Services Available:

Least Restrictive Environment

The first service provided to these special education students is just the fact that they are granted free public education tailored to their specific needs. This is available due to the passage of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which was passed by congress in 1997 and grants free appropriate education to all students with disabilities in a "least restrictive environment" (1).  A least restrictive environment means the best environment for an individual student and their needs.  For example, if a student has a reading disability, it would be restrictive for them to take a test in a regular education classroom.  Therefore, they would further benefit by being placed with an individual aide in order to create a least restrictive environment.

Individualized Education Plans (IEPs)

Individualized Education Plans are arguably the most vital aspect of successful inclusion.  IEPs are not created solely by teachers.   Administrators, parents, therapists, and even the students are involved in deciding what will be best for each individual’s needs in meetings in which the child is ascertained. Ascertainment is used to determine whether or not a child in a special education setting needs further support for learning.  Depending on the severity of a child’s disability, they may need additional services. For example, after ascertaining a child’s needs, it may be determined that a deaf child needs to have an aide constantly in the classroom to interpret what the teacher and others around them are saying to allow for successful communication (2).

Transportation Services

Transportation services are available to students with disabilities as well. This can help parents to transport children if they are unable (work schedule, no car to accommodate wheelchair, etc.)  In some small school districts where there are no disabled buses, they will ensure that the child can be safely and successfully transported by the parents, or other options will be discussed such as The Bus Fare Assistance Program.  This service pays for the use of disabled buses for children, essentially renting a bus from another county or district (3).

Transition Services

Transition services are also essential.  Transition services are provided, mainly at a high school level to prepare students for life outside of school and in the workplace.  This process begins when the child is approximately fourteen years old.  At this point, classes that the child will take during high school are mapped out to ensure that the classes will educate the child not only in an academic sense, but also in the world around them to ensure that they have the skills that are necessary for success

Aides/Teacher’s Assistants

Aides or teacher’s assistants are also involved in the process of full inclusion.  This service is provided to special education students who need more assistance in order to be fully included.  These aides are present in the classroom during different times of the day depending on the child’s disability.  A severely disabled child may need the constant assistance of an aide in the classroom with them while another may just need an aide during a portion of the day to ensure that the student is successfully completing their work.  They also attend to the physical needs of these students, among these are feeding,

assisting in riding the school bus, or playing on the playground, and teaching good personal hygiene.  The aides pay close attention to the student’s progress to ensure that they are being successful and that nothing needs to be changed in order to further the least restrictive environment (4).

Importance of These Services

The primary reason that all of these services are necessary is just because of the basic requirement that our society places on us to have an education in order to succeed.  Without an education, which may not be possible without these services, a child will be more or less doomed to failure.  Every additional level of education will improve a child’s odds of success.  Although some of these children may never be able to earn a college degree, just a high school diploma can be highly beneficial.  For example, only 36.1 percent of high school drop-outs who are employed full-time are earning a salary that is above the poverty line (5).  On average, if these students aided by special education programs tailored to their individual needs are able to earn their high school diploma, they will earn approximately $11.05/hour while their peers without a diploma will earn just $7.70/hour (6).

Our society more or less mandates that we obtain a high school diploma in order to succeed financially in our modern world.  By cutting these valuable services, people are consenting to allow these children to potentially suffer poverty for the remainder of their lives just because they have special needs.  Although these needs may not necessarily be beneficial to the child, there is no reason they should harm them in the long run if there is any way to avoid this.  Rather than just cutting or reducing these services, they need to be improved and readily available to ensure that each and every child in a special education

program obtains a high school diploma to secure their future success.  It follows that if this diploma is so beneficial and highly held, there needs to be assurance that all special education students are able to be safely and successfully transported to high schools.  If a child is unable to get to school for any given reason, both that child and their parent(s) need to be aided in any possible way to ensure the child can get the education they both deserve and need to succeed. Therefore, not only are transportation services valuable to both special education students and parents, they are a necessity.

Although it may be easy to say that these children just need to work hard and earn their degree like all of the other students around them, it can be easily demonstrated that this is not the case.  Some special education services are the only reason that these children would be able to earn their high school diploma, and without them, although a dismal outlook, they will surely fail.  For example, some special education students such as those with autism, which typically makes the child introverted with a warped sense of reality, are unable to function with other students present.  Due to their generally introverted nature, a large classroom of children can be slightly overwhelming, and instead of learning, these children will just act out and distract other classmates while accomplishing nothing themselves.  However, with individualized attention by an aide in a resource room, for example, these children can prosper. Although they can spend portions of the day with regular education students, the services provided by aides and resource rooms and the seclusion and individualization this brings is vital to their success.

Due to the different needs of children, it is also important to acknowledge that each child is an individual when it comes to learning as well.  This is why IEPs are so crucial.  In introduction to education courses, one important matter that is emphasized is the fact that all learning material must be presented in two ways to ensure that all different learning styles are accommodated.  While some general education students may learn material quickly if the teacher just writes it on the board, a special education student may need it to be presented in a different way which would be outlined in their IEP. Therefore, without an IEP, these children will not be able to learn as much as they could if their education was handled on an individual basis.

Not only are these basic services such as aides and resource rooms essential, but even more fundamental is transition services.  Without transition services, a special education student who has successfully earned a high school degree may not know what the next step for them is.  However, with transition services, they are aided in finding a job rather than just depending on their parents for everything.  While some parents of special education students may be tempted to just provide for them indefinitely because of their special needs, it is inevitable that there will be some time in the child’s life that their parents

will be gone.  This raises the question of what will happen to these children, or young adults.  Rather than just having a sense of abandonment and confusion at this point, they will have a job, and a good strong idea of how society works, and what their role is in that.  They will know that their job is their future and they can continue to advance this, and in some cases even be independent.

While these students may not be able to get the same job as a student who was college educated, there are still jobs that are available to them, and it is important that this is explained to them.  Many of these students benefit from having a sense of independence through holding a job and depending on the level of their disability, potentially even living outside of their parent’s home. Having a job not only boosts confidence, but also self-esteem.  It gives these students a sense of independence and meaning that they might otherwise not have if after their school career they just simply lived at home with their parents.  Although it is sometimes the case that such a situation is not possible, and a

special education student will never hold a job, it is important to at least explain to them the setting in which they will be living outside of school (7).  Because many of them may have not held a job throughout high school as regular education students may have, it is especially important that they be prepared for what lies ahead.  Some students with disabilities, such as autism also do not react well to change which can be rather shocking and disorienting to them.  This service helps to ease them gradually from school to work eliminating the element of shock (7).  Rather than just sending these children blindly out into the world, we can send them out prepared and ready to become functioning members of society.