Understanding Special Education 1
Understanding Special Education
Brittany Santiago
Liberty University-EDUC 510
Understanding Special Education 2
Introduction
Mark 16:15 states “And he said to them, “go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to
the whole creation” (English Standard Version, 2001/2008). This verse depicts the belief that all
people, to include those with disabilities are a part of God’s world creation, deserving of
equality. Special education is meant to do just that, provide students with disabilities the
education that meets their developmental needs. Special education is a specialized education to
decrease the gap between disabled students and their non-disabled peers. This education may
present as vastly different than the typical education as it provides physical therapies as well as
life skills to aid in the well-being of disabled students in the long run. The special education of
disabled students is necessary because these students require different treatments and educational
methods to succeed. Special education provides laws and protection so that they receive correct
support that they wouldn’t receive in a typical classroom.
Laws
In the midst of the civil rights movement fighting to desegregate schools, parents were
fighting for the fair education of their special needs children. Using verbiage from the Brown v.
Board of Education case, it was argued that disabled students should be in public schools instead
of segregated to specialty schools because of their special needs (Colker, 2013 p. 22). In 1975
the Education of All Handicapped Children’s Act was enacted and would later become the
Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act. This act describes disabilities, the type
of educational programs that must be offered and an emphasis on access to general education for
special needs students (Orlich et al., 2018 p. 47). With the introduction of IDEA, special needs
students began being included in general education classes more leading to the LRE mandate.
Within the IDEA are mandates that include Free Appropriate Public Education and Least
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Restrictive Environment. LRE refers to the environment that the special needs services are
delivered, ranging from least restrictive to most restrictive. Examples of this range from a
general education classroom being the least restrictive and most restrictive being an institutional
setting. FAPE ensures that a special needs student is able to make educational progress that is
appropriate to their disability or needs (Yell et al., 2021 p.3). The key component of IDEA is
ensuring that public schools have the tools available to their special needs students. This
provides a clear process for defining disabilities, providing necessary services and individuals to
help the student get the help they need to succeed in a school setting such as teachers
specializing in speech therapy.
Special Education Services
Before a student receives the services offered from a special education classroom, the
school must be sure they actually need the services. Not all disabilities or disorders are so
extreme that the use of special education resources would be beneficial. Each student’s disability
is different and because of this, they are each assessed differently. Students learning disabilities
typically standardized test to provide educators with an understanding of the students IQ. Some
disorders such as Down Syndrome or Autism are based on evaluations or informal assessments
(Wilmshurst & Brue, 2018 p.56). However, James Kaufmann states that eligibility decisions
should strictly be based on cut-and-dry quantitative formulas, but instead should also be based on
the professional judgement of those involved (Kauffman et al., 2018 p. 40). The students that
receive special education services demonstrate a wide variety of characteristics that consist of
lack of communication and life skills, as well as cognitive, physical, and emotional delays.
Covered under IDEA are the resources needed to assist in these characteristics and help students
learn to cope with or even learn how to adjust these delays. For example, if a student suffers
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from a TBI they will have problems in many areas such as movement, speech, and social
interactions. Services offered to this student would consist of a speech pathologist as well as a
physical therapist. These services will differ depending on the needs of the student and are apart
of the evaluation process when determining the eligibility of the student (Orlich et al., 2018 p.
48-50).
Service Delivery Models
A key component of IDEA is LRE in which the goal is for a student to be in an
environment that is closest to non-disabled students while still having their instructional needs
met. This is case by case and is demonstrated differently for each student (Giangreco, 2020). The
least restrictive environment would be inclusion in a general education classroom. This inclusion
would mean the student’s educational needs can be met by a general education teacher, with a
few specialized tools or instructional methods. An example of a student best served in this
environment would be one with a learning disability who has a specific subject that is a struggle
in which a special education teacher would come in for said subject to work with the student. In
the middle would be a student that spends a majority of their day in a special education class,
while still participating in some general education classroom time. An example of this would be
a student with Autism that is in a special education classroom for most of her day but joins a
general education class for lunch or P.E. The most restrictive environment would be a hospital or
residential facility. An example of a child best served by this environment would be a student
whose health has declined or a student with a severe behavioral disorder. In this circumstance,
the student’s physical and mental needs would be met by the facility, with their education being
worked around their treatments and provided by staff on hand. A study was done over an 18-
Understanding Special Education 5
year span revealed that placements in LRE have increased greatly, as students are being included
in general education classrooms more (Williamson et al., 2020).
Conclusion
Psalm 55:22 states “Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you; he will never
permit the righteous to be moved” (English Standard Version, 2001/2008). For years, students
were discriminated against and segregated from general education classrooms due to disabilities.
With the creation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act, special needs
students gained support on a national level with laws that determined types of educational
programs that must be offered and access to general education classrooms. Students would begin
to have access to physical therapist, and speech pathologist to support them in school. These
tools amongst many others helped place students within the least restrictive environment possible
while still maintaining the support they needed to succeed. Many people have considered special
education students as students who will not succeed past grade school. While this might have
been true before IDEA, special education are there to teach the students more than what they
would have learned beforehand and because of this there are students that go on to achieve
higher levels of education. James Kauffman stated “having the same expectations for all
students may sound good but is an instructional disaster,” showing the true responsibility and
need for special education and the services it offers (2018 p. 4).
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References
English Standard Version Bible. (2001)
Colker, R. (2013). The Education for All Handicapped Children Act: Historical Evolution. In
Disabled Education: A Critical Analysis of the Individuals with Disabilities Education
Act (pp. 17–44). NYU Press.
Giangreco, M. F. (2020). “How Can a Student with Severe Disabilities Be in a Fifth-Grade
Class When He Can’t Do Fifth-Grade Level Work?” Misapplying the Least Restrictive
Environment. Research and Practice for Persons with Severe Disabilities, 45(1), 23–27.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1540796919892733
Kauffman, J.M., Hallahan, D.P., Pullen, P.C., & Badar, J. (2018). Special Education: What It Is
and Why We Need It (2nd ed.). Routledge.
Orlich, D. C., Harder, R. J., Brown, A., Trevisan, M. S., & Miller, D. (2018). Teaching
strategies: A guide to effective instruction. Cengage Learning.
Yell, Mitchell L., McNamara, S. Prince, A.(2021). Adapted Physical Education: Meeting the
Requirements of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act. Teaching Exceptional
Children.
Williamson, P., Hoppey, D., McLeskey, J., Bergmann, E., & Moore, H. (2020). Trends in LRE
Placement Rates Over the Past 25 Years. The Journal of Special Education, 53(4), 236–
244.
Wilmshurst, L., & Brue, A.W. (2018). The Complete Guide to Special Education: Expert Advice
on Evaluations, IEPs, and Helping Kids Succeed (3rd ed.).
