Over the last few months, I’ve written a lot of posts sharing my thoughts on inclusion and mainstreaming.  In those posts, I’ve spent a lot of time complaining about the way things are done today (especially in North America), but I’ve spent relatively little time describing the urgent changes I think we need.

Probably the most complete description of my thoughts so far is found in this post, where I explain how I disagree with both of the major views on inclusion that have been described so far: the “moderate” and “universal” camps.[1]

The universal inclusionists are those who think that all students should be educated together in the mainstream schools.  Theirs is a well-intentioned argument, motivated in part by a proper appreciation of the horrors of the institutional era and a justified fear of anything resembling its return.  Furthermore, the universal inclusionists are very well aware of the fact that anything less than universal inclusion tends to end with the most “difficult” kids, especially kids with intellectual disabilities, challenging behaviours, etc., being kicked out of the mainstream – even though many of them might do very well in the mainstream.

On the other hand, there are some serious problems with universal inclusion.  I’m pretty sure that a lot of autistic kids – especially the more verbal, “high-functioning” types – are going to be at greater risk of bullying, isolation, and mental health challenges in many mainstream settings.  Other communities also don’t do well under universal inclusion: Deaf students, for example, are going to have an uphill struggle trying to become meaningfully included in an environment where students don’t understand ASL and other sign languages.

In theory, the moderate inclusion school is a reaction against the failures of universal inclusion.  For moderate inclusionists, the mainstream is still the preferred environment, but the moderate inclusionists acknowledge that the mainstream doesn’t work for everyone.

Unfortunately, I fear that a lot of people from the moderate inclusion school aren’t really motivated by the failures of universal inclusion so much as by convenience.  It seems like the default image of a kid who can’t be successfully included isn’t an Aspie or Deaf student who will quietly suffer in the background, but the kid with challenging behaviours that teachers want to be somewhere else.  Yes, I get that teaching 20+ students with diverse needs is difficult, especially when you aren’t getting proper training in special education – I certainly don’t think I would be any good as a grade school teacher, and I have a lot of respect for those who can do it well – but it seems kind of like some of these moderate inclusionists are like NIMBYs: not in my classroom, please![2]

Where I think the universalists went wrong is when they made mainstreaming a duty, not a right.  We need to give people the right to the mainstream – but we don’t have to force them to be there against their will.  Such an imposition is unacceptable.

As for the moderates, I think they went wrong when they chose who makes the decisions about educational placement.  Instead of having a teacher, school, or school district deciding that a given kid needs to be placed in a specialized school, I think that students and their families should be the ones deciding.

Choice in Educational Placement

Unfortunately, I think the idea of choice of school has a negative history in the United States.  I’m more familiar with the situation in BC[3] than America, but it seems like the idea of school choice is often used to create elite establishments for high-achieving students from rich families, or even to promote particular ideological agendas.

That’s not what I’m talking about at all.

I’m talking about the idea that neurodivergent children and their families should have the option of choosing between several types of educational placement.  To me, this is basic logic: if disability is the product of an interaction between the individual and the environment, then it follows that children with disabilities may sometimes need to be educated in a different environment than everyone else.

To start with, every child should have a right to be educated in the mainstream.  But they shouldn’t be forced to stay there against their will.  The child and their family should be presented with real alternative options and given the choice of accepting them or not.  Furthermore, these options should be accessible.  A private program that comes with a hefty price tag isn’t accessible to many families; programs need to be delivered at no greater cost than the mainstream.  Organizing specialized programs within the framework of the public school system would be a good way of ensuring this accessibility.[4]

I believe that the firm enshrinement of the child’s inalienable right to a mainstream education (if and only if they want to be educated in the mainstream) would provide sufficient protection against the danger of warehousing that comes with creating specialized options.  In a worst-case scenario, if specialized settings were stripped of resources and turned them into segregated warehouses, individuals and families would be able to return to the mainstream.  More likely, the mere threat that families might do this would create pressure to ensure that specialized programs were high-quality environments.

Now, what sort of alternatives to the mainstream can we offer?

Specialized Schools

One obvious alternative to the mainstream would be schools specialized for autistic children or children with various other neurodevelopmental disabilities (e.g., learning disabilities, ADHD).

Today, specialized schools in many jurisdictions are often more or less explicitly aimed at those students with challenging behaviours (who may not want to be there).  Many jurisdictions don’t even allow students in specialized schools to graduate from high school with a diploma.  This situation is absolutely intolerable: it is an appalling example of discrimination.  Any student who would be capable of getting a diploma in the mainstream should have that right in a specialized setting.[5]

We need to develop a network of specialized schools – available to anyone in an area with sufficient population density to support them – that are capable of serving refugees from the mainstream.  These schools would have to be academically competitive with the mainstream – students should be able to achieve just as much in the specialized school as the mainstream.

I don’t think this is logistically impractical,[6] nor do I think there is insufficient demand for such schools.  In England (which is much, much closer to achieving realistic educational choice than North America), a large survey suggests that 17% of autistic children attend specialized schools, including 7% who are in schools specialized for autistic students alone (National Autistic Society, 2016).  There is also demand for the creation of even more such schools: another ~10% of parents want their child to be in an autism-specific specialized school but have been unable to obtain such a placement.  It’s the most common preference named by parents who aren’t satisfied by their kid’s current school placement.

In North America and other places that presently lack these schools, we could start by establishing them in areas with higher population densities, then we could gradually expand outwards into areas with somewhat lower densities.

Specialized Classrooms

Of course, not all students will live in areas where a specialized school is a realistic option.  A small city should have enough density, but smaller towns likely won’t.

Furthermore, some parents and kids may want to be around neurotypicals, even if they don’t want their kid in a class dominated by neurotypicals.  I personally don’t buy the argument that the mere presence of neurotypicals will automatically improve autistic kids’ social skills – it seems somewhat ableist to me – but regardless, I do think the preferences of individuals and their families should be respected.

In these cases, a specialized classroom in a mainstream school can be a good compromise.

Of course, everything I said before about the availability of things like a diploma, to those students on regular or adapted curricula, still applies to the specialized classroom.

Distributed Learning

This option is what I did when I fled the mainstream.  I completed the regular education curriculum through the public school system, but online.  Because the distributed learning centre was near my house, I also had regular in-person meetings with my teacher from their special education division.  The program was great for time management.  Being handed a pile of schoolwork that had to be done sometime over the next ten months was a very effective way of teaching me to organize my time before university.[7]

I see no reason why a distributed learning option couldn’t be offered through public school systems everywhere.  While concerns about population density are at least relevant in the case of specialized schools and classrooms, only Internet access is really needed to attend a distributed learning program.

Of course, there isn’t as much opportunity for social interaction in the distributed learning path as in a specialized school, so I definitely wouldn’t recommend it for everyone.  That’s why we need choices.

Telepresence

Although I was merely completing classes online in my distributed learning program, continued developments in technology are making the idea of children attending school via telepresence a realistic option (e.g., Wesselink, 2012).  As telepresence technology continues to improve, I see no reason why it could not be added to our list of choices.

Individualized Funding

It takes a fair bit of money to educate an autistic child in the mainstream.  For example, in each school year, the province of BC allocates $26,371 CAD for each autistic student.[8]  Why not make that funding available to families when they leave the mainstream, subject to some good regulations to ensure that it is spend appropriately?

A lot of the best autism programs out there are grassroots efforts.  When the existing system isn’t adequate, families often band together to create something for themselves.  I myself had the pleasure of observing – at least until it unfortunately closed due to inadequate funding – a very small learning centre for autistic children in my hometown.  That centre relied heavily on volunteerism, but what would happen if we allowed families to bring funding with them when they leave the education system?  Suddenly, a tiny centre with just ten students would have an annual budget of $263,710 CAD.  That’s might not sound like a huge amount, but it could go pretty far in the hands of committed people working at a grassroots level.

Even the smaller sum of $26,371 CAD, or equivalents in other jurisdictions, would allow families to do things like hire a tutor for their individual kid.

Giving families the right to leave the system and bring their funding with them would place a great deal of pressure on the school system to provide an appropriate range of options.  And if the system nevertheless failed, it would give families an extremely flexible last resort.

There are all sorts of ways we can make sure that this funding is properly spent.  We could conduct inspections to ensure that the program is academically sound.  If necessary, expenses could be paid through the government when requested by the family, which would allow the government to verify that the expenses are educational (and not, say, autism interventions or family vacations).  We could even set up non-profit organizations that could act as host agencies, working with families to hire contractors that would meet the needs of a student or a group of students.  These non-profits would be easier to regulate than the families themselves, but they would still work with families to set up individualized programs.

“Unschooling”

While I don’t have personal experience with unschooling, I am very wary of teaching kids that we have low expectations of them.  I’m a bit concerned that unschooling might be one of those things that teaches kids that we have low expectations…

Recap

Well, that was a pretty long list!  Thanks for bearing with me as we went through those options.

To me, the length of this list only emphasizes the degree to which meaningful choice is possible when it comes to educational environments.  In addition to the inalienable right to an education in the mainstream school, I think we can offer students with disabilities in cities the chance to attend a specialized school or classroom suitable for their needs, while those in areas with medium levels of population density might be offered a specialized classroom.  All students and families should have the options of attending a distributed learning program, attending classes via telepresence, or even walking away from the school system with funding that they can use to create their own programs.

There’s every reason to believe that it would be possible and practical to offer all of these choices: only politics and policy are stopping us.

Too many autistic children today are enduring victimization and isolation in the mainstream environment, and coming out of the system with mental health challenges that cripple their ability to navigate the adult world.  Equally, too many children are being excluded from the mainstream against their will.  I believe that the establishment of a genuine right to a mainstream education, combined with access to meaningful options beyond the mainstream, can solve both problems.

What do you think?  Have I covered all the relevant options, or should I be adding more?  Are there things I’ve overlooked?  Other options?  Have you tried any of these options, and if so, what were your experiences?  Please comment below!

Footnotes

[1] There are people who agree with me and support choices in educational placement – especially in the UK – but I’m not sure that these people do enough to distinguish their views from those of the moderate inclusionists.

[2] In that sense, even though my views look rather like those of moderate inclusionists on the surface, I might feel greater sympathy for the universalists: I think they’re misguided and somewhat ableist, but I can at least respect the fact that they’re trying to keep kids from being kicked out of the mainstream against their will.

[3] Education policy in Canadian provinces is very idiosyncratic.  What happens in BC is not necessarily going to be reflected in the other provinces.

[4] Although I do think that unions can sometimes create an unfortunate culture in which students’ needs are not valued, this isn’t inevitable.  A lot depends on the demands of the environment.  The staff in the distance education program I attended – more on that later – were great, despite being unionized public school employees.  They weren’t under the same stresses as mainstream teachers, and I think that’s what made the difference.  Thus, I see no reason why high-quality specialized programs couldn’t be delivered as part of the public school system.

(If you don’t believe me about the excesses of unions, my home province allows any teacher with seniority to bump and replace any teacher with less seniority, and indeed restricts any actual evaluation of teachers’ effectiveness besides seniority.  Last year there was even a case in which a teacher who had an inappropriate relationship with a 15-year-old student was allowed to remain in the school for an extra month before summer break, before their piddly five-month suspension took effect, because it was judged to be more convenient.  I’m a progressive person, but I have my limits, and public-sector unions can sometimes go too far!)

But anyway, I do think most of the problems that can arise in the culture of school-based teams arise due to excessive demands in school environments, not unionization.  Independent specialized schools are a good last resort when there are no suitable public specialized options, but I don’t believe that getting rid of public-sector unions is worth the cost of having an inaccessible independent program.

[5] I’m not saying that we should hand out diplomas to students on modified curricula (that is, programs that have been modified so much that the requirements of the curriculum have not been met, as opposed to adapted curricula, in which the student completes the necessary requirements but with adaptations to eliminate barriers).  But a student who could be on an adapted curriculum, or the regular curriculum, should have the right to be on those curricula and every right to get their diploma, regardless of whether they attend a mainstream or specialized school.

[6] Specialized programs can be very cost-effective.  Special education assistants tend not to be paid very much, but even so, the cost of a well-trained special education teacher for a class of 10-12 students will be lower than the cost of paying a bunch of SEAs to support some (but not all) of these students in several different mainstream classrooms.

[7] I’ll admit it was a process of trial and error!  Ten months is a long time, and it’s easy to get distracted.  After I figured out how to schedule my time through distance education, university was easy by comparison – there, you just have to worry about things that are going to be due in a few weeks.

I’m glad I learned my time management skills in the forgiving environment of a high school distance learning program (I may occasionally have been forced to continue into the summer to finish, and nobody really minded), rather than the less-forgiving university environment.

[8] That’s the $7,301 CAD that goes in the basic allocation for all students, plus $19,070 from the “Level 2” special needs allocation (Resource Management and Corporate Services Division, 2017).  The money doesn’t go directly to the student, but can be spent at the school district’s discretion.  I believe it usually goes as far as the school, whereupon it will often be diverted away from supporting students who suffer silently and towards supporting students with more visible difficulties that interfere with the teaching of classes.  (Sorry, I’m a bit of a cynic when it comes to the school system.)

References

National Autistic Society. (2016). School report 2016: Two years on, how is the new special educational needs and disability system meeting the needs of children and young people on the autism spectrum in England? Retrieved from http://www.autism.org.uk/schoolreport2016

Resource Management and Corporate Services Division. (2017). Operating grants manual: 2017/18, 2018/19, 2019/20. Retrieved from https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/education/administration/resource-management/k12funding/17-18/17-18-operating-grants-manual.pdf

Wesselink, M. (2012). Videoconferencing as an educational intervention for children with autism (Master’s thesis). Eindhoven University of Technology. Retrieved from https://pure.tue.nl/ws/files/46910759/740041-1.pdf