Please check, just in case

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Please check, just in case
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Todays Topic

• The Social Construction of Disability and
  Inclusion

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Announcements

• Book reviews due in two weeks consider doing a
  book club meeting with your group.
• Please come and see me if you have questions on
  your final essays.
• Final essay is due in class on May 5. Last papers
  will NOT be accepted, except in case of
  significant emergency.

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Quick questions or quandaries?
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The Least Restrictive Environment -- Just the
Facts...

• IDEA requires that every student with
  disabilities be educated in the least restrictive
  environment (LRE). Specifically, the law
  stipulates that to the maximum extent
  appropriate, children with disabilities ... will
  be educated with children who are not disabled,
  and that...

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LRE, cont.

• Removal of children with disabilities from the
  regular educational environment may occur only
  when the nature or severity of the disability is
  such that education in regular classes with the
  use of supplementary aids and services cannot be
  achieved satisfactorily.

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LRE, cont.

• The LRE is the setting that is closest to a
  regular school program and also meets the child's
  special educational needs.
• LRE is a relative concept the LRE for one child
  might be inappropriate for another.

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LRE, cont.

• Although the regular classroom is the LRE for
  many children with disabilities, IDEA does not
  stipulate that all children with disabilities
  must be educated in regular classrooms all of the
  time.

Heward, W. L. (2000) Exceptional Children, 6th
ed. Prentice-Hall.
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Taylors (1988) critique of LRE and the continuum
of services

• Legitimates restrictive environments. To
  conceptualize services in terms of
  restrictiveness is to legitimate more restrictive
  settings.
• Confuses segregation and integration with
  intensity of services. LRE equates segregation
  with the most intensive services and integration
  with the least intensive services.

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Taylors (1988) critique cont.

• Based on a readiness model. The implicit
  assumption is that people with developmental
  disabilities must earn the right to move to the
  LRE.
• Supports the primacy of professional decision
  making. The LRE is almost always qualified with
  words such as "appropriate," "necessary,"
  "feasible," and "possible" (and never with
  "desired" or "wanted").

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Taylors (1988) critique cont.

• Sanctions infringements on people's rights. The
  question imposed by LRE is not whether people
  with disabilities should be restricted, but to
  what extent.
• Implies that people must move as they develop and
  change.
• Directs attention to physical settings rather
  than to the services and supports people need.

Heward, W. L. (2000) Exceptional Children, 6th
ed. Prentice-Hall.
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In contrast, inclusive education means...

• heterogeneous grouping,
• a sense of belonging to a group,
• shared activities with individualized outcomes,
• use of environments frequented by persons without
  disabilities, and
• a balanced educational experience.

(Giangreco, Cloninger, Dennis, Edelman, as
cited in Heward, 2000)
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African American students were overrepresented
in more restrictive educational environments and
underrepresented in less restrictive environments
relative to all other students with the same
disability. Disproportionality was most evident
in those disability categories served primarily
in general education settings.
(Skiba et al, 2006, p. 411)
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The majority of African American (52.0),
Hispanic (49.8), and Native American students
(54.9) were placed in the most segregated
setting (setting 3), as compared to White
(32.9), Asian (21.6), and Other (35.6)
students. Most ELLs (57.1) were placed in
setting 3, as compared to 38.1 of non-ELLs.
de Valenzuela, Copeland, Qi, Park, 2006, p. 432
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(McLaren, 1994, p. 182)
Hegemony is a struggle in which the powerful
win the consent of those who are oppressed, with
the oppressed unknowingly participating in their
own oppression.
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How might the notion of consent from the
definition of hegemony relate to the
disproportionate placement of minority students
in more segregated educational setting?
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Quick Write

• How might the ways that we perceive (socially
  construct) different families impact the extent
  to which students are placed in different
  settings?

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Small Group Activity

• Get into small groups and share your progress on
  the rough drafts. Give each other dieas about
  critical readings and key quotes for each of the
  questions.

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Looking ahead

• Approaches to reform

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Please take a minute for the minute paper.