Schools aim for inclusion with special-needs
Amy Crawford, TRIBUNE-REVIEW Saturday, December 20, 2008
Most of the first-graders at Bon Air Elementary in Lower Burrell raised their hands, eager to sound out the words that teachers Courtney Barbiaux and Jennifer Hartung spelled with magnetic letters on the blackboard.
As Hartung spelled out jump, hump, and stump, Barbiaux, a special education teacher, scanned the room, looking for students who were having trouble grasping the concept of blended consonants.
Among the 19 children in the class are two with autism and one with a learning disability. Despite their special education status, they were fully a part of the class, working on the same lesson as everybody else.
A few years ago, those students would have been sent to another room for separate lessons. Today, students with special needs are more often included in the mainstream classroom, an approach proponents say helps special education students academically and socially.
The federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, passed in 1990 and revised in 1997 and 2004, says that students with disabilities should spend as much time as possible with their non-disabled peers. In 2004, the Pennsylvania Department of Education settled a class-action lawsuit over that requirement, and since then the state has held school districts more accountable.
Four years later, many schools still are scrambling to get it right, often simply "dumping" all of their special education students in mainstream classes, said Bernard Miller, director for exceptional programs at the Pennsylvania State Education Association.
Critics, including some advocates for the disabled, say mainstreaming can be taken too far, when students with serious learning problems are left to fend for themselves in regular classrooms.
"Inclusion is really big right now," Miller said.
But, while the teachers' union favors inclusion when appropriate, Miller said, "This is a big state and there are huge differences district to district."
Ideally, Miller said, general education teachers would be trained and prepared to have special-needs students in their classrooms, and those students who need extra help would still have access to a special education teacher. For many students, Miller said, pulling them out of the regular classroom is still the best option.
"Inclusion isn't an exact science," Miller said. "When it is working, we need to celebrate it, and when it's not, we need to go back to the drawing board."
One strategy used by several districts in Westmoreland and Allegheny counties is co-teaching, where two teachers team up to teach a class, as in the first grade at Bon Air.
It's an idea that has been around since the 1990s, but in recent years has become more widespread.
Ellen Estomin, who directs the special education programs in the Pittsburgh Public Schools, said every school in the city district has an inclusion program.
Some of those schools use co-teaching, she said, and the district plans to expand the method to more schools.
"For inclusion to work, it takes a team of people," Estomin said. "We are really working hard to make it work well."
The Franklin Regional School District has used co-teaching since 2000, longer than most districts, said special education director Ron Tarosky.
"Our kids do very well," Tarosky said proudly, noting that the district's special education students met requirements under the No Child Left Behind Act every year.
Most general education teachers do not have much experience with special education, Tarosky said, and that can make mainstreaming difficult. The benefit of co-teaching is that it allows a teacher who knows the content --- reading, math or science, for example ---- to work together with one who understands how to adapt it for special-needs students.
Recently at Franklin Regional Senior High School in Murrysville, English teacher Susan White and special education teacher Tina Girt were guiding ninth-graders, several of whom have learning disabilities, through the play "A Raisin in the Sun."
Using tests and evaluations, the pair could tell which students were grasping the material and who needed extra help or a modified assignment. White said the two-teacher team seemed to benefit all the students, not just those with special needs.
With more than a decade's experience in special education, Girt remembered a time when students with learning disabilities usually were segregated from their peers. The push for inclusion was an improvement, she said.
"The minute you put them in the special ed class, they misbehave because they feel like the expectations are lower there," Girt said.
Nancy Janicak, whose son Justin, 14, has Down syndrome, said she noticed that inclusion can boost a student's confidence.
The family moved to Export from Indiana County last year, and Justin now is part of an inclusion program at Franklin Regional Middle School. He still works on math and English with a special education teacher, but goes to class with his seventh-grade peers for other subjects, learning the same lessons.
"He doesn't have to remember as much as the other children," Nancy Janicak said, "but he's held accountable for the curriculum."
Being included has made Justin more excited about school, his mother said, and he has been making friends.
"He's one of the gang now," she said, "instead of the kid in 'that room.' "
At Bon Air Elementary, administrators said the first official year of co-teaching has been going well. Barbiaux and Hartung, who co-teach language arts, were pleased with their first-graders' progress.
"We've seen them improve," said Hartung, who attributed gains over last year's class to having a second teacher in the room. "It's easier for us to pick up on a lot more --- who's struggling, who needs more help."
Every student benefits from a lower student-teacher ratio, Hartung said.
Administrators in Burrell School District have high hopes for the co-teaching program, which operates under the motto "Every child can learn."
"There have been some times when students have been mainstreamed and it hasn't worked out," said Matthew Conner, who began the program last year as the special education director. "But with this model, they have more support and it hasn't been an issue."
Conner, who now is principal at Burrell's Charles A. Huston Middle School, said he hopes to find that co-taught students will do better on the PSSA, the standardized test Pennsylvania uses to determine whether schools are making progress under No Child Left Behind.
Bon Air officials already were noticing substantial improvements on scores for the 4Sight test, which projects PSSA scores.
"If they're mainstreamed and they're successful, it increases their confidence," Conner said. "We hope that spills over into the PSSAs."
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