Portraits of Inclusion: Part Three

Part 3

A SUBSTANTIAL SHARE OF CHILDREN enrolled in early childhood special education programs are trying to surmount barriers to learning that are related as much to their life circumstances as to clearly identifiable physical or medical conditions -- circumstances such as lack of English proficiency and the lingering effects of poverty, domestic violence, parental drug use, homelessness, and unemployment. In our increasingly diverse nation, as funding for basic public education has tightened over the past decade, school officials have had to address needs the best they can, often by reaching into special education budgets for the resources to assist children who have difficulty learning academics, social skills, and classroom routines.

National data indicate that children with disabilities are disproportionately of minority status and likely to be growing up in low income, single-parent families, with grandparents, or in foster care arrangements.

The rapid rise in special education enrollment over the past decade suggests that it is being used as an all-purpose intervention for many children who have culturally rooted difficulties fitting into prescribed classroom curricula and settings.

Over-identification of children as eligible for special education services is now a political issue, much as lack of such services was an issue that helped lead to passage of the federal Public Law 94-142 in 1975.

Children with disabilities are more likely than all children to be poor. Federal law addresses this problem by providing Title I and other programs to meet the special educational needs of low-income children. National data show that race and ethnicity are also strong drivers of special education placement. For example, African American children are more likely than White children, and Hispanic children less likely, to be enrolled in special education placement because of mild mental retardation or serious emotional disturbance

MANY PEOPLE THINK OF LANGUAGE AND ETHNIC BACKGROUND WHEN THEY HEAR THE WORD "CULTURE." But culture incorporates other kinds of behavior and demographic changes. All of these changes may influence the content of education and how services are delivered and used.
For example, Joanna and Robert have created a new family -- one that came about because of environmental factors and the stresses of modern life -- that is becoming more typical for children with disabilities. When Joanna and her husband, Robert, watched their teenage daughter prepare to venture into the world, they talked of retirement and travel. Then Joanna's daughter from her first marriage died, and Joanna and Robert inherited five young grandchildren.
Joanna's daughter had been drug addicted and had lived in a violent relationship. At the time of her child's death, Joanna and she were estranged. Joanna says she "did some soul searching" before bringing her grandchildren, who were relative strangers, into her home on what she thought would be an interim basis. "But . . . now they are so bonded to us . . . and we're so in love with them, we don't want them to go somewhere they might not get the same care." Joanna and Robert demonstrate a 24-hour-a-day commitment to their grandchildren, who early in their lives experienced parents who abused drugs and were chronically neglectful.
Two of the children, including 3 year-old Rachel, were diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome. Rachel also had been physically and sexually abused. Many of Rachel's problems, in common with those of a majority of young children served in special education settings, are invisible at first glance. She is a healthy child who charms her teachers and the high school students who help in her inclusive school program. But Rachel is often confused by verbal directions, is easily frustrated and angered, and doesn't play or make friends easily.
Rachel's school and community respond to these increasingly prevalent child and family circumstances with anger management classes and mental health counseling for school-age children, seminars to help families understand the dynamics of fetal alcohol syndrome and child maltreatment, early intervention in inclusive classrooms, and a willingness to work with families to solve problems.
Joanna believes strongly that "there is a way" of teaching children with Rachel's problems in school. "Whether or not the school system wants to adapt to them, that is what they are going to have to do, because there are going to be a whole bunch of them. When you see all the drugs and alcohol being used by young people, all the teenagers giving birth, all the children who are going to have problems and who don't have families . . . . Schools need to provide."

LOCAL CONTROL OF EDUCATION POLICY is an established principle throughout the United States, particularly in more rural regions. Most school districts are run by locally elected boards of education and thus adhere to policies reflecting local political cultures. Each community views special education within its own concept of equal opportunity.
The federal and state governments create most early childhood special education policies, but local school districts run programs. Increasingly, this dichotomy is a source of complaint from local school boards.

Some school districts-such as those near tertiary medical centers for children-are responsive to the therapeutic needs of children with disabilities. In others, children with subtle developmental problems may not be seen as disabled.

Some small to mid-sized school districts have been successful with inclusive classrooms because communication with teachers, families, and the community is direct and informal. School districts that encourage schools to experiment-with multi-age groupings and alternative curricula, for example-may also be more likely to embrace inclusive models. Many very small school districts have made inclusive classrooms work because it is their only option.

The current devolution of public policy-making authority and resources from the federal and state level to the local level enhances the role of communities in achieving inclusion in schools and other settings. Advocates for early childhood inclusion stress that it is an issue for communities as much as for public education systems. Successful inclusion requires collaboration and community membership to achieve safe and positive environments that are suitable not just for children with disabilities but for all children.

ALICE IS A LITTLE GIRL WITH SPEECH DELAYS WHO RECEIVES SPECIAL EDUCATION SERVICES in her inclusive early childhood class in a school district known for exemplary inclusive education. Alice's mother believes in inclusion of all children, not just those with disabilities.
When the district was reapportioned and Alice's school began to serve children who live in multifamily dwellings and who come from low income families, Alice's mother was not among those who removed their children and placed them in private schools.
Alice's mother describes her 5 year-old daughter as a "gap kid" whose problems are not severe but who "needs a little help." She says she favors mixed-age classrooms of children whose development and skills are at different levels, and she seeks inclusive classrooms for Alice. But she points out that "Alice could be in her [neighborhood] preschool in any event" because her developmental disability is so mild.
Alice's mother says she supports inclusion "across the board." But she adds that in some classrooms, the policy "takes time out from the teachers and the other things that are going on in the classroom." Some of the children, in her view, may not "fit."
At first glance, the children who don't fit in are not easy to find in this school, which has an exemplary reputation. The school's classrooms have dramatically high ceilings full of light and space. Children spill happily into the hallways with their cooperative projects, and they conduct thoughtful discussions about how people can solve conflicts in a peaceful manner.
But to find the children who don't fit in, one must walk no farther than to the end of the hall. There is no art work displayed on the walls here, no groups of children working. It is quiet and still. Here, hunched over a typewriter, is a boy with bushy red hair. His frame is too big for the desk and chair on which he is perched, and he looks uncomfortable as he stretches his long legs to one side to accommodate the lack of space. His fingertips touch the raised dots that represent letters and numbers in the Braille system.
Alice and the other young children from her inclusive child care program walk down the hall and descend the stairs to the gym. They are doing their best to keep their "lips zipped" as they have been instructed to do. The redhaired boy diligently types away. The preschool children pass quietly by.
The ethos of inclusion seems to translate differently in different locations and by different people.

WHEN SPECIAL EDUCATION POLICIES CHANGE, administrators, teachers, and therapists are called upon to alter established methods of providing services. Inclusion inevitably alters the environment in which both regular and special education teachers work. To achieve successful change, teachers need special training and support. Efforts to assist change must be rooted in real-world circumstances and focused on the needs of children with disabilities, or they risk becoming sporadic, parochial, and disintegrated.

With inclusion, special education teachers who are accustomed to working in a self-contained classroom often must learn new roles as itinerant teachers or team teachers.

Special services for young children-including Head Start and therapeutic child care-are often dispersed. This means that training in these areas is also dispersed, a situation that may discourage seamless and rational early childhood special education programs.

Every state education department receives some federal funds to support personnel development, and most states use some of their own discretionary funds to train teachers. At the local level, school districts provide some form of continuing education for teachers.

Successful inclusion requires that educators and administrators from multiple disciplines receive coordinated training beginning in colleges and universities and continuing with professional development activities as they practice. Interdisciplinary training-drawing together regular education teachers, special education teachers, therapists, and social workers-can give professionals the information and support they need to accommodate a diverse group of students and to work in concert.

WWHEN ANYONE ASKS LORA ABOUT HER SON MARK'S DEVELOPMENTAL PROBLEMS, she usually looks the person straight in the eye and asks, "Why don't you ask my son ? He's right here." Mark's response is, "My body has earthquakes."
Mark is an attractive 4 year-old boy with long, blond hair pulled back into a braided ponytail. He wears a helmet for protection in case of a seizure. In his Head Start classroom, Mark has frequent tantrums and shows a lack of compliance with classroom routines. He speaks rarely, but on occasion surprises everyone by issuing full, clear sentences. Mark uses sign language about half the time and verbal language the other half. Lora says that "when he needs to tell me something important, and when he's really serious, he'll sign." Mark also has delayed fine motor skills, and he is unable to zip or button his clothes. Yet his cognitive skills are two years advanced.
Mark and Lora have both learned that early childhood teachers are not necessarily prepared for inclusive programs. Lora removed Mark from a previous school program when she learned that Mark's teacher, after nine months with Mark in her classroom, did not know that Mark could talk. Lora reports that Mark was rarely involved in social activities in his previous classroom because his teachers "didn't know what to do with him and didn't want to upset him. "
Recently in Mark's classroom, a boy took a truck Mark was playing with. Mark emphatically signed "stop" to the little boy. When the boy refused to return the truck, Mark resorted to wrestling with the boy. The teacher intervened, gave the truck back to Mark, removed the other boy, and seated him alone at a table. Lora would never tolerate that sort of behavior from Mark, whom she wants "to be treated the same as everyone else." Instead, a little boy was punished without understanding why, and without learning what Mark was trying to say. Mark's attempts to communicate were futile, and he missed an opportunity to learn the important art of negotiation. And the teacher remained lacking in competence.
When Lora is asked whether Mark has difficulty following directions, listening, and working in groups, Mark himself responds that he "doesn't really get that at school." Some things Mark would change about the program would be to have longer days and a summer program. Lora's ideal schedule would be a totally inclusive one, with therapy and behavior management available for all children in the classroom. Acknowledging that not all schools accept the responsibility to educate children like Mark, Lora says, "Well, they'd better become responsible because the world is inclusive."

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All the names of people, programs, and localities have been changed to protect the privacy of those involved. The photographs were taken at a variety of project sites and do not represent the children in the report.

This information is posted here with permission of
ECRII: The Early Childhood Institute for Research on Inclusion
and the project's previous principal investigator, Samuel Odom
slodom@unc.edu
by New Horizons for Learning
http://www.newhorizons.org
E-mail: info@newhorizons.org
This area of the website is made possible by a grant from the
Office of State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Special Education
P O Box 47200
Olympia, WA 98504-7200
(360) 725-6088
Fax (360)586-1631
E-mail: dgill@ospi.wednet.edu