To Mainstream or Not to Mainstream
To mainstream or not to mainstream. To fight for an autistic child to be included in a classroom with non-autistic students, and to attend his or her neighborhood school, rather than be bussed to a “special” school an hour plus away.
The choice is obvious, a parent of an autistic child may think: The more a child is included with typical students, the better.
A professor of special education at the University of Pittsburgh, Dr. Naomi Zigmond, called for the opposite in her keynote address at the 44th international conference of the Learning Disabilities Association of America. As reported in the February 15th Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
“Because of the pressures for state testing and accountability and a desire to make kids feel normal and to expose them to what everyone else gets, we have been forgetting that special education is supposed to be special.
“It’s time for unconventional thinking………Because those things have taken precedence over what special education was invented for and that is to force the education system to provide something special to students with special needs.”
Zigmond, who has studied special education for more than 41 years, called for special ed students to be “separated from the general school population and given intensive, relentless instruction.”
My own son Charlie has been in both inclusive settings in a public school and in a private autism school (45 minutes minimum each way from our house) and he is currently in a self-contained autism classroom in a public school in our town. He has been doing very well—better than he ever has in school—though I think this is in part because we have tried to learn from “what went wrong” in previous placements. When Charlie was 6-7, he was in an autism classroom in a public school (in a different town than the one we now live in), and was mainstreamed for “specials,” for music and for library. (This combination of a special education classroom and mainstreaming in “specials” is one that we have frequently heard to be the case for autistic students in public school settings.) After about a month, Charlie struggled mightily in the special classes, which he attended with an aide; in hindsight, I realize that training for the aide (and for the other teacher, and the librarian) was inadequate and less than minimal. And we were not sure what benefits there were for Charlie in the specials, where he struggled just to sit in his chair, much less to pay attention. Now, while Charlie sees other children when he walks the hallways with his classmates and teachers, he is not in any inclusive settings at school—-which is not to say that Jim and I do not try to provide him with as many opportunities as possible to be in the greater mainstream of the world.
So once again: To mainstream, or not to mainstream?
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8 opinions for To Mainstream or Not to Mainstream
jypsy
Feb 17, 2007 at 3:35 pm
To fight for an autistic child to be included in a classroom with non-autistic students, and to attend his or her neighborhood school, rather than be bussed to a “special” school an hour plus away.
I’d hope there would be a lot more options and choices than just those two. Especially when “not mainstream” means “intensive, relentless instruction.”
Lisa/Jedi
Feb 17, 2007 at 5:20 pm
So much depends on the level of training of the teachers & the attitude of the school towards all of the students. We live in NYS, which has a serious over-emphasis on standardised testing. Brendan’s school is a private school & does no standardised testing at all. There are kids with autism & other developmental differences “mainstreamed” into nearly every classroom, a few with one-on-one aides, some with significant language delays. It’s wonderful to see how well this school community functions as a truly inclusive community, & how well & kindly all the students are treated. The kids who have PT, OT, & speech are not treated differently by the kids who don’t, & the aides are important to the whole class, not just to the kids they are assigned to assist. In a setting like this mainstreaming seems to be having the wonderful effect of enriching all of the kids. As a parent, I feel included & comfortable identifying myself as the parent of an autistic student (it probably doesn’t hurt that the present director of the school has a college-age autistic son). I’ve never felt as though other parents feel their children are hurt by my son’s inclusion in the classroom & we’ve made some great connexions with the parents of other kids with autism as well. Because there’s no worries about the testing, I think the teachers are rightly focused on each child as an individual & are able (& want) to tailor each child’s educational programme to suit them (not just the kids with IEPs). From my reading of other parent blogs, I know just how lucky we are to have this school nearby…
Kristina Chew, PhD
Feb 17, 2007 at 9:30 pm
Jypsy, I feel it should not be so “either/or”—-somehow, like Lisa, we’ve been lucky and found a neighborhood public school that seems able to provide Charlie with just the right mix—a self-contained autism classroom in a public school. Charlie’s previous private autism school, while ABA-based, was housed in a religious school and had a very special ethos about it (so that it was well worth the long trip he had both ways). Creating more educational options for him and other kids is more than ncessary.
Club 166
Feb 17, 2007 at 10:39 pm
Last year we had doubts that Buddy Boy would be able to be mainstreamed in Kindergarten, but the school assured us that he would do fine. He was put in a regular classroom with inadequate support and failed spectacularly because he wasn’t compliant enough. Subsequently he was sent to a separate school and put in a class for emotionally disturbed kids.
Now, after a lot of wrangling on our part, he’s in a self contained classroom within a regular school. He’s gained a lot in terms of self control, but the school hasn’t let him mainstream for anything. We’re continuing to advocate for some inclusion this year, because we feel that it will help in with socialization.
I don’t think that any one solution is right for any kid. And what’s right at one point in their education might not be ideal at another point.
Jen
Feb 18, 2007 at 8:58 am
I’ve been reading here for a long time, but I’ve never posted just to start. As a future teacher, I have one side of me that is saying I’d love to see every kid included in the regular classroom. I know that’s what one of my professors was attempting to drive at us last semester. If we just try hard enough, we can do that. The more realistic side of me says it just doesn’t work that way. Some kids can be included and do wonderfully. I know a child who was included in a regular Pre-K class, and he did beautifully there. I never met the teacher and aide he had, but I don’t need to to know that they must have been good. After his success last year in that situation, he was put back in a self contained class for kindergarten. For various reasons, other kids don’t do well in the regular classroom, and although a lot of times it has to do with poor staffing, or complete lack of the necessary staffing needed to make it work, there are some times when even the best aren’t going to be able to make it work.
It’s not supposed one size fits all, there’s a they’re called individualized education plans, and it seems in some places that’s being forgotten.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Feb 18, 2007 at 11:49 pm
Jen, thanks so much for your observations—-I remember reading Bernard Rimland some years ago to the effect that mainstreaming is not always the best solution. Charlie was not even 5 then and his statement puzzled me or, rather, I just did not want to think that Charlie might not some day be able to be mainstreamed. One thing that I have learned along the way is that there really are no set answers, that it’s a child by child, year by year, even month by month and more concern. Indeed, some non-autistic students do not do so well (for instance) in larger public schools, but in smaller, private settings.
caroline
Feb 19, 2007 at 6:43 pm
I began to read Dr. Chew’s daily comments and Charlie’s journal after the post on seclusion and restraints in CT. public schools. Charlie’s daily triumphs should be required reading for teachers and therapists. Increasing ‘awareness’ of autism and ‘earlier diagnosis’ is not enough to really enable all these children, teenagers and adults to thrive. While everyone is finally talking about autism and other disorders (and I do thank the Wright family for their tireless efforts) little is being done to erase the STIGMA. Teachers in regular education settings may be aware of autism, or what they perceive it to be, but the predjudice against these children is often deeply engrained. The child can feel it. On the other hand, a regular education teacher who treats the child with love and respect can do far greater good than all that expensive ‘look at me’ ‘match!’ ’sit in chair’ type of therapy. I would like to know who is ‘diagnosing’ all these children with ’spectrum’ disorders. Not everything is autism or pervasive development disorder, and sometimes children can be labeled incorrectly and trapped in inappropriate cycles of ‘therapy’ and school settings that are detrimental. It would be so useful to spend a week or so on the different types of therapies that actually work in all educational settings and in the world - rather than the genetic vs. environment discussion. There is so much that can be learned from good therapy.
Autism Vox » $15 million in state grants for autism programs in NJ
Feb 21, 2007 at 3:25 am
[…] My son Charlie attends an in-district autism program and likes it so much that, though he is on vacation this week, he has been constantly calling out his teachers’ names. Though he is not mainstreamed, Charlie goes to school in our town and regularly sees the other students and staff, and is regularly seen by them. […]
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