Curriculum Access for Students with Low-Incidence Disabilities: The Promise of UDL
Table of Contents — Next Section
Why are schools and communities particularly challenged in serving students with low-incidence disabilities?
Insufficient Numbers
Students with low-incidence disabilities are difficult to serve in today's public schools because none of the low-incidence categories alone can form a group large enough to warrant the presence of full-time, school-based, and highly specialized personnel, except in the largest of big-city school districts. Therefore, students with low-incidence disabilities are more likely to be served in less inclusive settings (such as in special classes, separate schools, and residential facilities) than are students with high-incidence disabilities. Local schools that do attempt to provide maximum inclusion most often support these efforts through the use of itinerant personnel, usually teachers/consultants who travel from school to school as needed, often crossing district lines to serve the needs of their students.
Each variety of low-incidence disability brings its own unique challenges to a local school system. When intensive, specialized instruction is required, such as the learning of Braille for blind students or American Sign Language (ASL) for the deaf, teacher consultation models of intervention can prove woefully inadequate for the delivery of specially-designed and carefully-targeted intensive instruction. Similarly, when faced with students who present with complex healthcare needs, local schools frequently lack the capacity to respond appropriately to medical emergencies or to provide required routine intensive care. Each group of students with a low-incidence disability has its own set of specialized needs, requiring specialized supports and specially-trained personnel to maximize their educational opportunities. While some generic support services are of use to nearly all students, most are specialized to one group. For example, a deaf or autistic child is unlikely to need to learn Braille, while a blind student will not need the level of constant medical support that a quadriplegic child or one under medical treatment for leukemia is likely to require.
The low-incidence nature of these disabilities also makes it extremely challenging to maintain an adequate supply of qualified professionals to serve them. The skills and knowledge sets of these professionals are highly technical, requiring a significant commitment of time and effort to acquire through professional preparation, typically at university centers. Yet the caseloads of these professionals are small and likely to change in composition from year to year. Further added to this supply challenge is the paucity of university-based, professional preparation programs to prepare sufficient numbers of practitioners to adequately serve these students. Moreover, administrative supervision and mentoring of new inductees to the field are frequently inadequate. These professionals are mostly isolated from colleagues, limiting their opportunity for collaboration and shared growth. Opportunities for targeted professional development may be extremely limited. In sum, it is difficult to attract qualified individuals into these fields to begin with and perhaps even more difficult to nurture, support, and retain them once employed.
Finding the Least Restrictive Environment
Often, the least restrictive environment for students with low-incidence disabilities cannot be found in their local public school. While IEP teams must presume that a student is to be placed in the public school closest to her or his home, a team may be compelled by assessment findings to urge placement in a specialized setting where highly-trained personnel and appropriate technologies can be concentrated and unique needs can be appropriately targeted for intensive instruction. Although students with low-incidence disabilities are required to have access to the general education curriculum, that requirement does not state that the only way in which such a condition may be met is in a full-inclusion setting in a general education classroom. An IEP team may determine that an alternative and highly specialized setting is the most appropriate, and therefore least restrictive, placement available for meeting the specific needs resulting from a student's disability(ies), particularly if their local public school is not sufficiently equipped to provide a safe and successful educational experience for that student. Thus, in many cases of students with low-incidence disabilities, the true path toward greatest access to the general education curriculum may be pursued more appropriately in a separate setting (for example, in a school for the deaf or a residential school for the blind).
However, in some cases, appropriate program planning for students with low-incidence disabilities in local public schools is possible and may be the preferred placement according to the IEP team, which includes the student and the student's family. Adequate provision for these students in inclusive settings requires broad community engagement and significant systems change. Collaboration and commitment among stakeholders at the local, state, and federal levels are necessary to effect such change. With thoughtful and appropriate approaches to planning, such as those to be described, willing communities can amass the supports necessary to ensure high-quality educational services for even those students with the most significant cognitive disabilities or complex healthcare needs.