Here’s yet another story by the Wall Street Journal about inclusion of students with disabilities in regular classes. Criticism of inclusion has surfaced repeatedly on that publication’s news pages over recent months.

Reporter Robert Tomsho now reports that school districts are pursuing a controversial new strategy to reduce the number of children in special education programs. Known as “response to intervention” or RTI, the strategy claims to bring special support to needy students in regular education programs.

Opponents say it shortchanges children by depriving them of needed assistance. Supporters maintain that many children now in special education are simply victims of poor instruction and wouldn’t need expensive special-education services if they had gotten extra help as soon as their problems surfaced.

The push for RTI is the latest chapter in a long-running battle over just how far schools should go to educate disabled students in regular classrooms. Observers say RTI could boost such mainstreaming to unprecedented levels by shifting resources away from separate special-education programs and requiring regular-education teachers to tackle tougher learning challenges in their own classrooms.

… Meanwhile, there are no standards for what the RTI process should look like or how long the various tiers of intervention should last. Without limits, some fear RTI could become a “gulag of general education,” says Douglas Fuchs, a special-education professor at Vanderbilt.

Under the federal special-education law, parents could short-circuit the RTI process with a written demand for a full special-education assessment, but disability attorneys say many parents aren’t aware that they have such rights. In the meantime, students in RTI aren’t covered by the federal laws that require specific record-keeping, case monitoring and due-process rights for special-education students.

Tomsho’s last opus on inclusion carried a profoundly disturbing message: Death raises questions about ‘mainstreaming.” Here’s how it is promoted on the WSJ website:

Evidence is mounting that special education students account for a disproportionate share of school violence, raising questions about educational mainstreaming. As the story of a 15-year-old Wisconsin boy shows, the results can be tragic.

See also earlier stories here and here. Registration required for the WSJ website.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 18th, 2007 at 12:51 pm and is filed under inclusion, special education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  Email This Post