What a wonderful idea- Full Inclusion

What a Wonderful Idea- Full Inclusion

We have brainwashed ourselves into believing that the full inclusion of children with disabilities is a great idea for the kids and not just because it saves the school districts money.   It is supposed to teach children better social skills and make greater academic demands.   More than half of the children with disabilities spend 80% of their day in general education environments, according to federal data.  Now a recent study by the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) is showing that those general educators and paraprofessionals are not prepared to do the tasks we are asking of them.

CEC surveyed 1,500 special educators from around the country.  These special education teachers work with those general educators to serve children with disabilities.  Only 8% of the people surveyed believe that the general educators they work beside are prepared to serve children with exceptionalities.   They felt slightly better about the paraprofessionals, but they still only had confidence in 12% of them.  And that may be because there were lower expectations for paraprofessionals.    Of the people surveyed, 70% believed that they and the related service personnel were well-prepared.  However, it should be noted that only 38% of beginning special educators felt that way about themselves.  What is most frightening is that while all educators say they look at a child’s IEP several times a week, they were almost unanimous in saying that they were too busy to use them in the development of daily lesson plans!   One cannot help but wonder what they were used for!

We have a situation where the most vulnerable learners are being taught by people with the most limited training and skill set to address those learning challenges.   Yet we continue to mark progress by the percentage of children with learning challenges who are being served in the general ed classroom.  It seems like this wonderful idea of full inclusion only looks good on the outside of the apple, but when we slice the fruit there may be a rotten core.