CONSIDERACIONES FINALES: EL CARIBE PLAZA COMO CIUDAD SIMULADA

federally recognized disability classifications in two programming options, it is perhaps not surprising that faculty and staff participants expressed concern about the appropriateness of special education programming and support options for all students. This issue was evident most commonly in reference to the accommodations and modifications available to students in the inclusive program, and in reference to perceived special education staffing shortages.

Accommodations and modifications in the inclusive model need to be better individualized and implemented. Faculty and staff participants reported that the prescribed nature of the K12 curricula makes it impossible to implement modifications in the inclusive program. One non-instructional special education staff member reported that, “The platform doesn’t allow for significant modifications…reduced answer choices or scaffold own the text…that can’t happen in our platform.” Therefore, curricular modifications are limited to the self-contained classroom. This reinforces the concept that all students in the inclusive program are not just enrolled in grade-level courses, but access course materials uniformly. Regardless of the nature or severity of their disability, all students in the inclusive model access learning in the same ways, Class Connect Sessions, the OLS, and related texts, without the benefit of curricular modifications.

Even though there are no curricular modifications in the inclusive model, participants describe a standardized set of accommodations that are offered to students, regardless of specific disability or need. Many of these accommodations apply only to high stakes testing environments. For example, extra time is described as a “given,” because students are working at home and can take as long as they need to complete a given assignment. If students have ELA goals on their IEPs, they will be given a read aloud accommodation. Things like calculator and dictionary use are reported as common.

What’s more, even when instructional accommodations or modifications are mandated on a student’s IEP, it is the Learning Coach, not the faculty, who is expected to implement these supports. One non-instructional special education staff member summarized the discussion of accommodations and modifications:

“No, [teachers] don't modify anything…[students] don't get modifications, [students] get accommodations, like extended time or…use of a calculator or maybe you just have a dictionary. [Students] get accommodations at home with their Learning Coach. So it's whatever that learning coach provides, that's their, that's a lot of their support.”

The implementation of special education services and supports is designed around the current capacity of the school rather than the needs of the students who attend. One common sentiment among participants was that AVS needs more special education teachers. At the time of the present study, six special education teachers taught in inclusive classrooms serving 211 students with a variety of disabilities, in a variety of grade levels with an average of thirty-five students per teacher. As noted above, the two self-contained teachers are responsible for sixteen students each, with a total of thirty-two students in the self-contained program. Because so few teachers are responsible for special education instruction for so many students, administrators felt that the school could not effectively offer additional special education instructional models beyond the two already in place.

The model of delivery of special education instruction in the inclusive program is designed around the capacity of the school to deliver that instruction. All students receive thirty minutes of special education instruction, once per week, per academic area of IEP goal (math and/or ELA). In short, staff availability rather than student need drives special education

saying:

“…we need more teachers…it kind of just goes down to some students need more minutes…more attention. So…if we can't modify the curriculum, then we need to give them more minutes…”

This concern was often raised in relation to the decision to place students in the self- contained class. All faculty and staff participants with knowledge of LRE determination expressed an understanding that placing a student in the self-contained program eliminated the possibility of that student earning a high school diploma, and acknowledged the serious impact that decision can have on a student’s options after high school. They all expressed a desire for additional programming options to meet the various needs of their learners. One non-

instructional special education staff member discussed the case of a specific student being moved from an inclusive to a self-contained classroom, saying:

“One is an SLD student who is really low…thirty minutes once a week isn't going to help her, but they also can't provide thirty minutes every day…I was told she's going to go to [the self-contained] class…So she's going to go from getting her thirty minutes once or twice a week to being in…our self-contained, [she won’t] get a diploma…I think she’s a classic slow learner and she just needs more support, but we don’t have an avenue to give her more support other than completely self-contained.”