] Require Students with Disabilities 
to "Prove" That They Belong in Regular Education Classrooms

     Contrary to the law which presumes that students with 
disabilities should be in regular education classrooms "unless 
education in regular classes cannot be achieved 
satisfactorily,"[27] some districts have written policies that 
change the inquiry from one of whether a student can be educated 
in the classroom to one of whether he or she should be educated 
there. 

     One of the things that needs to change to overcome these 
     barriers to obtaining inclusive education is the assumption 
     ... that if a parent who has a kid with a disability wants 
     an inclusive setting, then they have to prove that that can 
     be done. 
                                        - Mark Partin

One example of this kind of policy is a special education policy 
in New York City.

     Yet another regulation requires that special education 
     students must have a level of achievement "comparable to the 
     functional level of the mainstream class to which he or she 
     will be assigned and that the special education student 
     shall exhibit socially and emotionally appropriate behavior 
     in order to function successfully in the mainstream" in 
     order to even be considered for inclusion in the general 
     education classroom.  This is by regulation, remember. 
                                        - Harvey Burkhour 

One witness provided a vivid example of the kind of 
considerations that motivate such policies and articulated the 
resulting loss to society:

     A teacher testified that she was against integrating her 
     severely disabled student because she didn't want him to be 
     fed in front of others.  I asked the woman what was wrong 
     with having the need to be assisted with eating, that Chad 
     should not have to be hidden away in order to eat.  He need 
     not be ashamed of his need, no more than I should be ashamed 
     of my need to wear eyeglasses.  His need for assistance was 
     just that, a need.  It is not a measure of his validity or 
     his worth as a person and certainly should be not be used to 
     judge his right to exist as an equal part of the community.  
     That young man could have the cure for AIDS or cancer, but 
     because our society isn't comfortable with his need for 
     assistance, simply because we segregate him, we waste him 
     and do a great disservice to our community by not even 
     considering the value of his input.
                                        - Kathleen Winter

      Some Districts Arbitrarily Limit the Number of Children
    with Disabilities Assigned to a Regular Education Classroom

     Some districts enter into collective bargaining agreements 
and write policies to arbitrarily limit the number of students 
with disabilities enrolled in a regular education classroom.

Collective Bargaining Agreements

     One of the district actions that most clearly undercuts the 
likelihood of a child's placement in a regular classroom is the 
certification of a collective bargaining agreement with a 
teachers' union that places limits on the presence of children 
with disabilities in regular classrooms.  

     School boards and superintendents have relinquished 
     decision-making for students with disabilities.  Parents 
     have been told the unions will not allow students to be 
     placed in regular classes.
                                        - Rene Leininger

In some cases the agreements do not specifically prohibit the 
placement of students with disabilities in regular education 
classrooms, but "limit the opportunities for students with 
disabilities to be included in general education classrooms" 
(Harvey Burkhour).  One school district in Michigan was cited as 
an example.

     There was a system in the contract language whereby if 
     students who were special education eligible ... spent 10 or 
     more hours a week in a general education setting, they were 
     counted as two students.  The contract language also had a 
     limitation on the total class size.  As a result, we 
     identified a number of students who were denied the 
     opportunity to attend their neighborhood school because, 
     while they were appropriate perhaps to go into a 5th grade 
     or 3rd grade classroom, there was only room for one student 
     in that particular room.  They counted as two and were 
     forced to ride a bus to some other location in some other 
     city.  
                                        - Harvey Burkhour

In this case the district's action was challenged and the 
students won placement in their neighborhood schools.

        A complaint was filed on their behalf with the Office of 
     Civil Rights.  The complaint was substantiated.  The 
     district has been ordered not to take part and not to honor 
     this particular part of the collective bargaining agreement, 
     and I have been told by many other administrators and 
     parents from around the State of Michigan that this is a 
     common language in one form or another in collective 
     bargaining agreements.
                                        - Harvey Burkhour

Many of those other districts, however, are never challenged.

     The Council understands that these agreements and policies 
which limit the number of children with disabilities are often 
demanded as a result of the lack of support some school districts 
provide to students with disabilities in regular classrooms 
and/or a lack of training provided to teachers.  The adoption of 
many of the recommendations contained in the present report would 
help to enhance supports to students and training for teachers, 
and, thus, greatly reduce (if not eliminate) these exclusionary 
practices.

District Policies  

     Some districts have developed policies with the same 
restrictions as the collective bargaining agreement described in 
Michigan.  Harvey Burkhour testified that the New York City 
Public Schools have such a provision in Special Circular No. 1:  
"Among the regulations that are included is one that limits the 
number of mainstream students per classroom."  The specification 
of limits on the number of students with disability labels 
allowed in regular classrooms is only one of the policy barriers 
to inclusion that districts have enacted. 

Some Districts Give Teachers the Final Decision About
Whether Particular Students with Disabilities Are Placed in Their 
Classrooms

     Although the law is clear that the decision about a child's 
proper placement should be made by all stakeholders in an 
individualized education planning meeting, some districts have, 
in effect, given teachers "veto" power.

     Finally, there is a regulation that allows general education 
     teachers to challenge the placement of any special education 
     student in their general education classroom and provides 
     assurances of due process protection for the teacher.  This 
     can really lengthen the process and make it very difficult 
     and cumbersome for the child to ever get into an inclusive 
     setting.
                                        - Harvey Burkhour


Some Districts Restrict the Availability of Assistive Technology 
to 
Students with Disabilities and Limit Its Use to Segregated 
Special Education Programs

     According to the law, children with disabilities may be 
removed from a regular education program "only when the nature or 
severity of the disability is such that education in regular 
classes with the use of supplementary aids and services cannot be 
achieved satisfactorily."[28]  Yet, some districts have 
restricted the availability of assistive technology that would 
enable a student to succeed in a regular classroom.  

     Some fail to acquire or develop the technology students 
need:

     The big problem is that although it works a lot of the time 
     to use something that has already been developed, like an 
     existing communication board, sometimes you have a kid that 
     is so unique you have to come up with something new.  Then 
     it really is a battle to get somebody to pick up the tab for 
     it.
                                        - Mark Partin

     Some districts intimidate teachers to keep them from 
recommending assistive equipment that would enable a student to 
be more successful in the regular classroom:
     
     I am aware of dedicated and caring teachers who are 
     threatened by loss of their job if they recommend equipment 
     for students, equipment that they know their students need 
     in order to successfully compete in their educational 
     programs.  Such a practice of threatening teachers, in 
     preventing them from recommending things that are best for 
     their students, has to stop.
                                        - Mary Beth Gahan

     Once a student has obtained appropriate technology, the 
battle may not be over.  The district may even make the 
technology available only in segregated settings. 
     
     One of the things that I have seen school districts do is 
     they get that assistive technology money, they get that 
     assistive technology equipment and ... it goes into a 
     separate system and stays there.  If you want to come out, 
     the equipment stays there.
                                        - Mark Partin

Even when students have the assistive technology they need and 
they attend regular education schools, they may not be permitted 
to use it outside of the segregated classrooms:

     I represented a young man, Joshua, in a hearing and a trial.  
     He has severe cerebral palsy which affects his motor 
     involvement just incredibly, but he's a
     very bright, cute kid.  One of the things that the school 
     district did to claim that they had made efforts to place 
     him in "integrated activities," as they called it, was that 
     they put him in the regular lunchroom and they put him in 
     the library and they let him go to one pep rally....  In 
     each of these integrated activities, the first thing they 
     did was take his communication board away from him and sit 
     him in the library or sit him in the lunchroom or sit him at 
     the pep rally so he could not even tell anybody whether he 
     wanted to be there or not.  
     
     To me that makes no sense.  If you cannot communicate with 
the people you are there with on some level, especially if you 
have some assistive technology that allows you to do that, then 
it ought to go with the kid.  "Well," [they say], "you can't do 
that because it's regular education and that is special education 
equipment and has to stay in this room."  That is a screwed up 
process. That must change.  
                                        - Mark Partin

     Finally, districts resist letting students take assistive 
technology home with them. Because this problem does not arise 
with children who are educated in segregated residential schools, 
it creates an additional incentive for parents to accept 
segregated institutional placements.
     
     Unless parents are sophisticated enough to get goals and 
     objectives written into the IEP that call for consistency in 
     the home and you have to have that piece of equipment to 
     achieve that consistency, then the school district says, 
     "We've spent $20,000 on this piece of equipment.  We're not 
     letting it out of our sight!"  Buy insurance, I say.  The 
     school could be vandalized.  It's safer at home.
                                        - Mark Partin 

All of the above policies and practices violate students' rights 
to placement in a regular education classroom with their 
non-disabled peers.

    Some Districts Limit the Availability of Special Education
  Services and Supports to Segregated Special Education Settings

     Although the law is clear that its goal is to provide "a 
free and appropriate public education" for students with 
disabilities, some districts have policies which force parents to 
choose between various elements of an appropriate education:  for 
example, placement in a regular education classroom or other 
elements of a quality education.  If they choose a regular 
education setting, they are forced to give up something else, 
such as assistive technology (discussed above), a teacher aide, 
appropriate transportation, alternate scheduling, etc.

     Another example of a policy that inhibits parents from 
securing placement of their child in a regular education 
classroom relates to the use of teacher time.  All students in
special education are required to have an individualized 
education program (IEP).  It is developed at a meeting between 
the parents, teachers, and related services providers.  A special 
education teacher must be present.  Whether a regular education 
teacher attends the meeting is dependent upon his or her 
availability.  Mark Partin explained why the teacher's attendance 
at the meeting is so important:    
     
     The regular education teacher needs to be at the IEP 
     meeting.  They need to have that interaction with the 
     parent, with the people who have done the assessment, to 
     feel what this kid is like.

Partin then described the problems he has encountered:

     One of the things that we keep running into is that you 
     cannot get a regular education teacher at an IEP meeting 
     because they are teaching.  We can't pull them out of the 
     class to come in and help you develop your IEP, but we are 
     talking about putting [the student] into this person's 
     class.
  
One witness cited a regulation from the New York City Public 
Schools Special Circular No. 1 that made it even more unlikely 
that a regular education teacher would be fully apprised of the 
needs of a student with disabilities in the regular classroom.

     Another regulation limits the amount of time that a general 
     education and special education teacher have to consult with 
     each other about the needs of any particular student at the 
     elementary level to three hours per semester.  At the junior 
     high level it is also 3 hours per semester, per class, that 
     the student is in.  
                                        - Harvey Burkhour

A student with a disability who spends some or all of his or her 
time in an integrated classroom may receive a less appropriate 
education if the regular education teacher is limited to three 
hours of consultation per semester with a special education 
teacher.  Furthermore, any coordination of work going on in the 
two settings would be virtually precluded by such a policy.

Some Districts Urge Parents to Agree to Segregated Settings Due to a Belief
That Children with Disabilities "Will Not Benefit" from a Regular Education Setting

     Mark Partin shared an example of the recommendations 
educators made to one parent about her child's potential and 
proper educational placement: 
        
     A young man lives in Colorado Springs.  He is severely 
     physically involved and the school system in the State told 
     [his mother] that she should put her son in an institution.  
     That was their recommendation.  "He will always be 
     dependent.  He will never be able to do anything on his own.  
     He will always be in diapers.  He will always be a burden.  
     He will tear your family apart. 
     We think you should put your kid into the State institution 
     for the mentally retarded."

Many parents would be unable to reject such a recommendation, 
given the negative characterization of this child's future and 
the family's future.  However, this parent did, and the boy's 
outcomes speak for themselves:

     Right now, or at least this summer, Scott was a counselor at 
     a camp, not a camp for kids with disabilities, but a regular 
     camp there in Colorado.... He can work and he can do 
     whatever he wants, even teaching.  
                                        - Mark Partin

     Some Districts Refuse to Modify Programs and Practices to
              Accommodate Students with Disabilities

     Perhaps because of their low expectations of students with 
disabilities, educators resist their placement in regular 
education settings at the very same time they are attempting to 
improve the public's view of schools by raising standards and 
implementing new programs:

     One of the greatest barriers toward the inclusion of 
     students is, of course, the whole business of trying to 
     raise the standards of our schools, the whole mindset that 
     we would be world class in these subjects of math, etc.  It 
     causes a great problem for students with disabilities if 
     they are not able to achieve those high scores. 
                                        - Max Starkloff

The reluctance may be even greater in those districts that have 
been most successful in improving their programs:

     Affluent school districts with model educational programs 
     are not all eager to discuss modifications of their programs 
     to include children with disabilities.  In these cases, 
     staff may be so wedded to the "excellence" that they believe 
     that they are offering that any modifications are viewed as 
     signs of weakness and reduction of standards rather than as 
     a strength associated with accommodating diversity.
                                        - Charlene Green
     
     The difficulty of getting school districts to make even 
minor accommodations for students with disabilities is one 
indication of the enormity of the barriers that educators' 
attitudes can create.  It also points out the understandable 
frustration of parents and advocates seeking inclusion by means 
of enforcement actions on a case-by-case basis.

     Driving over here, I had a phone conversation with the 
     mother of one of my clients, a young man in a wheelchair who 
     has been denied entrance into his neighborhood high school 
     this fall because some of the classes meet on the
     third floor.  I suggested that if the English Department is 
     on the third floor, his English class could meet on the 
     second floor in a room set aside normally for math, and the 
     math class for that period could simply meet on the third 
     floor.  The school said, "This simply would not work.  It 
     would upset their schedules."  This is the type of 
     attitudinal barriers that these children still face.  I 
     shouldn't have to be litigating that issue.  That is plain 
     dumb.  

     We have got to teach the teachers and we have got to teach 
     the administrators and we have got to teach the school 
     boards, first of all, that if they would take the attitude 
     toward having disabled children in their classes that they 
     would take if this disabled child were their own and they 
     were trying to adapt within the home, we would not have a 
     problem. Because if this were a family member, they would 
     simply figure out how to do it.  And if they would simply 
     figure out how to do it for the children who live in their 
     community, in their attendance area, we wouldn't be having 
     these problems.
                                        - Nancy Hablifschel

The barriers that educators' actions and words create are 
frequently compounded by parents' feelings, fears, and lack of 
information.

Informational and Emotional Barriers Facing Families

     It's very difficult for families.  None of us choose to be 
     the parent of a child with a disability, or certainly, very 
     few, ...  so you are not trained.  When I was brought up 
     through the public school system, all I remember my family's 
     attitude about school and education was you sent your kids 
     to school, they are gone for a few hours, they come home, 
     and it was, "Hi!  How was your day?"  "Oh, fine!"  Maybe 
     they will attend PTA and maybe not, but you had a big trust 
     and a big faith in education and in the public school 
     system.  

     And when you were forced to be thrown into the world of 
     developmental disability and you have to change your 
     mindset, you have to become a professional parent.  For the 
     education system to recognize you in that role is 
     difficult....  It is an overwhelming experience for parents.
                                        - Carol Reedstrom

     The statistics on inclusion suggest that large numbers of 
children with disabilities are not presently included in regular 
education classrooms.  In fact, passionate advocacy by someone is 
frequently needed to overcome the multiple barriers to inclusion.  
A variety of factors inhibit many parents from pressing for 
placement of their child with disabilities in a regular education 
classroom.  A brief summary of factors cited at by witnesses 
follows: 

 Parents Have Little Information About the Failure of Segregated 
       Special Education Programs to Educate Their Children

     While most parents use their knowledge of their child's 
potential and reports of their performance on standardized tests 
to evaluate the quality of the education their child is 
receiving, parents of children with disabilities rarely receive 
such information:

     The dismal outcomes of special ed are often hidden in 
     special evaluation procedures as special ed students may be 
     denied the opportunity to participate in the school's 
     standard testing programs.  Instead, the teachers and 
     psychologists are trained to give the "special" students 
     "special" tests which deprive the parents of the data needed 
     to see the enormous number of areas in which their children 
     are making no progress at all.  
                                        - Dr. Joy Jean Rogers

The grading policies applied to students with disabilities in 
segregated educational programs also mask the quality of the 
educational outcomes students achieve.

     I want you to know that I am a graduate of Spaulding [a 
     special education high school in Chicago]....  I had a 
     wonderful time with all of my friends and did not know until 
     I left that I did not get the same education that my sister 
     got in the regular school system.  I was in the honor 
     society and I thought I was pretty hot stuff.   I wanted to 
     go the University of Illinois and I was told that I would 
     not succeed there because I did not have the skills or the 
     preparation that would be necessary to go to the University 
     of Illinois.
                                        - Barbara Eunique

Without such information parents are less likely to be open to 
considering any other kind of placement.  Even if they did, they 
are still unlikely to consider inclusive education, given the 
policy, administrative, and attitudinal barriers cited above.

Parents Have Little Information About the Benefits of Inclusion   

     Given the tremendous barriers parents face in obtaining 
inclusive educational placements, they must have great confidence 
that such a placement is the best placement for their child.  
Unfortunately, many have never had the opportunity to witness 
children in inclusive placements nor have they received 
information about the successes. 

     Most parents are unaware of the benefits of inclusive 
     education.  And, frankly, on the contrary, if parents were 
     told anything by schools, they were told a lot of horror 
     stories, some perhaps with some element of truth and many 
     without.  They were told about the children being ridiculed, 
     teased, taken advantage of, and frustrated if they were to 
     attempt to receive their education in the general education 
     setting.
                                        - Harvey Burkhour

Parents Might Believe That Their Children Will Be "Safe" in Segregated Settings

     One witness with a disability discussed the inferior quality 
of the education she received in the only educational setting 
available to her during her school years, a segregated placement.  
She went on to hypothesize, though, that had her parents been 
given the choice of a segregated placement or an integrated one, 
they would have chosen the segregated one, unable to resist the 
"safety" and services they believed would be available to her 
only in such a setting.

     My feeling is that when I was a child, had I been able to go 
     to a regular school, because my parents were so 
     overprotective of me and there was this [segregated] special 
     school where I could get physical therapy and be nicely 
     protected, they would not have had me go anyway.  
                                        - Barbara Eunique

Many parents share the perception that their children will lose 
something if they attend an inclusive educational setting.  
Others-particularly those in the inner city-fear for the physical 
safety of their children, especially in large urban high schools.  
While it is natural for all parents to want to protect their 
children, it is tragic that after nearly twenty years of a 
national policy presuming access and equality to regular 
education settings, parents of students with disabilities are 
made to feel that their children will be ridiculed, marginalized, 
or even abused in exercising their fundamental legal right of 
participation.

  Parents Often Lack Information About Their Child's Potential  

     Because many parents know little about the effects of a 
child's disability on developmental potential, they may have 
lower expectations for them.  Educators can lower expectations 
further by providing negative information (see above).  Without 
the expectation that a child can benefit from an appropriate 
education in an inclusive setting, there is little reason to 
fight for such a placement.
 
     My family had no expectations for me....  A lot of the 
     education, a lot of the teaching has to take place with 
     parents so that parents understand that they need to have 
     expectations for their disabled child.  I don't care whether 
     you are talking about someone with an IQ of 20 or someone 
     with an IQ of 120.  The expectations are different, but they 
     must be there.                                    
                                        - Barbara Eunique


  Parents Might Believe That Children Will Receive Less Services 
           if They Are in a Regular Education Setting  

     In some cases, parents believe that they must choose between 
critical educational and related services versus placement in a 
regular education setting.  They are predisposed to believe that 
"segregated" means "highly specialized" because of the 
justifications that have historically been used for segregated 
special education placements. 

     One of the biggest things I have run into with parents and 
     parent groups that are less than enthusiastic about 
     inclusion are the ones that fear that they are going to lose 
     something because we have been telling them for years and 
     years and years, "Go to special education and you will get 
     what you need.  You will get all of this OT and PT and 
     speech therapy.  It would do great and wonderful things for 
     your kid."  And now it's that system that we set up, that 
     separate special education system, that isn't very good for 
     kids.  
                                        - Mark Partin

 Parents May Be Reluctant to Move Their Children from Segregated 
Programs to Regular Education Programs Perceived as Having Problems of Their Own

     The choice of an inclusive setting becomes more problematic 
when regular education programs are perceived to be having 
difficulties in meeting the needs of all children. 

     As we talk about inclusion, however, we must address the 
     issue of education in general.  The concept in the law that 
     children with disabilities are entitled to receive a "free 
     appropriate public education" is based on the presumption 
     that their non-disabled peers receive an appropriate 
     education.  When parents and community members perceive that 
     appropriate educational opportunities are lacking in the 
     mainstream and that schools are over-crowded, that teachers 
     are overwhelmed with overflowing classrooms, that the 
     curriculum is out of line with current best practices, 
     special education with its smaller class size and more 
     individualized instruction begins to be more appealing.
                                        - Charlene Green

Dr. Donald Moore used the Chicago Public Schools as an example of 
the need to improve schools generally in order to make 
inclusionary education preferable to segregated special education 
programs.

     6,700 students entered these 18 high schools [that serve the 
     largest percentages of low-income children] as ninth graders 
     in the Class of 1984.  However, only 300 of them (4% of the 
     original class) both graduated and could read at or above 
     the twelfth grade national average.  About 50% dropped out.  
     Another 20% graduated, but were reading below the ninth 
     grade level as graduating seniors.  Thus, 70% of the 
     graduates of these schools are unlikely to ever hold a job 
     that requires a high school diploma and ninth grade reading
     competency....  These statistics are typical of major urban 
     school systems.  And they illustrate the fact that merely 
     including children with disabilities in schools that exhibit 
     this magnitude of failure will do little to increase their 
     life chances, unless these urban schools themselves are 
     radically restructured.
                                        - Dr. Donald Moore

  Parents Lack Information to Challenge School District Decisions

     Educators and administrators have a variety of responses 
they can use to justify their decisions to place students in 
segregated settings:  sometimes it is money, sometimes test 
results.  Often it is the fact that such placements are where all 
students "like your child" are placed.  Without an independent 
source of information, parents have little ability to challenge 
these reasons. 

     "Dollars" is always thrown at the parent.  They say, "Oh, we 
     can't do that.  We don't have the money for it," or "That's 
     Federal money and it's controlled."  As a lay person, I have 
     no idea that they might be just twisting me around a pole 
     versus truly understanding what they can do or what I can 
     expect them to do or what they should do.
                                        - Carol Reedstrom

           Parents Are Reluctant to Challenge Educators

     Even if parents are able to overcome all of the barriers 
mentioned above, they may still defer to educators.

     Parents were oftentimes reluctant to challenge this system 
     because of feelings of inferiority to the professionals.  
     After all, doctors know what people need in the way of 
     medicines; teachers know about education.  This is perhaps 
     even more true of poor people who are less educated.  
                                        - Harvey Burkhour

Particular Barriers Facing Minority Individuals in Seeking Inclusionary Education

     Four decades after Brown v. Board of Education, we continue 
     to address the issue of inclusion.  While the Brown decision 
     brought the segregation of African-American students to the 
     forefront, we find ourselves faced with the same issue as it 
     relates to people with disabilities.  Segregation in any 
     form is unacceptable and cannot be tolerated.
                                        - Charlene Green

     In addition to the lengthy list of barriers to inclusionary 
placement discussed above, students with disabilities from 
minority groups face additional hurdles due to their race
and/or ethnicity.[29]  Experts at the Chicago hearings explained 
how race relates to segregated special education placements.

Children from Minority Groups Are Disproportionately Identified as "Disabled"

     Statistics reveal that children from minority groups are 
identified as mildly disabled in numbers disproportionate to 
their representation in the general population.

     Nationally, African-Americans represent 41.6% of all 
     students in programs for children with mild cognitive 
     disabilities, although only 21.4% of the total national 
     school population is African-American.  
                                        - Charlene Green

Other witnesses went on to point out an array of problems related 
to the over-
identification of children from minority groups as mildly 
disabled.

  The Classification of Children from Minority Groups as "Mildly 
                   Disabled" Is Often Erroneous

     Recently, researchers examined the classification of 
children as mildly disabled and came up with some significant 
conclusions:

     The research of James Ysseldyke and his associates has 
     established that diagnosticians cannot reliably distinguish 
     among children who are currently labeled mildly mentally 
     disabled, children who are currently labeled mildly learning 
     disabled, and children who have problems mastering basic 
     skills but never end up in special education.  
                                        - Dr. Donald Moore   

If there is no difference among these groups of children, then 
some other factor must be involved in labeling children from 
minority groups "mildly disabled" at a much greater proportion 
than others.

     One of the factors that contributes to the 
overidentification of minority children as "mildly disabled" is 
their behavior in class, which triggers their referral for 
evaluation.

     A typical pattern of misclassification, well documented by 
     past research, is that children who cause behavior problems 
     in regular classrooms are referred for special education 
     evaluation, and that once they are referred, most of them 
     end up being labeled.  And this pattern of harmful 
     misclassification is particularly likely to impact minority 
     students and boys.
                                        - Dr. Donald Moore 

According to Charlene Green, once minority children are referred, 
they end up disproportionately classified as disabled because of 
the inadequacy of the instruments used in evaluation:

     I believe that some of our youngsters who are labeled 
     emotionally [disturbed] and mentally retarded function 
     [well] in their own households.  Some of them can move 
     through the streets better than I can.  

     I believe that there is biased testing.  Our youngsters do 
     not do well, and, therefore, score in a range of mental 
     retardation.  There have got to be other measures added so 
     that we can figure out a way to really get a true 
     measurement of a child's ability.  

Children from Minority Groups Who Are Misclassified as Mildly Disabled Do 
    Have Problems in Learning and Require Assistance in School

     While there is a significant problem in the 
misclassification of students from minority groups, this is not 
to say that these students have no problems in school:

     Based on my experience, children are not recklessly referred 
     for evaluations.  Rather, the referral is triggered because 
     the child is having trouble learning and/or behaving and the 
     teacher knows the child needs additional services to 
     succeed.
                                        - Charlene Green  

Thus, while improvements in identification methods are needed, 
those changes alone will not result in improved educational 
opportunities for children:
  
     Even if refinements and changes in the evaluation process 
     were to eliminate unreliable or invalid testing so that 
     minority children would never be misclassified as having a 
     disability, the teacher is still left with a child who is 
     having trouble learning or behaving.
                                        - Charlene Green

Children from Minority Groups Who Are Labeled "Mildly Disabled" Are 
                     Often Harmed, Not Helped

     The goal of special education, the evaluation process, and 
all of its classification schemes is the provision of an 
appropriate education for each child with a disability.  However, 
children from minority groups who are classified as mildly 
disabled are instead frequently removed from the educational 
program that can best benefit them.

     In Illinois and other States, we have established diagnostic 
     and service systems based on the fiction that these 
     diagnostic distinctions can be made reliably, that each 
     purported disability requires a different treatment, and 
     that only teachers who are specially certified to provide 
     this distinct treatment can teach children with a particular 
     label.  

     Not only do we lack evidence of the benefits of these 
     distinct treatments for children labeled as having various 
     forms of mild disabilities, we do have concrete evidence 
     that children who currently end up with these labels benefit 
     from ... full participation in a regular classroom that 
     presents challenging instruction and in a school with a 
     climate of high expectations that all students can succeed.
                                        - Dr. Donald Moore

     Furthermore, the damage due to the disproportionate 
identification of children from minority groups as being in need 
of special education is compounded by the even greater 
disproportionality of their representation in segregated special 
education settings.  One speaker cited statistics from a report 
which included information on the New York City schools:[30]

     The percentage of general education students in the City of 
     New York is approximately 20% who are identified as 
     African-American.  However, the percentage of 
     African-American students in segregated special education 
     facilities is 35%, while the number in self-contained 
     special education rooms is close to 50%.  By comparison with 
     white students in the same population, almost 60% are in the 
     general education population, while 31% of the
     students placed in segregated and special education 
     facilities are white, and 13% of the students in 
     self-contained special education classrooms are white. 
                                        - Harvey Burkhour

     Thus, the practices of identifying minority children as 
having particular disabilities in numbers disproportionate to 
their incidence in their population, and of placing children with 
those particular disabilities disproportionately in segregated 
settings, has led to the segregation of disproportionate numbers 
of minority children.
     
     While the consequences of labeling children are very serious 
in school, some children will be affected throughout their lives 
by the stigma of the disability label.

     I am very concerned as a minority, as an educator, that many 
     of the youngsters who leave school at the level of 12th 
     grade with the label of
     emotionally disturbed cannot go into the service, cannot get 
     life insurance, cannot get a job.
                                        - Charlene Green

     Inclusion may provide a way to meet students' educational 
needs without needlessly labeling them and segregating them, thus 
eliminating the apparent racial discrimination inherent in 
current educational practices:

     Inclusion, therefore, offers a mechanism to enhance our 
     effectiveness as teachers and to embrace to the extent 
     possible all children without regard to the particular label 
     or lack of label that they may happen to wear.
                                        - Charlene Green
                             Findings

1.   Provisions of the IDEA and its regulations related to grant 
     applications tacitly endorse segregated educational programs 
     by requiring small districts to submit applications with 
     others and by allowing others to join together for the 
     purposes of creating large, separate programs for students 
     with disabilities.

2.   Federal accounting requirements for districts which receive 
     Federal funds serve as incentives for segregation because 
     they are easier to comply with when children are educated in 
     separate programs.

3.   The enforcement provisions of IDEA and its regulations have 
     not been effective in securing inclusionary educational 
     placements for vast numbers of children with disabilities.

     a. The due process rights provided by law for parents

        - provide little protection to the many students whose 
          parents are  unaware of their rights;
     
        - may be prohibitively expensive for parents who will not 
          be reimbursed for expenses incurred in due process 
          hearings or who cannot wait for reimbursement until 
          they have prevailed in court;

        - offer little or no protection to students who are wards 
          of the State and must rely on surrogate parents to 
          represent them; and 

        - do not alter the pervasive patterns of segregation in a 
          district even when an individual parent has won 
          inclusion for his/her child;
     
     b. Parents have no real recourse to the Federal Department 
        of Education as provided by IDEA when actions by an SEA 
        are in violation of the law.

     c. The Federal government has failed to use the enforcement 
        mechanisms available to it-state plans, monitoring, and 
        annual reports-to bring about full implementation of the 
        law.
     
4.   The due process and enforcement mechanisms contained in the 
law need to be clarified and strengthened.

5.   Many State governments' policies in finance and teacher 
certification contribute to the placement of students in 
segregated educational settings.

6.   Many school districts adopt illegal policies and practices 
     to keep students in segregated placements.

7.   Parents have too little information about their rights 
     (including possible reimbursement of reasonable attorneys' 
     fees incurred in due process hearings), the possibility of 
     obtaining inclusive placements, successful practices 
     supporting inclusion, and other related issues that would 
     enable them to make informed decisions about appropriate 
     educational options for their children and to challenge 
     educators' recommendations.    

8.   Children from minority groups are identified as "mildly 
     disabled" in numbers disproportionate to their 
     representation in the general population.

9.   The classification of children from minority groups as 
     "mildly disabled" is often erroneous because it is based 
     solely on behavioral issues and questionable evaluation 
     methods.

10.  Children from minority groups classified as mildly disabled 
     do have problems which need to be addressed in school.

11.   The over-placement of students from minority groups in 
     special education programs is damaging because: 

     a. It often offers an inappropriate educational program,

     b. It further promotes segregation, and
     
     c. It narrows their future life choices.
    
12.  Inclusionary education offers the potential to provide great 
     assistance within the regular education classroom to 
     children with a wide range of educational needs from diverse 
     racial and cultural backgrounds without the use of 
     stigmatizing and, often, life-defining labels.

    FINANCING INCLUSIVE EDUCATION:  BARRIERS AND OPPORTUNITIES

     The dilemma is that if you become inclusionary, some of the 
     dollars disappear.
                                        - William Peters

     As speakers identified factors in the persistence of 
segregation and the changes in policy and practice with the 
greatest likelihood of achieving the inclusion of children with 
disabilities in regular education classrooms, again and again 
testimony centered on the financing of special education.  States 
have Federal and State funds to allocate and make decisions 
relating to these funds such as who will be funded, what will be 
funded, and the circumstances that must be present for funding to 
occur.  Each of these decision points provides an opportunity to 
allow educators to make decisions based on the actual needs of 
individual children or to constrain them by making particular 
choices more attractive and others less attractive.

     Although States vary in their systems for financing special 
education, the evaluation of each system as it relates to 
inclusion must center on the following inquiries:  
     
     Is the money tap to ... school districts turned on by the 
     educational needs of the individual child?  Is the money tap 
     turned on when a child with disabilities is included in her 
     or his home classroom?
                                        - Dr. Douglas Kane[31]

Too often, witnesses testified, the answers to these questions 
are negative.  Although much of the testimony related to specific 
practices in Illinois and Pennsylvania, the general points are 
applicable to many other States which employ similar funding 
schemes.  

     A variety of elements in the current pattern of financing 
special education encourages the segregation of children with 
disabilities.  Federal finance requirements and most State 
financing systems contribute to high rates of segregation 
inconsistent with the law.

     Federal and State laws governing the education of children 
     with disabilities emphasize that the educational needs of 
     the individual child should drive special education 
     decisions, and that to the extent possible, educational 
     services should be delivered in the home classroom of the 
     child with disabilities....

     Funding systems, however, have a way of creating priorities 
     that may not be the same as those stated in the law.  School 
     districts and administrators respond to the way that dollars 
     flow.  Dollars are appropriated to specific entities for 
     specific purposes.  Specific circumstances or specific 
     actions turn on the money tap.  Whatever dollars are 
     attached to, tends to get done.  Whatever dollars are not 
     attached to, tends not to get done.
                                        - Dr. Douglas Kane

All too often State funding systems reflect triggering criteria 
which reward entities, activities, and circumstances which are 
inconsistent with inclusion.  The Illinois system of funding is 
one example. 

    The Creation of Incentives for Segregation in Illinois[32]

         Decisions Illinois Has Made About Funding Policy
     
Only Larger Districts Can Get Direct Funding

     One of the factors that supports the continuing segregation 
of special education students is State restrictions on the 
eligibility of its districts for Federal grants.  

     Even though the Federal dollars are attached to the number 
     of pupils, the State Board of Education has limited those 
     entities who can apply for grants to get the Federal dollars 
     to the cooperatives[33] and to the regions and to the 25 
     larger individual school districts in the State who operate 
     their own, again, largely centralized programs.  And so the 
     large majority of school districts in the State, the 920 odd 
     school districts in the State who are members of
     cooperatives, don't have direct access to the Federal 
     dollars because only the cooperatives can apply for those 
     grants, which then makes it difficult for the local school 
     district to engage in inclusive education because the 
     dollars go to the centralized structure rather than to the 
     local school district which runs the local classroom where, 
     by definition, inclusive education has to take place.  
                                        - Dr. Douglas Kane

The result of the creation of these cooperatives is high levels 
of segregation.  

     What typically happens is that if a district belongs to a 
     cooperative and that cooperative has a segregated program 
     for a certain type of label of disability, virtually 100% of 
     the students from that district with that label are sent to 
     that program.
                                        - William Peters

In this instance, Illinois did not create a new funding 
stipulation, but merely expanded upon a Federal provision for 
consolidated applications from school districts.  Mr. Peters 
explained that Illinois is not alone in this arrangement:  most 
States have some form of intermediate districts, like the 
cooperatives, that exist between the State and local school 
district levels.  This and other barriers present in Federal 
finance provisions are discussed in the chapter entitled, 
Continuing Barriers Experienced by Parents and Students Seeking 
Inclusion.

Private Schools Are Guaranteed a Certain Percentage of Federal 
Funding  

     State law in Illinois requires that a certain percentage of 
all Federal special education dollars (12.5%) must be used to pay 
for the expenses of children in private schools.  Even if 
districts stopped placing as many children in private placements, 
existing State law would preclude the reallocation of Federal 
money for other uses.  

     I don't know of any other State that does it, but what it's 
     doing is really limiting the discretion of the State on how 
     dollars are spent, what kinds of educational programs are 
     best for kids.  And I think that the choice should be left 
     up to the local school district and then the dollars should 
     be there, regardless of the choice.  The State and the Feds 
     shouldn't say, "If you make this choice, then these dollars 
     are going to be there."  There's too much manipulation 
     there, too much incentive, too much disincentive to make 
     other choices.  Attach the dollars to kids and then whatever 
     the choice is of the local district, hold the local district 
     accountable for the results. 
                                        - Dr. Douglas Kane 

        Decisions Illinois Has Made About What It Will Fund

State Funding of Special Education Personnel

     The single largest category of special education funding is 
personnel.  The State of Illinois reimburses districts for a 
certain portion of the salaries of some of their personnel, 
creating a strong incentive to operate segregated programs 
according to Dr. Kane:
     
     The personnel fund attaches dollars to professional teachers 
     and to non-certified people who are participating in the 
     special education system....  
     In order for a school district or cooperative to be 
     reimbursed by the personnel system, each teacher, each 
     non-certified person who becomes eligible, has to be 
     certified to teach the children with the particular 
     disability label ..., has to have a job description that 
     falls within that certification, teach in the special 
     education full-time setting 50% of the time, be supervised 
     by a credentialed supervisor who devotes 100% of the time to 
     special ed. So, in order really to get personnel dollars, 
     unless you want to have creative accounting on the part of 
     the local school district, you basically have to have a 
     segregated system for educating the child.  

Transportation

     Some States create incentives for particular placement 
decisions by paying only for particular costs attached to 
providing an educational program.  For example, the financial 
incentive in Illinois to retain children in segregated placements 
is strengthened by the State policies governing the costs of 
providing transportation.  

     The State [of Illinois] picks up 80% of all of the costs of 
     special education transportation, regardless of where the 
     education takes place.... As you move from a centralized 
     segregated system where transportation costs are high to an 
     integrated education system in which the child is educated 
     in the home school, your educational costs may go up, but 
     transportation costs can go down substantially.  Well, what 
     happens in that situation in Illinois is that the local 
     school district loses dollars because they have to pick up 
     the extra educational dollars for an inclusive education and 
     they lose the transportation dollars because the State picks 
     up 80% of the transportation.  So the savings go to the 
     State and the increased costs go to the local school 
     district.  So there's a real disincentive, a financial 
     disincentive for the school district to move from a 
     centralized segregated system that is based on 
     transportation to an inclusive system where the educational 
     costs may be higher, but the transportation costs are much 
     less.
                                        - Dr. Douglas Kane

     Because the decision-makers involved in an individual 
child's educational placement are not free to evaluate the best 
use of those transportation-related funds for meeting a child's 
needs, the very substantial savings that could be realized from 
reducing the high transportation costs necessitated by 
centralized, segregated placements will not occur.  In Illinois, 
"transportation accounted for 24% of the special education State 
dollars, second only to personnel" (Dr. Douglas Kane).  And, 
again, Illinois is not alone.  The amount of
money expended annually for the transportation of students with 
disabilities to segregated settings is enormous.  It is the most 
expensive related service[34] and continues to grow.  In 
Baltimore, for example, annual transportation expenses for 
students assigned to separate schools and programs grew from 
$2300 to $4200 per student between 1986 and 1990.  By contrast, 
the average annual transportation expense for a student in 
regular education is less than $100.[35]  The savings that would 
be realized in transportation costs alone if students were sent 
to their neighborhood schools would represent a significant 
source of new revenue if made available to improve the quality of 
educational programs, "from half a billion dollars to two billion 
dollars annually," estimates Dr. Martin Gould.

Policies Which Tie the Portion of Special Education Costs Allowed 
               to the Child's Educational Placement

     Some States tie the portion of the costs of educating a 
child with disabilities that it will pay to his or her 
educational setting.  In Illinois, several financing practices 
exist that encourage districts to place students in segregated 
private placements.  Dr. Kane explained that if a student with a 
severe disability is educated within the public education system, 
"the State contributes $2,000 of the extra costs" and the 
district pays all other costs.  He then explained that if that 
student is educated in a segregated program, 

     The local school district ... is responsible for the first 
     $4500 of extra costs and then the State picks up everything 
     else.  So that if the child is educated
     in the private sector, the local district's responsibility 
     is capped and the State's responsibility is unlimited.

Unless the costs of meeting a child's special education needs are 
minimal, the district will benefit financially from placing the 
child in a private, segregated setting.

     The System of Financing as a Whole Encourages Segregation

     Thus, the current system of financing special education in 
Illinois by directing funds to large districts and private 
schools, limiting reimbursement to particular expenses, and 
paying more money or less for particular placements needed by 
some children causes districts to require children to participate 
in those programs rather than in ones which might actually be 
less costly overall but more expensive to the individual district 
because the State will not pay for the same portion of the costs.  
As such, it subverts IDEA's fundamental requirement of making 
educational decisions based solely on each child's individual 
needs.

     The school district doesn't have the opportunity of trading 
     those [State and Federal special education] dollars, because 
     the dollars are attached to the activity rather than to the 
     child or the education program.  So, the school district 
     doesn't have the choice or isn't free to make educational 
     choices solely for the benefit of the child.  The school 
     district doesn't first make the choice and then have all of 
     the dollars necessary to fulfill the education program that 
     has been chosen for that child.  The school district makes 
     the choice and then, depending on whether the choice was 
     right or wrong, the school district and cooperative gets 
     reimbursed for particular kinds of expenditures.  It turns 
     the whole individual education plan on its head, because you 
     have to build in certain things into the educational plan in 
     order to get dollars regardless of whether that is good or 
     bad for the child.
                                        - Dr. Douglas Kane

  A System of Funding That Facilitates Inclusion in Pennsylvania

     Some States use a flat-rate allocation of dollars to 
districts for the education of children with disabilities, 
removing incentives for districts to keep students in expensive, 
segregated placements.

     The Pennsylvania system basically says we assume that 17% of 
     the students 
     in the school district require some kind of extra help. "We 
     assume that 1% of the students in the district require a lot 
     of extra help.  So, we're going to give you an extra $525 
     for 17% of your kids; we're going to give you $7,000 for 1% 
     of your kids.  Go and do a good job.  Then we also have a 
     special fund set aside for those who really need a lot of 
     extra help and we're going to deal with those on an 
     individual basis."   
                                        - Dr. Douglas Kane 


        Pennsylvania's System of Funding Special Education
    Increased the Inclusion Rates of Children with Disabilities

     When asked if such a change in the financing system alone 
would have an impact on inclusion, Dr. William Peters 
unequivocally stated,  

     The results in Pennsylvania were that when they changed to 
     this kind of system, inclusion increased.  What it does 
     basically is say to the local school district, "Here is 
     money.  You have control of the money and it's up to you to 
     make the choice for your individual students.  If you want 
     to educate the child in the local school in an inclusive 
     system, you have the money to do that.  If you want to 
     contract with a cooperative, you can do that, but you have 
     control of the money."  Under the present system, the local 
     school district largely does not control the money and the 
     money and the child do not start off at the same place.  And 
     what usually happens when money and children do not start 
     off at the same place?  The money stays where it went and 
     the kids move.  

       When Neighborhood Schools Have Control over Funding,
        They Choose to Include Students with Disabilities 

     When examined at the local school level, the effect of 
giving principals control over the funding spent for the 
educational expenses of children with disabilities made inclusion 
a viable choice. 
     
     We did have a principal where there were four students [in 
     centralized segregated placements] that really were home 
     school students for that principal and the principal was 
     seemingly our largest barrier [to their inclusion].  For him 
     it was a human resource concern.  I asked him if he could 
     serve these students in his home school and he indicated 
     that he couldn't.  He didn't have the staff, didn't have the 
     training.  I suggested that, if indeed, we shifted the 
     financial resources that we were now spending on those 
     students, could he do that?  He said, "No."  Then I said, 
     "Well, if those resources for the four students were 
     $104,000, would you consider it?"  He said, "Let's talk."  
                                        - Dan Hurd

A Flat-Rate System of Funding Is Not More Expensive
Than a Categorical Funding System

     A variety of issues have been raised about the affordability 
of inclusive education.  Aware of this dispute, Dr. Douglas Kane 
applied the formula in use in Pennsylvania to Illinois and 
compared the difference in total expenditures that would occur if 
Illinois merely adopted the Pennsylvania formula.  In FY 1991, 
Illinois State Assistance for Special Education was $529,343,080.  
Had Illinois used the Pennsylvania formula, it would have reduced 
its costs to $292,100,100.  While no claim has been made that 
Pennsylvania's level of funding for special education is optimal, 
its model has proved to have significant
advantages over the Illinois model in the freedom it gives 
educators to make placement and service decisions for students 
with disabilities.  Furthermore, as Kane pointed out, "The 
Pennsylvania formula could be considerably enhanced before the 
total cost would exceed the total dollars that Illinois is now 
spending on special education."

     The wide range of incentives for segregation inherent in 
current financing policies and practices can and must be reversed 
to produce broad incentives for inclusion:

     Change is difficult because you have to change the structure 
     and the financing at the same time.  
                                        - Dr. Douglas Kane

As we have seen, however, change is possible and need not involve 
a great deal of financial hardship.
                             Findings

1.   Most current State funding systems create barriers to 
     inclusion by financially rewarding school districts for 
     segregated placements.

2.   Local decision-makers tend to educate students wherever the 
     greatest amount of State and Federal funding is available to 
     support the costs of their special educational programs.

3.   State and Federal funding tends to remain wherever it is 
first sent.

4.   Funding sent to intermediate level educational agencies or 
     cooperatives creates barriers to inclusion because these 
     agencies operate largely segregated educational programs.

5.   State funding schemes which fund only certain costs 
     associated with providing education for children with 
     disabilities cause local decision-makers to make educational 
     decisions about children for reasons other than the 
     children's educational needs.

6.   State funding schemes which fund certain kinds of 
     educational placements at a higher level than other kinds 
     cause local decision-makers to make educational decisions 
     about children for reasons other than the children's 
     educational needs.

7.   The inclusion of children with disabilities in their 
     neighborhood schools may                               
     result in an increased amount of money available to those 
     schools for educational program costs that would otherwise 
     be used for their transportation to more distant segregated 
     sites.

8.   When neighborhood school principals are allowed to make the 
     decision to spend funds allocated for the education of a 
     child with disabilities to provide services in their school 
     or to pay the costs of education in a segregated site, they 
     are more likely to choose inclusion in their neighborhood 
     school than they do when funding decisions are out of their 
     hands.

9.   Inclusion is no more costly than segregation and may be far 
less costly.

10.  Large numbers of children with disabilities will be included 
     only when current disincentives embedded in State funding 
     systems are eradicated. 

   PROFESSIONAL AND CONSUMER TRAINING IN INCLUSIONARY EDUCATION

     When I started teaching in 1970 and 1971, the first two 
     years that I taught, I had children with muscular dystrophy 
     in my classroom.  I had children with mental retardation.  I 
     also had a little boy who was seriously emotionally 
     disturbed.  I didn't think a whole lot of it.  I was making 
     adaptations and accommodations every day as a general ed 
     teacher because with 27 students in my classroom, I had such 
     a diverse range of needs in that classroom that I did it 
     instinctively.
  
     By 1977, I began to believe I couldn't do it because now we 
     have this special ed law that said, "Give me your tired, 
     your poor, and your hungry, and I will take them all, and I 
     am special.  I know how to do it and you don't."  By 1977, I 
     didn't have children with disabilities in my classroom like 
     I had in 1970 and 1971.  I had lost the confidence that I 
     could teach children [with disabilities].
                                        - Linda Effner

                       Professional Training

     Almost twenty years since children with disabilities were 
removed from Linda Effner's classroom, graduates of teacher 
training programs are still learning the same lesson she did:  
that they have not been prepared to teach all children.

     I think that more than anything else, regular education 
     teachers fear the diversity among the learners in their 
     classrooms.  They feel that they do not have the expertise 
     necessary to adapt to a range of learning styles and rates.  
     The attitudes and fears of regular education teachers are 
     partly a result of their training.  Universities have not 
     aggressively pursued instilling the values of inclusionary 
     education in future preparation programs.  This is true in 
     spite of a growing body of research and promising practices 
     that have emerged over the last decade.  Interviews with 
     young teachers just graduating from teacher preparation 
     programs indicate a non-committal orientation to inclusion.
                                        - Rene Leininger

Teacher preparation must change.

     Because so many teachers currently in schools must be 
prepared to educate children with disabilities in their 
classrooms, inservice training programs have been used as one 
method of teacher instruction.  Unfortunately, this approach is 
not enough.

     Traditional inservice models, alone, do not immerse the 
     trainees sufficiently to produce the change in attitude and 
     strategy to provide inclusive schooling....  Absolutely 
     essential to inclusive schooling are strong preservice 
     programs
     which totally immerse the trainee in teaching to, and in 
     collaborative problem solving of, the diverse learning 
     styles of children in the public schools today.
                                        - Dr. Sharon Freagon

      Specific Changes Needed in Teacher Preparation Programs

     Witnesses were in agreement about the kinds of changes 
needed in teacher preparation programs.

Needed Structural Changes

     Witnesses consistently reported that one of the greatest 
barriers to inclusionary education is the structure of the system 
of teacher education.  The division of teacher preparation 
programs into "regular" education curriculum and "special" 
education tracks reflects the belief that teachers that work with 
children with disabilities in special education require different 
preparation than those teachers who work in regular education 
classrooms.  Inherent in this practice is the assumption that 
teachers in regular education classrooms will not teach children 
with disabilities requiring special education, a clear conflict 
with inclusionary education policies.

     The damage done through the existence of parallel systems of 
teacher preparation programs is even more insidious than the 
skills gaps that teachers exit with.  By virtue of the structure 
itself, the present system perpetuates a segregated approach to 
teaching children that is reflected throughout education systems.

     The continuing segregation of special and general ed 
     faculties in colleges and universities preparing 
     professionals for our schools in the future has to stop.  
     Separate faculties and separate departments send clear 
     messages to young undergraduates preparing to be teachers 
     that their roles in the schools are separate and, therefore, 
     the children they teach must be separated.  Young general 
     and special ed teachers then participate in ... [placement 
     meetings] that separate children and the cycle continues.  
     The pattern of separating and segregating children has to be 
     interrupted at the professional preparation level in the 
     colleges and universities.
                                        - Dr. Sharon Freagon

Needed Changes in Student Teaching Settings   

     Because neighborhood school classrooms contain increasing 
numbers of children with disabilities, all teachers should be 
trained to teach students with and without disabilities.  As a 
consequence of the placement of teacher candidates in segregated 
settings for student teaching, regular education teachers often 
feel unprepared to teach children with disabilities and special 
education teachers feel unprepared to teach non-disabled 
children.   The result is that few teachers perceive themselves 
as qualified to teach in inclusionary education settings.  All 
teacher candidates need to learn to teach in inclusionary 
settings.

     Teachers trained for an era of inclusion would need 
     preservice clinical experience in which they learn the same 
     skills they currently learn but have the opportunity to 
     practice those skills in settings in which disabled and 
     non-disabled learn together.
                                        - Dr. Joy Jean Rogers

Needed Content Changes in Teacher Preparation Programs

     In addition to changes in the structure of teacher 
preparation programs, the content of curricula needs to change, 
too.  Witnesses testified about competencies needed by teachers 
in instructional methods, subject matter, respect for the human 
rights of children, and communication skills for their use in 
interactions with parents.

     Instructional Methods.  Current research shows that teaching 
methods that facilitate learning in children without disabilities 
are the same ones that enable children with disabilities to 
succeed.

     There are many practices promoted within regular education 
     literature for increasing the quantity and quality of 
     learning for all students that should be considered and 
     adapted by any school teacher or administrator who is 
     developing inclusive educational practices.  These include, 
     but are not limited to, whole language classrooms, imbedding 
     basic skills learning in content area learning, group 
     instruction, as well as cooperative learning and peer 
     coaching.... In fact, there are few issues in developing 
     effective learning for students with disabilities that are 
     not also issues for all students in the general education 
     realm.
                                        - Ruth Usilton

Fortunately, regular education teachers have generally learned 
these methods.  What they have not learned is when to use 
particular methods to assist children with disabilities.

     Classroom teachers who complain that their university 
     training did not prepare them for the inclusion of children 
     with disabilities have an interesting and partially valid 
     point.  General teacher training programs offer regular ed 
     teachers many of the relevant skills, but leave them unaware 
     of how those skills can be used to meet the needs of 
     children with disabilities.  They are too frequently even 
     taught that they are not equipped to deal with "special" 
     children and such children should be referred to "special" 
     ed teachers who supposedly have an array of "special" 
     techniques to use with "special" children.  Tragically and 
     incredibly training programs for "special" teachers usually 
     lack training in the techniques which offer the most promise 
     in meeting the needs of "special" children.
                                        - Dr. Joy Jean Rogers
     
     Subject Matter Expertise.  All teachers need to be competent 
in the subject areas they teach.  Many preparation programs for 
special education teachers do not require the same expertise in 
subject matter as that required for regular education teachers.
        
     The situation in secondary schools is even worse.  Teachers 
     in regular classes are required to meet high standards of 
     subject matter knowledge, while special educators may have 
     little or no training to teach the subjects their students 
     need.  The results are predictable.  Special ed teachers are 
     often employed to teach ... subjects about which they know 
     little or nothing.
                                        - Dr. Joy Jean Rogers

     Respect for the Human Rights of Children.  Dr. Rogers also 
testified about the need to instill respect for the human rights 
of students in special education teachers.  She explained some 
differences in the approaches taken by regular and special 
education preparation programs.   

     While regular educators are sensitized through their 
     training to be responsive to the needs of the whole person, 
     special educators are systematically desensitized to the 
     personhood of the children they are being prepared to teach.  
     Common jargon in the field of special education is a 
     dehumanizing jumble of letters and words....  Regular 
     educators are routinely trained to use disciplinary 
     techniques consistent with the civil and human rights of 
     their students.  Principals supervising regular schools are 
     trained to respect privacy rights, to issue rudimentary due 
     process, and to avoid unlawful restrictions.  Special 
     students, however, are often subjected to especially harsh 
     methods of discipline. 

     I recently visited one special school where students were 
     locked in 3' by 3' padded "time-out" cells.  Some special 
     schools give potent tranquilizers, use forcible take-downs, 
     tie students to desks, tape their mouths with duct tape, 
     ridicule them before their peers, snap them with rubber 
     bands, hit them, subject them to loud noises, force 
     unpleasant tasting substances into their mouths, and zap 
     them with cattle prods.  Amnesty International would defend 
     adult political prisoners against the very techniques that 
     special teachers have learned to use on special education 
     students in America today.

This provides another reason that teacher training should be 
conducted in regular education classrooms where students with and 
without disabilities are present and subject to the same 
standards of human respect and decency.

     Too often special education has become dehumanizing.  
     Because these special schools are often the clinical 
     training sites, new special education teachers are 
     socialized into this culture of accepted dehumanization.
                                        - Dr. Joy Jean Rogers

     Communication Skills.  In addition to pedagogical skills, 
teachers need to learn how to work with parents to achieve an 
appropriate education for their children.  One parent pointed out 
that general education teachers need to receive the same kind of 
preparation in collaboration, problem solving, and cooperation 
that parents do.  The critical role that parents play in planning 
for their children's inclusionary education is discussed in the 
chapter entitled Specific Strategies for Making Inclusion Work.

                   Proposals for Systemic Change

     From the above discussion, it would seem apparent that 
systemic changes are needed in the way we prepare teachers.  
Several different approaches were offered by witnesses at the 
hearings.

Strengthen Special and Regular Education Teacher Preparation

     Witnesses agreed that at the very least special and regular 
education teacher preparation programs need to ensure that all 
teachers are better prepared to teach in inclusive classrooms.  
Two changes were proposed, the first of which focused on 
strengthening the preparation requirements for special education 
teachers.  

     Teachers of children with disabilities need to be more 
skilled than regular education teachers, not merely differently 
skilled.

     The baseline of skills for special ed teachers must at least 
     be qualification to teach the same matter to the same age 
     group of children irrespective of whether those children are 
     "special".... The resulting nature of special education 
     would be to provide services available in addition to what 
     is regularly available to children of that age.  Such 
     changes would be consistent with a goal of preparing 
     teachers who are capable of working in inclusive settings.
                                        - Dr. Joy Jean Rogers

     Changes also need to be made in programs for regular 
education teacher candidates.  Consistent with the assumption 
that regular education teachers will not be working with students 
with disabilities is the approach most teacher preparation 
programs have taken to orienting them to special education.  
Regular education teachers frequently are required to take one 
separate introductory course in special education in order to get 
their teaching certificates, rather than learning about special 
education throughout their coursework.  The recommendations to 
teacher preparation programs and to States are clear:

     Institutions of higher education need to take a close look 
     at teacher training programs for all teachers.  They all 
     need information about what does work, what are successful 
     strategies and practices for teaching kids with a diverse 
     range of needs.
  
     I think the States need to look at the basic requirements 
     for teachers to increase the number of courses that are 
     available, to allow the education majors to have important 
     work and content infused into their program, and to make 
     sure that all courses have the relevant material infused 
     into their programs, into their syllabi, and into their 
     daily lessons.
                                        - Dr. Martin Gould

Eliminate Differentiated Training  

     Another strategy for teacher preparation would be to create 
a unified approach which combined the best of current teacher 
preparation methods in regular and special education programs.

     Special ed teachers appear much less prepared to serve 
     children in inclusive settings than their regular ed 
     counterparts.  Given that there is apparently no effective 
     special ed pedagogy, a persuasive argument can be made for 
     completely eliminating any differentiated preparation for 
     special teachers.
                                        - Dr. Joy Jean Rogers

Create "Master" Teachers  

     Another expert reviewed the evidence and suggested that 
instead of creating a separate curriculum for special education 
teachers,  teacher preparation programs should create separate 
approaches for teachers skilled in enabling all students and 
teachers to succeed.

     Since no particular pedagogy for teaching students with 
     disabilities has historically emerged, and since strategies 
     that are successful at accomplishing understanding with 
     children without disabilities will be successful with 
     children with disabilities, colleges and universities need 
     to address whether an undergraduate program preparing 
     special education teachers is warranted.  The future will, 
     however, require that we develop graduate teacher education 
     programs for experienced teachers to become "masters" at 
     teaching and supporting students and other classroom 
     teachers who are diverse in race, background, income, 
     gender, disability, and so on.  
                                        - Dr. Sharon Freagon


                        Effecting Change  

     Although witnesses were in agreement about the structural, 
logistical, and subject matter changes needed in teacher 
preparation programs, they did not underestimate the difficulty 
of bringing about such changes.  

The Lack of a Federal Mandate  

     One of the difficulties is the absence of Federal 
requirements in this area.

     With no mandates ... providing guidelines as to how 
     educators are to be prepared, the required change in 
     educator preparation which is essential to inclusive 
     schooling will be arduous and take a long time.
                                        - Dr. Sharon Freagon

Needed Changes by States

     States have the authority to bring about change in several 
critical areas:  teacher certification requirements and financing 
schemes which tie funding to teacher certification.[36]  States 
could also remedy another obstacle to change in teacher 
preparation programs:  the lack of information university 
professionals provide administrative and teacher candidates about 
inclusionary education.  

     To remedy this, program approval sections of State Boards of 
     Education could monitor university programs and courses as 
     to how well they train professionals on the components on 
     which teachers and administrators in the school districts 
     are monitored.  There also could be a system of 
     commendations for those universities and colleges doing an 
     extraordinary job in preparing teachers and administrators 
     for inclusive schools of the future.
                                        - Dr. Sharon Freagon

Needed Changes by Universities and Colleges  

     Teacher training programs themselves have a major role in 
overcoming internal barriers to preparing teachers for inclusion.  
In order to ensure that university professionals receive updated 
training on inclusion, universities should create incentive 
programs that reward them for acquiring skills needed for the 
schools of the future.  

     Furthermore, there is currently little connection between 
what occurs in many teacher preparation programs and what happens 
in schools.  But that can change: 

     The annual personnel evaluation process in universities and 
     colleges most often does not reward a professor's impact in 
     the schools, impact on teacher and administrator preparation 
     or on collaboration and cooperation among faculty members.  
     Consequently, professors do not see their mission as working 
     to improve education in a given State or locale or to 
     provide a collaborative teacher preparation program with 
     general education.  To accomplish contributions to better 
     education in a State or in a locale, the personnel 
     evaluation process will have to reflect rewards for impact 
     on improving education and collaboration and cooperation.
                                        - Dr. Sharon Freagon

With their expertise and their access to schools and educators, 
universities can become leaders in bringing about inclusion in 
our educational system. 

                         Consumer Training

     As teachers and administrators change in order to implement 
inclusionary education more effectively, so must parents.  
Inherent in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act is 
recognition of parents' unique expertise:  their knowledge of 
their children's learning strengths and needs.  As parents 
absorbed these messages, more confident in the validity of their 
concerns and observations, many embraced the new role provided 
for them in the law, that of advocates for their children.  
Working with educators, they made and continue to make 
significant improvements in educational programs for children.

     All too often, though, parents have had to become 
adversaries of educators to obtain the educational programs they 
knew their children needed.  As discussed in the chapter 
Continuing Barriers Experienced by Parents and Students Seeking 
Inclusion, parents are still too often forced to adopt 
adversarial roles to secure inclusive placements.  However, 
experts testified that once children with disabilities are 
assigned to inclusionary settings in their neighborhood schools, 
their parents have new roles to play.  They need additional 
information about regular classroom operations and collaborative 
interpersonal skills to achieve the quality educational programs 
they seek. Training programs for parents of children with 
disabilities need to change to include a range of topics.   

                     The Inclusive Classroom  

     In order for parents to understand the value and dynamics of 
the inclusive classroom, parents need to see a successful model 
and hear from graduates.

     Parents will benefit from observation, that is, visiting 
     classes that have successfully included children with 
     disabilities.  When in-person visiting is not possible, 
     video should be used.  Observation, especially in real life 
     school rooms, will help parents and educators understand how 
     helpful the other children can be in the education of the 
     child with a disability. 

     Training workshops should include adults with disabilities 
     who have benefited from inclusionary education and life 
     experience.  No one is more eloquent on the subject.
                                        - Patricia McGill Smith

                     New Instructional Methods

     In order for parents to participate effectively in planning 
their children's educational program, they need to be familiar 
with the kinds of instructional strategies that are now available 
to benefit their children:

     Parents will also need to learn about new classroom methods:  
     cooperative                                            
     learning, team teaching, multi-sensory and multi-modal 
     instructional approaches.
                                        - Patricia McGill Smith

   The Educational Planning Process for the Inclusive Classroom

     The nature of program planning for a child with a disability 
who goes to an inclusive classroom leads to changes in 
instructional planning meetings.  The inquiry starts with an 
examination of the planned classroom activity and moves to 
consideration of the changes needed to enable the child to 
succeed.[37]  Parent training programs need to include 
information about this approach to planning.
 
     Parents may need to learn about new kinds of IEPs, simpler, 
with more emphasis on supports for both the child and the 
teacher, and less emphasis on detailed objectives.  A regular 
classroom teacher who has up to 30 children in her classroom 
cannot teach to one child's 20-page IEP, much less do that for 
three or four children.  Working collaboratively, teams of 
parents and educators need to put more emphasis on the nature of 
supports for both the child and the teacher as IEPs are 
developed.  Each annual goal needs to be analyzed with the 
questions of what supports are needed:  1) adapted methods or 
materials and 2) personal assistance.
                                        - Patricia McGill Smith

     Inclusionary education will require new approaches to 
planning and problem solving between parents and educators.  As 
never before, parents' success in achieving the assistance and 
support their children with disabilities may need in learning may 
now depend on the ability of the parents to secure the assistance 
and support teachers need to educate the children.  

     Inclusion has many implications for parent training.   
     Parents need to learn that in an inclusionary classroom, the 
     teacher may need supports as well as the student with 
     special needs.  Parent training must now include 
     step-by-step help for parents to ensure that all inclusive 
     placements fully support each student and the professionals 
     teaching that student.
                                        - Patricia McGill Smith
                             Findings
 
1.   A variety of specific changes are required in professional 
     training programs in order to prepare teachers and 
     administrators for inclusive education:

     a. The division between preservice regular and special 
        education preparation programs needs to be significantly 
        reduced, if not eliminated.

     b. All teacher candidates should do their student teaching 
        in integrated classroom settings.

     c. All teacher preparation programs should ensure that all 
        candidates:

        -  learn teaching methods which enable children with and 
          without disabilities to learn;

        - understand when to use particular methods with children 
          with disabilities;

        - acquire expertise in the subject matter that they are 
          expected to teach;

        - possess and maintain a high level of respect for all of 
          the children they teach; and

        - become skilled in communicating and collaborating with 
          parents.

2.   Significant systemic changes in preservice teacher 
     preparation programs should be considered:

     a. If the existing division between the programs is to be 
        maintained, each of the programs must be strengthened in 
        ways that prepare candidates from both certification 
        programs to teach in inclusive classrooms.

        -  Special education candidates must have the same level 
          of subject matter expertise as regular education 
          teachers; and
 
        -  Regular education candidates must learn techniques for 
          working with students with disabilities in all of their 
          classes, rather than in a single introductory course.

     b. Elimination of the division between preservice teacher 
        preparation programs may be justified on the grounds that 
        the evidence shows that children with disabilities 
        benefit from the same methods of instruction as children 
        without disabilities.

     c. Instead of a division between programs on the basis of 
        the population of students served, a distinction may be 
        justified based on the greater skills of "master" 
        teachers in enabling a wide range of students and 
        teachers to succeed.

3.   While change may be difficult to effect at the Federal level 
     because of the current absence of a mandate, it can be 
     achieved through efforts at other levels.

     a. States can address three areas:

        -  They can change teacher certification requirements so 
          as to eliminate the division between regular and 
          special education preparation;

        -  They can eliminate the linkages between funding 
          allocations and teacher certification; and 

        -  They can monitor and reward colleges and universities 
          for the quality of the training they provide teacher 
          and administrator candidates about inclusion.

     b. Universities and colleges can make changes that will 
        advance inclusion in at least two ways:

        -  They can create incentive programs that encourage 
          their faculty members to acquire additional information 
          and skills related to  inclusion; and

        -  They can encourage university faculty leadership in 
          bringing about inclusion by evaluating and rewarding 
          faculty for their impact on schools and teachers as it 
          relates to inclusion.

4.   Parent training programs need to assist parents in learning 
     how to be effective advocates to obtain inclusive placements 
     for their children, and help them recognize the need to 
     collaborate with educators in the school for better 
     educational planning.

5.   Parent training programs must help parents understand the 
     inclusive classroom and the instructional methods available 
     to assist their children.
 
6.   Parent training programs need to inform parents about how 
     the educational planning process changes when children with 
     disabilities are in inclusive settings and need to 
     familiarize them with their roles in that process.

            THE EFFECT OF INCLUSION ON THE TOTAL SCHOOL

     What is the effect of inclusive education on students who do 
     not have disabilities?  It makes them better students.  It 
     not only makes them better students, it makes them better 
     people.  I believe that is what our goal for education 
     should be.  It's not just reading, writing, and arithmetic, 
     but it is, "Are you a good citizen?  Do you value other 
     people?"  
                                        - Mark Partin

     One of the most persistent charges against inclusive 
education has been that,  whatever its benefit for children with 
disabilities, inclusion will diminish the quality of education 
afforded children without disabilities.  Witnesses at the 
Council's hearings consistently testified that the reverse is 
true:  students without disabilities benefit significantly when 
inclusionary education is implemented.  Their academic 
performance can improve, and they are better prepared for adult 
life.

Inclusion Can Improve the Performance of Students Without Disabilities

     In order to serve children with disabilities in regular 
education classrooms, schools and their faculty members change in 
a variety of ways.  Individual teachers change the instructional 
methods they use in class.  Related services personnel move into 
the classroom to work with students needing their services.  
Schools restructure their programs and redeploy their staff in 
order to meet the needs of students in integrated classrooms 
throughout the school, instead of in segregated enclaves within 
it.

                    Changes in Teaching Methods

     Researchers have determined that the educational 
practices[38] that best serve students with disabilities also 
serve non-disabled students in an exemplary manner.  

     We have found that the best and most successful curriculum 
     and instructional supports to the student with disabilities 
     are those same strategies that are considered best practices 
     in regular education. Those strategies include cross-age 
     classrooms, experience and hands-on learning activities, 
     authentic assessment, and cooperative learning groups.  
                                        - Dr. Barbara LeRoy

Furthermore, the implementation of inclusionary education 
increases the use of best practices in the classroom.

     We are finding that in determining what structures will best 
     support individual students with disabilities, our regular 
     education classrooms are utilizing best educational 
     practices more frequently than they did prior to the 
     implementation of inclusive education. 
                                        - Dr. Barbara LeRoy

As a result of the greater use of these "best practices," all 
students benefit academically:
     
     We are finding in many of our classrooms as we implement 
     inclusive education and help teachers to put those best 
     practices in place that the outcomes for all students are 
     improving.  In many of our inclusive education classrooms, 
     the typical kids in those classrooms have the highest 
     standardized test scores in their districts.
                                        - Dr. Barbara LeRoy

           Delivery of Related Services in the Classroom

     In the past children received related services in isolation 
from the regular classroom.  They were pulled out of their 
classrooms for individualized sessions.  Classroom teachers knew 
little about the services provided, nor how they corresponded to 
what was going on in the regular classroom.  Furthermore, their 
unfamiliarity with the service meant that teachers were often 
unable to reinforce a new skill or behavior or correct a child's 
error in practicing it.  In inclusionary classrooms, related 
service personnel plan with classroom teachers to determine when 
the skills they address relate to classwork and, when those 
skills are needed, enter the classroom to support the teacher in 
his/her instruction and the student in learning the skill.

     Our therapist, our speech pathologist, and our occupational 
     therapist work in the classroom.  One of our teachers 
     commented that it was one of the most marvelous things that 
     could occur because the mystery of what a therapist does has 
     been solved in some ways.  She now knows how to get the 
     child to say the letter, the sound of "s," and recognize the 
     letter "s." Because she is seeing a specialist do it, she 
     now is beginning to feel confident in working with the child 
     in the classroom.  They can talk about it later when someone 
     can look at the pathologist and say, "You worked with that 
     child.  How can I work with this child?"  And they begin and 
     build their communication.  
                                        - Catherine Bushbacher

Educators increase their knowledge and children benefit from the 
support teachers are able to provide and their ability to refer 
children who need such services more quickly and confidently.


      Restructuring Schools to Serve Children as Individuals

     One of the greatest changes in schools that include children 
with disabilities in regular classrooms is restructuring in order 
to meet the needs of individual children.  Staff with particular 
expertise no longer work in isolation with a "special" 
population.  They work collaboratively with classroom teachers 
throughout the school building, discussing student goals and 
their roles in providing the materials and services that are 
needed to assist students in achieving them.   This broader 
perspective results in greater support for all students:  

     Since we've begun inclusion, our standardized test scores 
     have gone up.  They've gone up because we are now able to 
     look at every child independently and to give them what they 
     need.  There's an ownership of all the students.  Many of 
     the teachers know the names of everyone in the building, 
     rather than just the 15 children that were assigned to them.  
     We intend to teach everyone, and we work together to help 
     each other.  
                                        - Catherine Bushbacher

     Some States have funding policies and practices that support 
inclusion.  When the money that formerly supported a student's 
segregated educational placement is made available to the 
neighborhood school where she or he is reassigned, there is an 
impetus for restructuring the way educational programs and 
services are delivered throughout the school.  One witness 
described the results in a school when three students who were 
formerly sent to segregated institutions were returned to their 
neighborhood school along with the resources that were previously 
diverted to those institutions:

     I told the principal he had $104,000.  What has happened for 
     the last two years in that building?  Because of our 
     allowing the building to use its dollars more flexibly and 
     then working within the other systems to make sure we did 
     not lose any of it, the other things in that building that 
     used to be categorical, like the Chapter One Reading 
     Programs, like the Bilingual Program, like the private 
     foundation dollars they had to deal with computers, and the 
     special ed money, have been reorganized so that the entire 
     school is now a teacher support team system.  Many people 
     are now working in bilingual.  Many people are working in 
     special education.  Many people are working with the 
     computers.  It is a highly educational program for all the 
     students, not just the students with disabilities.  And I am 
     positive that would happen if we would give local people 
     more control.  They know their needs.  They work with the 
     students and the parents every time.
                                        - Dan Hurd


               Preparation for Inclusive Adult Life

     Many witnesses spoke of the additional non-academic benefits 
of inclusion to students without disabilities.  Their experience 
with people with disabilities is knowledge that will help them 
throughout their lives.

     If we will be satisfied with graduates [of special education 
     programs] sitting at home and watching television, then a 
     protective and separate program approach will do.  If we 
     want higher outcomes in terms of living, learning, working 
     and playing to a high degree of independence in adult life, 
     then we must think in terms of services instead of programs, 
     and we must offer services in the least restrictive 
     environment.
                                        - Paul Ash 

     I am definitely a believer [in inclusionary education], not 
     only for the benefits to the children [with disabilities], 
     but for ... the benefits to the other persons, because I 
     also believe the condition of being able-bodied is a 
     temporary condition for many people.  I think we are 
     preparing children in schools for life, and life includes 
     disability within the family, within the school, and within 
     the work community.  People who expect to be successful in 
     work and successful in their family lives need exposure from 
     the beginning and need exposure for the able-bodied to learn 
     how to work effectively with their colleagues and peers who 
     have various disabilities.  
                                        - Nancy Hablifschel
     
One parent ended her testimony by eloquently describing the 
implicit message we are sending all children when we welcome 
children who were previously excluded by reason of disability 
into typical neighborhood classrooms:
 
     By eliminating segregation in our schools, we are teaching 
     kids that it is okay to be different and, in fact, there is 
     beauty in diversity.  They will see that we all have 
     individual gifts and talents that we bring to life's table 
     and that this country's founding principles of life, 
     liberty, and pursuit of happiness apply to all of its 
     citizens.
                                        - Debbie Rodriguez
                             Findings

1.   Inclusion can improve the academic performance of students 
     without disabilities.

     a. Teachers increase their use of the most effective 
        instructional methods for all students in order to ensure 
        the success of their students with disabilities.

     b. The benefits of related services to students are enhanced 
        because classroom teachers are more familiar with these 
        services and more capable of reinforcing progress when 
        the services are provided in the regular  classroom.

     c. Students with special needs no longer "belong" 
        exclusively to one staff  person or in one room in the 
        building; they are the responsibility of many  staff 
        people and are present throughout the building.  No 
        longer in isolation, school staff work more 
        collaboratively with each other and take  responsibility 
        for the success of all children, providing services and  
        instruction as needed to each other and to students.

2.   Effective inclusion provides benefits to children that go 
     beyond the greater academic skills they acquire:

     a. Students are better prepared for the possibility of 
        disability in their own  lives or those of their family 
        members.

     b. Students are better prepared to assume their future roles 
        in workplaces and communities that will include 
        supervisors, coworkers, and neighbors  with disabilities.

     c. Students will be more appreciative of human diversity.

                          RECOMMENDATIONS

                 Implement Strategies for Success

     When properly planned and implemented, inclusionary 
education improves the academic performance of all students, 
those with and those without disabilities.  In addition, it can 
provide benefits to children that go beyond the academic skills 
they acquire, preparing them to live and work in a diverse world.  
As schools implement inclusion, they should use the process as an 
impetus for school-wide changes that benefit all students.  
Schools should:

     1.   Adopt a school-wide curriculum and make modifications 
for all children who need them;

     2.   Employ experiential, interactive educational methods 
          proven to facilitate the learning of all students;

     3.   Redeploy personnel as needed to meet the needs of the 
          entire student population and engage all staff in 
          working to ensure the success of all students;

     4.   Engage in collaborative planning with all of the 
          stakeholders in the education of children with 
          disabilities;

     5.   Provide time for training, team-building, and planning 
so that staff and parents can work together for the changes that 
will benefit students;

     6.   Treat students with disabilities as much the same as 
          other students as possible (for example, having all 
          students begin school on the same day); 

     7.   Enroll children with disabilities in educational 
programs with their non-disabled peers at the earliest point 
possible, preferably in preschool;  

     8.   With the provision of reasonable accommodations, 
include students with disabilities in all system-wide assessments 
of educational performance and public reporting of the results, 
at the same time ensuring that their scores can be disaggregated; 
and

     9.   Publicly celebrate accomplishments.

                Improve and Expand Student Supports

     The successful inclusion of students with disabilities 
requires careful individualized planning regarding services and 
supports.  These may include assistive technology, peer 
preparation, personal assistance services, paraprofessional 
support, or social integration planning.  Schools should:

     1.   Create plans which include:

          a. needed adaptations of curricula;

          b. the provision of supports and other accommodations 
             such as sign language interpreters, accessible 
             formats, etc.; and

          c. the careful scheduling of the above in order to 
             enhance, not disrupt, the educational program of all 
             students in the classroom; 

     2.   Identify and develop/acquire assistive technology for 
those students who need it, making it available for their use at 
home and in school;

     3.   Prepare peers for the inclusion of a student with 
disabilities carefully, on an individual basis.  (Note:  
Sometimes, such "preparation" may actually hamper integration);

     4.   Plan the roles of necessary support personnel so that 
they do not foster dependence or segregation, and, where 
possible, assign the service                                     
provider to the classroom or the teacher, not to individual 
students;

     5.   Engage the families of students with disabilities in 
planning to facilitate the social integration of their children 
inside and outside of the classroom; and

     6.   Teach students with disabilities to manage their 
support services so they can achieve independence.

             Remove Administrative and Policy Barriers

     In spite of the legal requirements that students be educated 
in the least restrictive environment, major barriers to the 
inclusion of students with disabilities in classrooms with their 
non-disabled peers still exist.  

In order to reduce these barriers, the Federal government should:

     1.   Significantly increase the monitoring and enforcement 
          of current laws and regulations through State plan 
          reviews, consumer-oriented monitoring visits and 
          reports, issuance of appropriate sanctions for 
          non-compliance, Annual Reports to Congress, and the 
          establishment of a fair and effective parental appeal 
          process to the Secretary of the Department of 
          Education;

     2.   Disallow joint grant applications from multiple 
          education agencies, a policy which tacitly endorses 
          segregated special education programs;

     3.   Modify current accounting requirements in order to 
eliminate incentives to place children in segregated educational 
placements because of the ease of compliance with current 
reporting requirements;

     4.   Clarify and publicize IDEA regulations which require 
          school districts to pay the legal expenses of parents 
          who exercise their due process rights to secure an 
          appropriate education for their children with 
          disabilities and prevail at the due process hearings;

     5.   Require districts to pay all related costs for 
surrogate parents who exercise due process rights to secure an 
appropriate education for a child with a disability;

     6.   Review the results of all due process hearing decisions 
related to inclusion and use these results as a guide to 
improving and enhancing inclusionary education policies and 
practices;

     7.   Develop standards and procedures for processing appeals 
by parents to the Secretary of the Department of Education.
 
State governments should:

     1.   Alter school finance policies to eliminate provisions 
          which encourage segregation;
     
     2.   Amend their laws and regulations governing teacher 
          certification to require that all teacher candidates be 
          qualified and competent to teach all students at their 
          certification level; and

     3.   Prohibit local school districts from entering into 
          collective bargaining agreements which result, de 
          facto, in violations of the rights of students with 
          disabilities provided by Federal law. 

School districts should:

     1.   Rescind policies and practices that place and keep 
students in unwanted segregated placements;

     2.   Provide parents information about their rights to 
          inclusive placements for students with disabilities;

     3.   Eliminate the disproportionate identification of 
          minority children as needing special education and 
          rectify the disproportionate segregation of these 
          children by race and disability classification; and

     4.   Provide educational support services to children with 
disabilities who need them without requiring them to be labeled 
and placed in special education programs to obtain services.

                     Remove Financial Barriers

     Perhaps the single greatest barrier to the implementation of 
inclusionary education is the financing practices and policies of 
the various States.  Because States distribute both State and 
Federal dollars for special education, they have a great impact 
on the practices of local educational agencies.  Through a 
variety of funding mechanisms, they create disincentives to the 
inclusion of students with disabilities in regular classrooms 
and, in fact, often create incentives for districts to place 
students with disabilities in segregated educational programs.   
With changes in law and regulations States can reverse those 
incentives in order to facilitate inclusion.  States should:

     1.   Send funding directly to the local school district, not 
          to intermediate level educational agencies, where it is 
          often used to support segregated education;

     2.   Require the involvement of parents and persons with 
          disabilities in local decision making;

     3.   Eliminate all requirements that funding be tied to 
          particular kinds of placements, expenditures, or 
          categories of personnel;

     4.   Remove discrepancies in funding allotted to local 
          educational agencies for children with disabilities 
          based on the educational placement-neighborhood school, 
          segregated special education facility, or residential 
          school;

     5.   Require districts to provide the neighborhood school 
          that enrolls a child with a disability the same amount 
          of money that would otherwise have been spent in a 
          segregated placement;

     6.   Ensure that principals have the discretion to use 
          funding as needed to improve educational programs in 
          their school and are held accountable for the 
          educational outcomes the child achieves, not just the 
          expenditures they have made; and

     7.   Allocate funding according to a "placement-neutral" 
          process, whereby funding is tied directly to a 
          student's needs, not to specific placements.  For 
          example, the option of a funding model based on a 
          presumption of a proportionate incidence of children 
          with disabilities in a school population rather than on 
          the labeling and counting of individual children with 
          disabilities might be appropriate in many districts. 

The Federal government should:

     1.   Consider allowing States the option of allocating funds 
          according to a "placement-neutral" process, whereby 
          funding is tied directly to a student's needs, not to 
          specific placements.  For example, the option of a 
          funding model based on a presumption of a proportionate 
          incidence of children with disabilities in a school 
          population rather than on the labeling and counting of 
          individual children with disabilities might be 
          appropriate in many districts.

            Improve Consumer and Professional Training

     Inclusion requires parents, teachers, and other school staff 
to work together in new ways.  Parents need to change their 
expectations for their children, both in terms of goals and 
individual programming, when they enter an inclusive classroom.  
Teachers need to work with a more diverse population, relying on 
support from parents and others to assist them and all their 
students.  Additional school staff, previously accustomed to 
others being responsible for students with disabilities, need to 
learn how to assist and support them.  

     Unfortunately, existing preservice teacher preparation 
programs are most often divided into special and regular 
education sections.  They perpetuate teacher attitudes, skills, 
and confidence which make inclusion difficult at best.  In order 
to change this situation:

The Federal government should:

     1.   Modify regulations relating to a Comprehensive System 
          of Personnel Development in order to require plans for 
          preparing teachers and related service personnel for 
          work in inclusive educational environments; and
  
     2.   Condition its grants to institutions of higher 
          education for personnel development on the elimination 
          of the division between special and regular education 
          teacher preparation programs and, instead, support the 
          preparation of all teachers for inclusive classrooms.


States should:

     1.   Change bureaucratic teacher certification requirements 
          which make it difficult and, in some cases, illegal for 
          some teachers to work with students with different 
          (dis)abilities;

     2.   Eliminate the linkages between funding allocations and 
          teacher certification; and

     3.   Monitor and reward colleges and universities for the 
          quality of the training they provide to teachers and 
          administrators in the area of inclusion.

Professional training programs should:

     1.   Require all teacher candidates to demonstrate 
competency in teaching in inclusive classrooms;

     2.   Prepare all teacher candidates to:

          a. Use instructional methods which enable children with 
             and without disabilities to learn efficiently and 
             effectively;

          b. Understand when to use particular methods with 
             children with disabilities;
     
          c. Engender a high level of respect and safeguard the 
             human and civil rights of all children;
     
          d. Be skilled in communicating and collaborating with 
             parents; and

          e. Be knowledgeable of the subject matter they are 
             expected to teach.

     3.   Eliminate the division between regular and special 
education preparation programs.

Parent training programs should:

     1.   Assist parents in learning how to be effective 
advocates for their children in seeking inclusive placements and 
skilled collaborators when planning with educators for their 
children; 
 
     2.   Educate parents about the advantages of inclusion and 
how it relates to their child; and 

     3.   Familiarize parents with the instructional methods 
available to assist their children.

     With the passage of P.L. 94-142 in 1975, a new era of 
opportunity dawned for students with disabilities.  In response 
to the exclusion and abuse of children with disabilities, 
Congress promised quality education provided to the maximum 
extent possible in the presence of other non-disabled children, 
from their neighborhoods, from their families.  This promise has 
been broken in far too many instances.  It is our hope that the 
information contained in this report will assist Congress, as 
well as Federal, State, and local education officials, teachers, 
parents, and students with disabilities themselves in ensuring 
that the promises of quality inclusionary education can and will 
be kept.












                            APPENDICES

                         LIST OF WITNESSES

             CHICAGO HEARING ON INCLUSIONARY EDUCATION
                         AUGUST 4-5, 1993

     The National Council on Disability is grateful to the 
following individuals and organizations for submitting oral 
and/or written testimony as part of the hearings.  We are also 
appreciative of many others who spoke at the hearings but 
submitted no written testimony.

American Foundation for the Blind
Midwest Regional Center
401 North Michigan Avenue, Suite 308
Chicago, IL  60611

Paul Ash
Director
Division of Special Education
Indiana Department of Education
Room 229, State House
Indianapolis, IN  46204-2798

Amy Bennett
Program Analyst
Office of the Assistant Secretary for
  Special Education and Rehabilitative Services
U.S. Department of Education
330 C Street, S.W. - Room 3110
Washington, DC  20202

Harvey Burkhour
Michigan Protection and Advocacy Services
7653 Riverview Drive
Jenison, MI  49428

Catherine Bushbacher
Principal
Peter A. Reinberg School
3425 N. Major
Chicago, IL  60634

Sharon Clousing
Director of Children's Services
Elim Christian School
13020 Central
Palos Heights, IL  60463

Marco Coronado
Illinois Fiesta Educativa, Inc.
1921 South Blue Island Avenue
Chicago, IL  60608

Margaret C. Daley
The Chicago Cultural Center Foundation
78 E. Washington
Chicago, IL  60602

Rick Douglas
Executive Director
President's Committee on Employment
  of People with Disabilities
1331 F Street, N.W.
Washington, DC  20004-1107

Linda Effner
Parent and educator

William Ellis
Director of Professional Services
National Center for Learning Disabilities, Inc.
381 Park Avenue South
Suite 1420
New York, NY  10016

Bernadette Etten
Parent

Barbara Eunique
Certified Rehabilitation Counselor
Great Lakes Disability Business and Technical Assistance Center
University of Illinois

Sharon Freagon, Ph.D.
7500 Rich Road
De Kalb, IL  60115

Mary Beth Gahan
1025 Randolph Street
Oak Park, IL  60302

Larry Gorski
Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities
City Hall
121 N. LaSalle Street
Chicago, IL  60602

Martin Gould, Ed.D.
6527 Hillfall Court
Columbia, MD  21045

Charlene Green
Interim Associate Superintendent
Department of Special Education and Student Support Services
Chicago Public Schools
1819 West Pershing (6C)
Chicago, IL  60609

Nancy Hablifschel
Attorney
Chicago

William Henderson, Ed.D.
Principal 
O'Hearn Elementary School
1669 Dorchester Avenue
Dorchester, MA  02122

Dan S. Hurd
Executive Director
SASED
6S 
331 Cornwall
Naperville, IL  60540

Douglas Kane, Ph.D.
RR 2
Box 217
New Berlin, IL  62670


Robert F. Kilbury
Executive Director
Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities in Illinois
401 E. Adams
Springfield, IL  62701

Rene Leininger
Executive Director
Illinois Council on Developmental Disabilities
State of Illinois Center
840 South Spring Street
Springfield, IL  62706

Barbara W. LeRoy, Ph.D.
Program Director
Wayne State University
Center for Inclusive Education
6001 Cass Avenue, Suite 285
Detroit, MI  48202  

Carol Melnick, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Education
Chair, Department of Special Education
National-Louis University
2840 Sheridan Road
Evanston, IL  60201

Mark Mlawer
Executive Director
Maryland Coalition for Integrated Education
7257 Parkway Drive
Suite 209
Hanover, MD  21076-1306

Jean A. Modry
Associate Executive Director
Chicago Hearing Society
332 S. Michigan Avenue, #714
Chicago, IL  60604

Donald R. Moore, Ed.D.
Executive Director
Designs for Chicago
220 S. State Street
Chicago, IL  60604  

Randy Oltman
Parent
Streator, IL

Mark Partin
Advocacy, Inc.
7800 Shoal Creek Blvd.
Suite 171 E
Austin, TX  78757

William Peters
De Kalb County Special Education Association
2205 Sycamore Rd.
De Kalb, IL  60115

Patricia Pierce
Northwest Indiana Special Education Cooperative
2150 West 97th Avenue
Crown Point, IN  46307

Karen Rajski
Parent
349 Timber Creek Drive
Round Lake Park, IL  60073

Carol Reedstrom
6048 Birchwood Rd.
Woodbury, MN  55125

Debbie Rodriguez
Development Director
Access Living of Metropolitan Chicago
310 South Peoria Street, Suite 201
Chicago, IL  60607

Joy Jean Rogers, Ph.D.
Loyola University of Chicago
Lewis Towers, Room 828
820 N. Michigan Avenue
Chicago, IL  60611

Dr. Peter Seiler
Illinois Association for the Deaf
125 South Webster
Jacksonville, IL  62650

Mary Shahbazian
Illinois Affiliation of Private Schools for Exceptional Children

Patricia McGill Smith
Executive Director
National Parent Network on Disabilities
1600 Prince Street
Alexandria, VA  22314

Max Starkloff
5100 Oakland Avenue
Suite 100
St. Louis, MO  63110

Ruth Usilton
Director
Project Choices
6S
331 Cornwall Street
Naperville, IL  60540

Michael J. Ward
Branch Chief
Secondary Education and Transitional Services Branch
Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services
U.S. Department of Education
330 C Street, S.W. - Room 4624
Washington, DC  20202


Catherine Wells
Principal
Farnsworth School
5414 North Linder
Chicago, IL  60630

Margaret Wilson
President
Teachers with Disabilities United
3236 N. Ozark
Chicago, IL  60634

Kathleen Winter
Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities
City Hall
121 N. LaSalle Street
Chicago, IL  60602

Mary Zabelski
Metro Regional Representative
Illinois Parents of the Visually Impaired
658 East State Street
Jacksonville, IL  62650

                      DEFINITIONS OF ACRONYMS

AIDS      Acquired immune deficiency syndrome

CFR       Code of Federal Regulations

DOE       Department of Education

EHA       Education for All Handicapped Children Act, 20 U.S.C. 
1401

FY        Fiscal year

IDEA      Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 20 U.S.C. 
          1401 et seq.; the name                                 
          given the EHA in its 1990 reauthorization.

IEP       Individualized education program

IQ        Intelligence quotient

LEA       Local education agency

LRE       Least restrictive environment

OT        Occupational therapy

PT        Physical therapy

SEA       State education agency

U.S.C.    United States Code


                          HEARING AGENDA

                  NATIONAL COUNCIL ON DISABILITY

Making Inclusionary Education Work:  Overcoming Barriers to Quality

                          Public Hearing
               Truffles Room, Hyatt Regency Chicago
                         August 4-5, 1993

                            - AGENDA -

Wednesday, August 4, 1993

 8:30 - 9:00 a.m.

Opening Remarks     John A. Gannon
                    Acting Chairperson
                    National Council on Disability

                    Shirley W. Ryan
                    Member
                    National Council on Disability and 
                    Chairperson, Inclusion Subcommittee

                    Margaret C. Daley 
                    The Chicago Cultural Center Foundation
                    Chicago, IL

 9:00 - 10:30 a.m.

Panel 1 -- Examples of Successful Inclusion Across the Age Span 

Moderator:          Shirley W. Ryan
                    Member
                    National Council on Disability, and
                    Chairperson, Inclusion Subcommittee
                    Washington, DC

Panelists:          Martin Gould, Ed.D.
                    6527 Hillfall Court
                    Columbia, MD  21045

                    William Henderson, Ed.D.
                    Principal
                    O'Hearn Elementary School
                    1669 Dorchester Avenue
                    Dorchester, MA  02122

                    Carol Reedstrom
                    6048 Birchwood Road
                    Woodbury, MN  55125
                                   
                    Rick Douglas
                    Executive Director
                    President's Committee on Employment
                        of People with Disabilities
                    1331 F Street NW
                    Washington, DC  20004-1107

10:30 - 10:45 a.m.  Break

10:45 - 12:30 p.m.

Panel 2 -- Specific Strategies for Making Inclusion Work

Moderator:          John A. Gannon
                    Acting Chairperson
                    National Council on Disability
                    Washington, DC

Panelists:          Amy Bennett
                    Program Analyst
                    Office of the Assistant Secretary for
                        Special Education and Rehabilitative 
                    Services
                    U.S. Department of Education
                    330 C Street, S.W. - Room 3110
                    Washington, DC  20202

                    Larry Gorski
                    Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities
                    City Hall
                    121 N. LaSalle Street
                    Chicago, IL  60602

                    Ruth Usilton
                    Director
                    Project Choices
                    6S
                    331 Cornwall Street
                    Naperville, IL  60540

                    Michael J. Ward
                    Branch Chief
                    Secondary and Transitional Services Branch
                    Office of Special Education and 
                    Rehabilitative Services
                    U.S. Department of Education
                    330 C Street, S.W. - Room 4624
                    Washington, DC  20202

12:30 - 1:30 p.m.   Lunch

 1:30 - 3:15 p.m.

Panel 3 -- Continuing Barriers Experienced by Parents and 
Students Seeking Inclusion

Moderator:          Mary M. Raether
                    Member
                    National Council on Disability
                    Washington, DC

Panelists:          Rene Leininger
                    Executive Director
                    Illinois Council on Developmental 
                    Disabilities
                    State of Illinois Center
                    840 South Spring Street
                    Springfield, IL  62706

                    Mark Mlawer
                    Executive Director
                    Maryland Coalition for Integrated Education
                    7257 Parkway Drive
                    Suite 209
                    Hanover, MD  21076-1306

                    Debbie Rodriguez
                    Development Director
                    Access Living of Metropolitan Chicago
                    310 South Peoria Street
                    Suite 201
                    Chicago, IL  60607
                    
                    William Ellis
                    Director of Professional Services
                    National Center for Learning Disabilities, 
                    Inc.
                    381 Park Avenue South
                    Suite 1420
                    New York, NY  10016

 3:15 - 4:45 p.m.

Panel 4 -- The Experience of Individuals Who Are Minorities in 
Seeking an Inclusionary Education

Moderator:          John A. Gannon
                    Acting Chairperson
                    National Council on Disability
                    Washington, DC

Panelists:          Harvey Burkhour
                    Michigan Protection and Advocacy Services
                    7653 Riverview Drive
                    Jenison, MI  49428

                    Marco Coronado
                    Illinois Fiesta Educativa, Inc.
                    1921 South Blue Island Avenue
                    Chicago, IL  60608

                    Charlene Green
                    Interim Associate Superintendent
                    Department of Special Education and Student 
                    Support Services
                    Chicago Public Schools
                    1819 West Pershing (6C)
                    Chicago, IL  60609
     
 4:45 p.m.          Closing Remarks, Day One


Thursday, August 5, 1993

 8:45 - 9:00 a.m.   

Opening Remarks     John A. Gannon
                    Acting Chairperson
                    National Council on Disability
                    Washington, DC

 9:00 - 10:45 a.m.

Panel 5 -- Supports for Inclusion: The Role of Individual Plans, 
Assistive Technology, Personal Assistance Services, and Other 
Supports

Moderator:          Robert S. Muller
                    Member
                    National Council on Disability
                    Washington, DC

Panelists:          Mary Beth Gahan
                    1025 Randolph Street
                    Oak Park, IL  60302

                    Barbara W. LeRoy, Ph.D.
                    Program Director
                    Wayne State University
                    Center for Inclusive Education
                    6001 Cass Avenue, Suite 285
                    Detroit, MI  48202  
             
                    Carol Melnick, Ph.D.
                    Associate Professor of Education
                    National-Louis University
                    2840 Sheridan Road
                    Evanston, IL  60201

                    Mark Partin
                    Advocacy, Inc.
                    7800 Shoal Creek Boulevard
                    Suite 171 E
                    Austin, TX  78757
                    
10:45 - 11:00 a.m.  Break


11:00 - 12:30 p.m.

Panel 6 -- Financing Inclusive Education: Barriers and 
Opportunities

Moderator:          John A. Gannon
                    Acting Chairperson
                    National Council on Disability
                    Washington, DC  

Panelists:          Dan S. Hurd
                    Executive Director
                    SASED
                    6S 
                    331 Cornwall
                    Naperville, IL  60540

                    Douglas Kane, Ph.D.
                    RR 2
                    Box 217
                    New Berlin, IL  62670

                    William Peters
                    De Kalb County Special Education Association
                    2205 Sycamore Road
                    De Kalb, IL  60115

12:30 - 1:30 p.m.   Lunch

 1:30 - 2:45 p.m.

Panel 7 -- Professional and Consumer Training in Inclusionary 
Education

Moderator:          Anthony H. Flack
                    Member
                    National Council on Disability
                    Washington, DC

Panelists:          Sharon Freagon, Ph.D.
                    7500 Rich Road
                    De Kalb, IL  60115

                    Joy Jean Rogers, Ph.D.
                    Loyola University of Chicago
                    Lewis Towers, Room 828
                    820 N. Michigan Avenue
                    Chicago, IL  60611

                    Patricia McGill Smith
                    Executive Director
                    National Parent Network on Disabilities
                    1600 Prince Street
                    Alexandria, VA  22314

                    Max Starkloff
                    5100 Oakland Avenue
                    Suite 100
                    St. Louis, MO  63110
                    
 2:45 - 3:00 p.m.   Break

 3:00 - 4:30 p.m.

Panel 8 -- The Effect of Inclusion on the Total School

Moderator:          Shirley W. Ryan
                    Member
                    National Council on Disability and
                    Chairperson, Inclusion Subcommittee
                    Washington, DC  

Panelists:          Donald R. Moore, Ed.D.
                    Executive Director
                    Designs for Chicago
                    220 S. State Street
                    Chicago, IL  60604  

                    Catherine Wells
                    Principal
                    Farnsworth School
                    5414 North Linder
                    Chicago, IL  60630

                    Kathleen Winter
                    Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities
                    City Hall
                    121 N. LaSalle Street
                    Chicago, IL  60602

 4:30 p.m.

Closing Remarks     Marca Bristo
                    President, Access Living of Metropolitan 
                    Chicago

Note: After each panel there will be a brief open microphone time 
during which persons wishing to address the hearing will be given 
three to five minutes for testimony.  

           MISSION OF THE NATIONAL COUNCIL ON DISABILITY


                       Overview and Purpose

The National Council on Disability is an independent Federal 
agency led by 15 members appointed by the President of the United 
States and confirmed by the U.S. Senate.   
The overall purpose of the National Council is to promote 
policies, programs, practices, and procedures that guarantee 
equal opportunity for all individuals with disabilities, 
regardless of the nature or severity of the disability; and to 
empower individuals with disabilities to achieve economic 
self-sufficiency, independent living, and inclusion and 
integration into all aspects of society.

                          Specific Duties

The current statutory mandate of the National Council includes 
the following:

    Reviewing and evaluating, on a continuing basis, policies, 
     programs, practices, and procedures concerning individuals 
     with disabilities conducted or assisted by Federal 
     departments and agencies, including programs established or 
     assisted under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended, 
     or under the Developmental Disabilities Assistance and Bill 
     of Rights Act; and all statutes and regulations pertaining 
     to Federal programs which assist such individuals with 
     disabilities in order to assess the effectiveness of such 
     policies, programs, practices, procedures, statutes, and 
     regulations in meeting the needs of individuals with 
     disabilities; 

    Reviewing and evaluating, on a continuing basis, new and 
     emerging disability policy issues affecting individuals with 
     disabilities at the Federal, State, and local levels, and in 
     the private sector, including the need for and coordination 
     of adult services, access to personal assistance services, 
     school reform efforts and the impact of such efforts on 
     individuals with disabilities, access for health care, and 
     policies that operate as disincentives for the individuals 
     to seek and retain employment;

    Making recommendations to the President, Congress, the 
     Secretary of Education, the Director of the National 
     Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, and 
     other officials of Federal agencies, respecting ways to 
     better promote equal opportunity, economic self-sufficiency, 
     independent living, and inclusion and integration into all 
     aspects of society for Americans with disabilities;

    Providing Congress, on a continuing basis, advice, 
     recommendations, legislative proposals, and any additional 
     information which the Council or Congress deems appropriate;  

    Gathering information about the implementation, 
     effectiveness, and impact of the  Americans with 
     Disabilities Act of 1990 (42 U.S.C. 12101 et seq.);

    Advising the President, Congress, the Commissioner of the 
     Rehabilitation Services Administration, the Assistant 
     Secretary for Special Education and Rehabilitative Services 
     within the Department of Education, and the Director of the 
     National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research 
     on the development of the programs to be carried out under 
     the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended;

    Providing advice to the Commissioner with respect to the 
     policies of and conduct of the Rehabilitation Services 
     Administration;

    Making recommendations to the Director of the National 
     Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research on ways 
     to improve research, service, administration, and the 
     collection, dissemination, and implementation of research 
     findings affecting persons with disabilities;

    Providing advice regarding priorities for the activities of 
     the Interagency Disability Coordinating Council and 
     reviewing the recommendations of such Council for 
     legislative and administrative changes to ensure that such 
     recommendations are consistent with the purposes of the 
     Council to promote the full integration, independence, and 
     productivity of individuals with disabilities;

    Preparing and submitting to the President and Congress a 
     report entitled National Disability Policy: A Progress 
     Report on an annual basis; and 

    Preparing and submitting to Congress and the President a 
     report containing a summary of the activities and 
     accomplishments of the Council on an annual basis.

             Population Served and Current Activities

While many government agencies deal with issues and programs 
affecting people with disabilities, the National Council is the 
only Federal agency charged with addressing, analyzing, and 
making recommendations on issues of public policy which affect 
people with disabilities regardless of age, disability type, 
perceived employment potential, economic need, specific 
functional ability, status as a veteran, or other individual 
circumstance.  The National Council recognizes its unique 
opportunity to facilitate independent living, community 
integration, and employment opportunities for people with 
disabilities by ensuring an informed and coordinated approach to 
addressing the concerns of persons with disabilities and 
eliminating barriers to their active participation in community 
and family life.

The National Council plays a major role in developing disability 
policy in America.  In fact, it was the Council that originally 
proposed what eventually became the Americans with Disabilities 
Act of 1990.  Our present list of key issues includes personal 
assistance services, health care reform, the inclusion of 
students with disabilities in high quality programs in typical 
neighborhood schools, equal employment opportunity, community 
housing, monitoring the implementation of the Americans with 
Disabilities Act, improving assistive
technology, and ensuring that persons with disabilities who are 
members of minority groups fully participate in society. 

                         Statutory History

The National Council was initially established in 1978 as an 
advisory board within the Department of Education (Public Law 
95-602).  The Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1984 (Public Law 
98-221) transformed the National Council into an independent 
agency.

1. 20 U.S.C. 1401.

2. The Americans with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. 12101.

3. 20 U.S.C. 1401

4. The Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EHA) is now 
known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).  
The provisions relating to the education of children "to the 
maximum extent appropriate" with non-disabled students have 
remained the same.

5. SRI International (1992).  The Transition Experiences of Young 
People with Disabilities:  Implications for Policy and Programs.  
(Contract No. 300-87-0054).  Washington, DC:  Office of Special 
Education Programs, U.S. Department of Education.

6. National Council on Disability (1993).  Serving the Nation's 
Students with Disabilities:  Progress and Prospects.  Washington, 
DC:  Author.  See pp. 74, 78-79.

7.  Lou Harris and Associates, Inc. (1994).  National 
Organization on Disability/Harris Survey of Americans with 
Disabilities.  New York:  Author.

8.  IDEA, the legislation governing special education, requires 
that children be placed in integrated classrooms "to the maximum 
extent appropriate."  In the implementing regulations, the 
Department of Education rephrased the requirement, calling for 
the placement of students with disabilities "in the least 
restrictive environment."

9. National Council on Disability (1993).  Serving the Nation's 
Students with Disabilities:  Progress and Prospects.  Washington, 
DC:  Author.

10. In this report, the terms "mainstreaming," "integration," and 
"inclusion" are used interchangeably to mean that the primary 
placement of students with disabilities is in the regular 
classroom, although some instruction may also be provided in 
other parts of the school building based on student needs.  
Supports and performance expectations vary based upon the 
students' individualized needs and goals.  Students may be 
engaged in the same activity with or without modifications, or 
may be engaged in parallel activities (i.e., same content area 
but different activity).                

11. Richardson, N., Rogers, J., and Verre, J. (1994).  A System 
Apart:  A Study of the Implementation of the Least Restrictive 
Environment Provisions of IDEA in Massachusetts and Illinois.  
Newton, MA:  Education Development Center, Inc.

12. 20 U.S.C. 1412(5)(B).

13. 34 CFR 300.550(b)(2).

14.  20 U.S.C. 1412(5)(B).

15. Please note that the barriers detailed in this section have 
evolved over the history of the law.  No implicit criticism of 
current leadership at the Department of Education is intended.

16. 20 U.S.C.  1414(c)(1); 34 CFR  300.190.

17. 34 CFR 300.190(b)(2).

18. 20 U.S.C.  1414(a)(1), (a)(2)(B)(i); 34 CFR  300.182.

19. 20 U.S.C. 1401(a)(4).

20. 20 U.S.C. 1401(a)(3).

21. 20 U.S.C. 1401(c).

22. 30 CFR 300.515; 20 U.S.C. 1415(b)(1)(D); 1415(e)(4).

23. On November 3, 1986, the U.S. Department of Education issued 
a letter interpreting Section 300.515 of the regulations to apply 
to due process hearings, an interpretation consistent with IDEA's 
legislative history.  (Education for the Handicapped Law Report, 
211:425).  However, in order for parents to secure reimbursement 
for their hearing fees if districts do not choose to grant them, 
they must incur more legal expense to go to court.  Many parents 
never make it that far.

24.  Letter from Dr. Thomas Hehir, Director, Office of Special 
Education Programs, U.S. Department of Education, to Ms. Deborah 
Barnett, Director, Office of Special Education, South Dakota 
Department of Education and Cultural Affairs, October 29, 1993, 
in response to her request for clarification of "the extent of 
the explanation that public agencies are required to provide 
parents regarding the attorneys' fees provision."

25.  See, for example:  Richardson, N., Rogers, J., & Verre, J. 
(1994). A System Apart:  A Study of the Implementation of the 
Least Restrictive Environment Provisions of IDEA in Massachusetts 
and Illinois.  Newton, MA:  Education Development Center, Inc.

26. In the examples that follow, the term "some districts" is 
used to refer to districts, schools, elected governing bodies, or 
individual administrators or educators that may be responsible 
for the actions described. 


27. 20 U.S.C. 1412(5)(B).

28.  20 U.S.C. 1412(5)(B).

29. National Council on Disability (1993). Meeting the Unique 
Needs of Minorities with Disabilities.  Washington, DC:  Author.

30. Autin, D. M. T. K., Dentzer, E., and McNutt, B. (1992). 
Segregated and Second Rate Special Education in New York.  New 
York, NY: Advocates for Children of New York, Inc.

31.  Dr. Kane provided extensive testimony at the hearing.  Much 
of his testimony was based on the report prepared by Program 
Analysis Inc. for which he was a principal investigator with 
Stephen F. John, Richard W. Bell, and Connie Charlesworth.  The 
Identification of Financial Disincentives to Educating Children 
and Youth with Moderate to Severe and Multiple Developmental 
Disabilities in Their Home Schools was prepared for the Illinois 
Planning Council on Developmental Disabilities of the Illinois 
State Board of Education and completed in May 1993.

32.  Illinois has several categories for special education 
funding.  According to Dr. Douglas Kane, in 1991, the State's 
money for special education was divided in the following ways:

     46% for personnel
     24% for transportation
     6% for private sector education
     9% for orphans
     14% for students with disabilities in regular school 
     
According to William Peters, Illinois is organized into 11 
regions and 950 school districts, 25 of which are largely urban 
school districts.  The remaining 925 districts are members of 66 
cooperatives, organized by districts to meet particular needs.

33.  Cooperatives are "associations of two or more school 
districts formed for the sole purpose of providing special 
education," according to Dr. Douglas Kane. 


34. Office of Special Education Programs (1989).  Tenth Annual 
Report to the U.S. Congress on the Implementation of the 
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.  Washington, DC:  
U.S. Department of Education.

35. Report of the Vaughn G. Design Team to the Federal District 
Court of Maryland, 1993.

36. These topics are discussed in the chapter entitled Continuing 
Barriers Experienced by Parents and Students Seeking Inclusion.


37.   See Specific Strategies for Making Inclusion Work for a 
more detailed explanation. 

38. These methods are discussed at greater length in Specific 
Strategies for Making Inclusion Work.