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Understanding Special Education 1 Understanding Special Education Brittany Santiago Liberty University-EDUC 510

Understanding Special Education 2 Introduction Mark 16:15 states “And he said to them, “go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation” (English Standard Version, 2001/2008). This verse depicts the belief that all people, to include those with disabilities are a part of God’s world creation, deserving of equality. Special education is meant to do just that, provide students with disabilities the education that meets their developmental needs. Special education is a specialized education to decrease the gap between disabled students and their non-disabled peers. This education may present as vastly different than the typical education as it provides physical therapies as well as life skills to aid in the well-being of disabled students in the long run. The special education of disabled students is necessary because these students require different treatments and educational methods to succeed. Special education provides laws and protection so that they receive correct support that they wouldn’t receive in a typical classroom. Laws In the midst of the civil rights movement fighting to desegregate schools, parents were fighting for the fair education of their special needs children. Using verbiage from the Brown v. Board of Education case, it was argued that disabled students should be in public schools instead of segregated to specialty schools because of their special needs (Colker, 2013 p. 22). In 1975 the Education of All Handicapped Children’s Act was enacted and would later become the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act. This act describes disabilities, the type of educational programs that must be offered and an emphasis on access to general education for special needs students (Orlich et al., 2018 p. 47) . With the introduction of IDEA, special needs students began being included in general education classes more leading to the LRE mandate. Within the IDEA are mandates that include Free Appropriate Public Education and Least

Understanding Special Education 3 Restrictive Environment. LRE refers to the environment that the special needs services are delivered, ranging from least restrictive to most restrictive. Examples of this range from a general education classroom being the least restrictive and most restrictive being an institutional setting. FAPE ensures that a special needs student is able to make educational progress that is appropriate to their disability or needs (Yell et al., 2021 p.3). The key component of IDEA is ensuring that public schools have the tools available to their special needs students. This provides a clear process for defining disabilities, providing necessary services and individuals to help the student get the help they need to succeed in a school setting such as teachers specializing in speech therapy. Special Education Services Before a student receives the services offered from a special education classroom, the school must be sure they actually need the services. Not all disabilities or disorders are so extreme that the use of special education resources would be beneficial. Each student’s disability is different and because of this, they are each assessed differently. Students learning disabilities typically standardized test to provide educators with an understanding of the students IQ. Some disorders such as Down Syndrome or Autism are based on evaluations or informal assessments (Wilmshurst & Brue, 2018 p.56). However, James Kaufmann states that eligibility decisions should strictly be based on cut-and-dry quantitative formulas, but instead should also be based on the professional judgement of those involved (Kauffman et al., 2018 p. 40). The students that receive special education services demonstrate a wide variety of characteristics that consist of lack of communication and life skills, as well as cognitive, physical, and emotional delays. Covered under IDEA are the resources needed to assist in these characteristics and help students learn to cope with or even learn how to adjust these delays. For example, if a student suffers

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Understanding Special Education 4 from a TBI they will have problems in many areas such as movement, speech, and social interactions. Services offered to this student would consist of a speech pathologist as well as a physical therapist. These services will differ depending on the needs of the student and are apart of the evaluation process when determining the eligibility of the student (Orlich et al., 2018 p. 48-50) . Service Delivery Models A key component of IDEA is LRE in which the goal is for a student to be in an environment that is closest to non-disabled students while still having their instructional needs met. This is case by case and is demonstrated differently for each student (Giangreco, 2020). The least restrictive environment would be inclusion in a general education classroom. This inclusion would mean the student’s educational needs can be met by a general education teacher, with a few specialized tools or instructional methods. An example of a student best served in this environment would be one with a learning disability who has a specific subject that is a struggle in which a special education teacher would come in for said subject to work with the student. In the middle would be a student that spends a majority of their day in a special education class, while still participating in some general education classroom time. An example of this would be a student with Autism that is in a special education classroom for most of her day but joins a general education class for lunch or P.E. The most restrictive environment would be a hospital or residential facility. An example of a child best served by this environment would be a student whose health has declined or a student with a severe behavioral disorder. In this circumstance, the student’s physical and mental needs would be met by the facility, with their education being worked around their treatments and provided by staff on hand. A study was done over an 18-

Understanding Special Education 5 year span revealed that placements in LRE have increased greatly, as students are being included in general education classrooms more (Williamson et al., 2020). Conclusion Psalm 55:22 states “Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you; he will never permit the righteous to be moved” (English Standard Version, 2001/2008). For years, students were discriminated against and segregated from general education classrooms due to disabilities. With the creation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act, special needs students gained support on a national level with laws that determined types of educational programs that must be offered and access to general education classrooms. Students would begin to have access to physical therapist, and speech pathologist to support them in school. These tools amongst many others helped place students within the least restrictive environment possible while still maintaining the support they needed to succeed. Many people have considered special education students as students who will not succeed past grade school. While this might have been true before IDEA, special education are there to teach the students more than what they would have learned beforehand and because of this there are students that go on to achieve higher levels of education. James Kauffman stated “having the same expectations for all students may sound good but is an instructional disaster,” showing the true responsibility and need for special education and the services it offers (2018 p. 4).

Understanding Special Education 6 References English Standard Version Bible. (2001) Colker, R. (2013). The Education for All Handicapped Children Act: Historical Evolution. In Disabled Education: A Critical Analysis of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (pp. 17–44). NYU Press. Giangreco, M. F. (2020). “How Can a Student with Severe Disabilities Be in a Fifth-Grade Class When He Can’t Do Fifth-Grade Level Work?” Misapplying the Least Restrictive Environment. Research and Practice for Persons with Severe Disabilities, 45(1), 23–27. https://doi.org/10.1177/1540796919892733 Kauffman, J.M., Hallahan, D.P., Pullen, P.C., & Badar, J. (2018). Special Education: What It Is and Why We Need It (2nd ed.). Routledge. Orlich, D. C., Harder, R. J., Brown, A., Trevisan, M. S., & Miller, D. (2018). Teaching strategies: A guide to effective instruction . Cengage Learning. Yell, Mitchell L., McNamara, S. Prince, A.(2021). Adapted Physical Education: Meeting the Requirements of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act. Teaching Exceptional Children. Williamson, P., Hoppey, D., McLeskey, J., Bergmann, E., & Moore, H. (2020). Trends in LRE Placement Rates Over the Past 25 Years. The Journal of Special Education , 53(4), 236– 244. Wilmshurst, L., & Brue, A.W. (2018). The Complete Guide to Special Education: Expert Advice on Evaluations, IEPs, and Helping Kids Succeed (3rd ed.).

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