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Senior Year! Starting off with Inclusion and Big IDEAs

Hello! It has been a long summer and a rapid start to my last year as an undergraduate at Saint Michael’s College, but I am excited to be back in the classroom (both at St. Mike’s for my senior Education and American Studies courses, and Essex Middle School for my final placement and student teaching)!

Before the student teaching semester begins, most secondary education students at St. Mike’s wrap up their studies with two courses focused on classroom particulars: teaching in an inclusive classroom, and approaches to teaching in your specific content area (which, for me, is humanities). As the title of this blog post suggests, I would like to reflect on some recent conversations and learning from my Teaching in an Inclusive Middle/High School Classroom course, namely those regarding the history and development of inclusive law.
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The idea that all students, no matter their race, ethnicity, religion, intellectual or physical ability, etc. should have access to free, public, appropriate, and accessible education is one that is well documented in recent theories and policies regarding education in the United States. However, the opposition and obstacles to this idea becoming a reality are also well documented; and unfortunately, they have a much longer history than the modern efforts to provide students with educational provisions under IDEA. Following the Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education (1954), segregation based on unalterable characteristics was prohibited, opening classroom doors to students who were previously excluded based on inexcusable societal norms. 65 years later, the current Individuals with Disabilities Education (Improvement) Act, also known as IDEA/IDEIA, lays out the mandates for a more “inclusive” educational system. You can read more about the IDEA law here.

Out of curiosity, I decided to look further into IDEA and how the law has functioned in more recent court cases related to inclusion in U.S. schools. After scrolling through some articles, I came across a paper presented at the annual international convention of the Council for Exceptional Children in 2001 (the paper was reprinted as a part of an ERIC collection, and can be found here). The opening line to the abstract was enough to rope me in: “This paper stresses that the word ‘inclusion’ is not used in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and that the law calls for students with disabilities to be provided with a free, appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment” (Sultana, 2001). How on earth is inclusion not explicitly stated in IDEA when so much of the rhetoric surrounding the law relies on it?

The ten court cases outlined in Sultana’s paper raise difficult questions and left me wondering how satisfactory the final rulings really are. However, the cases selected do provide decent evidence as to why the word “inclusion” should not be a part of the official law. While the purpose of leaving the word “inclusion” out of IDEA is controversial and lends itself to arguments based on the protection of civil rights, the way in which “inclusion” would be defined in IDEA would actually hinder the law’s ability to provide students with free, appropriate public education (FAPE) in the least restrictive environment (LRE). In some situations, inclusion in general education classrooms does not always benefit a student’s learning, whether inclusion means full or partial inclusion in general education. What IDEA aims to do is simply provide equal opportunity for FAPE and LRE to all students, therefore extending itself to protect students with disabilities by protecting the entire student population. By meeting the provisions in IDEA while basing how those provisions are met on a student’s individual needs, the extent to which inclusion is appropriate for a student naturally becomes the standard for their inclusion in the classroom. Combined with best practice and a strong, specialized support network for students and educators, IDEA protects the notion of appropriate inclusion in the classroom without sacrificing the student-centered decisions that prioritize FAPE and LRE. So, while “inclusion” may not explicitly appear in the law, it is evident that appropriate inclusion is a large part of the law’s intents and purposes.

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