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IEP Issues - Inclusion

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In the Mainstream but Isolated - Victoria Miresso cannot button a shirt, match a sock or tell one school bus from another. Yet at Roberto Clemente Middle School in Germantown, she is expected to function much like any other sixth-grader, coping with class changes, algebra quizzes and lunchroom bullies.

 

US Child Expert Quits Britain Over Special Needs 'Crisis' - "It was always my intention eventually to return home to the United States, but I'm going years early because in all conscience I can no longer participate in a corrupt and dysfunctional system that is dishonest in its treatment and management of children with special needs."

 

Eli's Choice - His parents fought for boy with Down syndrome to be in the mainstream. As a teenager, he just wanted to be with his friends.

 

Learning-Disabled Students Blossom in Blended Classes - Jed was a new boy. His fourth grade had two full-time teachers and the class was so well-organized, Jed moved smoothly from one task to the next. When Ms. Jacobs asked how he liked it, Jed said he thought his teachers must have a disability too, because they made it so easy to understand the work.

 

Inclusive Schools Week 2005: December 5-9 - Great things happen in inclusive schools. Inclusive schools are better prepared to bridge the achievement gap for students of diverse abilities and backgrounds, because they integrate special education supports into the curriculum and affirm students’ rich cultures. The 5th Annual National Inclusive Schools Week™ will be celebrated in schools, classrooms, and communities December 5-9, 2005, with a special focus on the achievement gap and strategies for improving educational outcomes for all students. Free Celebration Kit now available!

 

Editorial: 'Special' Education Helps All Students - The University of Cincinnati has just announced a plan to offer free or drastically reduced tuition to teachers willing to enter the field of special education. That's a cost savings and employment enhancement for teachers, but the real winners in this package are students - and that's not just children with special needs but regular education students as well.

 

Talking To Kids: Mainstreaming Into Classrooms - The world is made up of many different kinds of people. There are people with different skin colors, different religions, different hairstyles, different accents, and different learning abilities, just to name a few. Yet, despite all their differences, most people somehow manage to work together successfully.

 

MI Teacher Receives Award For Inclusion - No one gets left out in Pam Morgan’s classroom. The Bird Elementary teacher was recently awarded ‘Teacher of the Year’ by the Arc of Northwest Wayne County because of the way she has promoted the concept of ‘inclusion’ in her first-grade class of 23 students.

 

U.K. Turning Point For Special Needs? - The BBC's Mike Baker detects signs of a change in the approach to children's learning difficulties: “We may even be at another turning point: after almost 30 years of movement in one direction, the pendulum could be about to swing back from inclusion towards segregation.”

 

LA Learning Together - In the metro area, children in special-education are increasingly moving into regular classes. Once there, the children - those with special needs and those without - are learning important lessons about life.

 

Everyone Together (Michigan) - At an individual local network level we seek to educate parents and increase their advocacy for inclusion of children with disabilities in general education classrooms. As a group of networks, we seek to support each other and to combine our voices to advocate for the inclusion of all children who are routinely separated and segregated based on disability. As a statewide coalition of networks, we seek the fundamental changes to the education system that are necessary if we are ever to achieve All Children, All Together, All the Time. We seek to align ourselves with like-minded organizations and to advocate for the adoption of policies, legislation, and practices that support Universal Education. All Children, All Together, All the Time. That is our mission.

 

PA Pennsylvania Agrees to Changes in Special Ed to Increase Inclusion of Students with Disabilities in Regular Ed Classes - The state of Pennsylvania and the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia have concluded an historic settlement of litigation designed to change the quality of special education services throughout the state. Pursuant to the agreement, the state will change how it helps its 501 school districts comply with the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and how it monitors that compliance. The settlement is designed to increase the inclusion of students with disabilities in regular education classes with non-disabled students.

 

Inclusion at the Heart of His School - Joe Petner, in his 15th year as the principal of the Haggerty School in Cambridge, is a pioneer of whole-school inclusion, which integrates children with disabilities into all aspects of school life. In an interview with Globe correspondent Ashley Pettus, Petner discusses the ingredients needed to make the inclusive school ideal a reality.

 

CA Acceptance Reigns Along With a King - David Mason crossed his fingers and squeezed his eyes shut as he listened to the announcement that confirmed his dream: This Culver City High School senior, an autistic youth enrolled in the campus' special education program, was named homecoming king after a landslide vote.

 

Legal Requirements and Court Cases in Support of Inclusion - The most current language of the federal mandate concerning inclusive education comes from the 1997 Amendments to the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). These federal regulations include rulings that guide the regulation. The IDEA requires that children with disabilities be educated in regular education classrooms unless "the nature and severity of the disability is such that education in the regular classes with the use of supplementary aids and services cannot be achieved satisfactorily." This means that schools have a duty to try to include students with disabilities in the regular general education classes.
 

Integrated at Last: The Right to Belong, The Story of Yvonne

 

Featured Website: The Supportive Classroom - A Curriculum for Creating Safe and Supportive Classroom Environments - Tested in 14 Vermont Schools Kindergarten through Eighth Grade. "We believe that all students need to be supported to feel good about themselves, to feel good about school, and to feel that they belong. For belonging to occur, students and their teachers must be supported, and opportunities created for students to meaningfully participate and make friendships. For every student to belong, teachers must strive to find a way to help all students to have power and worth as individuals and as group members."

 

Her Passion: Care For Disabled - As she waited for her newborn child to be brought to the nursery, Sylvia Kloc saw that all of the other mothers had their babies already. She knew something must be wrong. Some months later, when a doctor said her infant son, Steven, had Down syndrome and encouraged her to put him in an institution, Kloc said she knew there was a better way.
 
PowerPoint Presentation: Tools for Getting Parents Involved in the Exceptional Education Process; Inclusion of Students with Communications, Learning & Social Relating Disorders
 

Getting to Know Your Classmates with Special Needs by Mary Ellen Leahy, Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute - The primary objective of this unit is to sensitize both students and teachers to special education students and their needs and their rights. Many regular education students and teachers have had limited contact with special education students.

 

The 2nd edition of "Foundations for Inclusive Education" is now available at www.tash.org.

 

U.S. Denial of Mainstreaming Rejected - In a ruling hailed as a victory for disabled children, a federal judge has ruled that a 4-year-old child with Down syndrome must be "mainstreamed" at the preschool level at least temporarily and that, after an initial trial period, Pennsylvania education officials must put the burden on the school district to prove that a non-mainstream placement is more appropriate.

 

A Personal Story - I knew that this day would come. I just didn't know when. My son Sebastian (age 10) came home from school today talking about how Lincoln helped free the slaves and how Martin Luther King Jr. helped people of all races to realize his dream of equality.

 

OR And Inclusion For All - On a chilly Saturday morning at Roosevelt High School, Michael Remus replays a theme he has delivered throughout his career to 21 teachers gathered for a school improvement workshop: "If I walk into a classroom and the kids are doing fractions," he says, pacing in front of the teachers, "I want to know what the special education kids are doing to learn fractions. The curriculum needs to be linked to everybody."

 

Boy, Have They Missed the Point! - Because I have IDEA reauthorization on my mind all of the time these days, as I was driving away from the auditorium, all that I could think was, “Boy, have our legislators missed the point!” Because of IDEA ’97, Nicholas’ kind school staff now just naturally understands why we work toward placement in the least restrictive environment with age appropriate peers, give access to the curriculum, and implement Positive Behavior Support concepts on a daily basis.

 

Inclusion, Advocacy & Self-Determination Websites

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NOTE: (ALL RESOURCES PRE-IDEA 2004 ARE FOR INFORMATIONAL/HISTORICAL RESEARCH PURPOSES ONLY)