My recent columns on inclusion, in which I urged a moratorium on the rush to place all children with disabilities in regular classrooms, drew a flood of letters. As you might expect, the letters ranged all over the map, from applauding my stand to accusing me of being "malicious," "immoral," and worse.
There were parents who wrote movingly about how much inclusion in a regular classroom had done for their children. But the fact that inclusion has been successful with some children doesn't prove that it will work with children who have other disabilities -- or that the conditions that made it successful in some schools will be repeated elsewhere. It makes no more sense to insist on including all kids with disabilities in regular
classrooms, regardless of their condition, than it made to exclude them all.
Some other letter writers advised me that there is no point discussing the pros and cons of inclusion because it is the law: All children with disabilities have a legal right to placement in a regular classroom. And if the placement doesn't work out, there are legal procedures for changing it. These letters missed the boat on several counts.
It is true that the Education for All Handicapped Children Act gave youngsters with disabilities the right to a "free and appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment." But this doesn't tell us whether the "least restrictive environment" that is "appropriate" for a particular child is a special education class or a regular classroom. Where parents and school districts differ, the decision becomes a matter for the courts.
What if a placement doesn't work out? Suppose a teacher is assigned a 14-year-old boy whose disability involves violent behavior that regularly turns the class upside down. What are the legal procedures for moving the youngster out of the class? What protection does the law offer the teacher and the other kids in the meantime?
If a behavior problem is considered disability-related, the normal school rules governing student behavior don't apply. According to the so-called stay-put rule issued by the Supreme Court, the student cannot be suspended for more than 10 days a year, though if the school district petitions the court, a temporary restraining order could be granted otherwise, the kid is back in class no matter what he did -- and does. That includes hitting other students or the teacher or bringing a gun to class.
The only way to remove the student is to change the placement, and doing so involves a series of procedures: an informal meeting followed, if necessary, by a formal hearing, an administrative appeal and, finally, if there is still no agreement, a court case.
If the matter is settled in an informal hearing, a change of placement might not take more than a couple of weeks. It could also stretch out for many months. And for however long it takes, the stay-put rule means that the youngster remains in the class he has been disrupting. Since appealing a placement can be expensive as well as complicated, schools often try to avoid it altogether, putting pressure on the teacher to continue coping with the disruptive youngster -- while trying to teach the other students.
Until now, special education teachers and their students have borne the brunt of inappropriate placements. If total inclusion takes off and the regular classroom becomes the standard placement for all children with disabilities, more classes will be disrupted. Teachers who often have little training and little if any extra help in dealing with the special needs of disabled youngsters will be trying to cope with unfamiliar problems. What kind of learning will go on in these classrooms?
The stay-put rule and the procedures for changing a placement mean that teachers and principals aren't allowed to exercise judgment the way people running other institutions -- like hospitals or fire houses -- can. They have to make a case and prove it in a legal procedure. Of course schools have committed serious errors in their treatment of children with disabilities, and there must be a way of appealing such errors. But in an effort to create justice for one group, we have created injustice for others.
Am I saying that all children with disabilities should be denied placement in regular classrooms because some create enormous problems? Not at all. That's no more sensible than saying -- as some of the parents who wrote me did -- that all children with disabilities have a right to be placed in a regular classroom because some succeed there. Children with disabilities are individuals, not a bureaucratic category, and their school placements need to be done on a case-by-case basis. Placing them in regular classrooms based only on their membership in a group will be as devastating to many of them as it will be to the education of the other kids in their class.