IDEA and progress toward full inclusion

Sometimes a child is not ready for full inclusion in the classroom and may even need to receive services in a segregated environment.  This is why IDEA provides a continuum of placements and requires maximizing inclusion rather than full inclusion.  But if one of the goals of special education is to prepare the student for life after school, we must ask how well those segregated environments prepare the student to work, learn, live, and play in the community. Our national goals of equal opportunity, full inclusion and participation in society, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency for students with disabilities cannot be achieved through the use of segregated settings.  Even if we can't achieve full inclusion for all students, we can ensure that the child's educational opportunities become increasingly inclusive over time.

The mandate for increasing inclusion is not explicit in IDEA.  IDEA explicitly provides many rules about inclusion in schools, inclusion in the general curriculum, and inclusion in classrooms--as I discussed in the Inclusion in Schools post--but doesn't say anything specifically about increasing inclusion.  So where does this rule originate?  Where is this requirement?

You have to look at the forest instead of the trees.  Inclusion is one of the purposes behind IDEA.  Inclusion is part of the definition of an appropriate education.  In conducting the evaluation, the IEP team must examine how the student's disability affects inclusion.  In creating the IEP, the team must--in addition to maximizing inclusion--include goals related to the student's access to and progress in the general curriculum (part of inclusion).

So . . . IDEA requires you to know what needs affect inclusion, address those needs with appropriate services, and then evaluate progress and re-evaluate what needs affect inclusion.  If you are successfully addressing the reasons the student can't receive services in a more inclusive environment, shouldn't it logically follow that you are improving the student's ability to receive education in an inclusive setting?  Shouldn't the maximizing the student's inclusion in school  mean responding to improved ability to access and participate in inclusive settings, lessons, and activities?  Put simply, if the student is not better able to participate in an inclusive environment than he or she isn't making significant progress and isn't receiving an appropriate (and inclusive) education.