The Power of Placement: Why LRE Discussions Matter ~ 708

Tim Villegas:
Hey, y’all. Welcome to the Think Inclusive Podcast. I’m your host, Tim Villegas. If you aren’t familiar with who we are, our main goal is to build a bridge between parents, educators, and people with disabilities to advocate for inclusive education. We do this by publishing articles on Think Inclusive by disabled writers, parents of children with disabilities, and educators who are “all in” for inclusion. We’re a big group and we are only getting bigger. This podcast is an extension of what we try to do every day on the website and in a surprising plot twist…this will be the last episode of season seven. So, let me explain.

The last time we talked, it was June 2020, and humanity was smack dab in the middle of a worldwide pandemic. We didn’t know if students or educators were going to be let into school buildings, or if there even was going to be a 2020–21 school year.

Well, a funny thing happened while the world was falling apart. I got a new job. “In this job market,” you gasp? I was shocked as well. The Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education has hired me to be their Director of Communications, which means that producing this podcast is going to be part of my job. And not only that, but Think Inclusive is now MCIE’s official blog.

I just want to pause and savor this moment because if it wasn’t for all of you listening and sharing the podcast with your friends, family, and colleagues, I don’t think we would be here today. So thank you.

Now, what does this mean for you as the listener and the future of the podcast? Honestly, you won’t notice much of a difference except that the podcast is going to be laser-focused on inclusive education and that MCIE will be mentioned quite a bit more frequently.

I had to make the tough decision to not publish a few interviews that were scheduled to be produced. So for Lisa Drennan, Kyle and Brent Pease, Michelle Tetschner, and Nancy Tarshis, my sincerest apologies. In order for us to get rolling on the new season and editorial calendar for Think Inclusive and MCIE, some things had to get cut.

But for those of you who are interested in hearing the complete unedited interviews of everyone I just mentioned and get access to the whole archive of unedited interviews, there is an easy fix: become a patron. Go to patreon.com/thinkinclusivepodcast and check out the one, five, and ten dollar a month tiers.

Okay. That’s enough of the commercial. In the next season, I will get you some additional information about how it will all work. So today I’m very excited about the interviews that we have. First, we have Amy Langerman, a special education attorney and advocate in California and Arizona.

We discussed the difficulty some parents face when seeking the least restrictive environment for their child and how services are delivered in both of those states. Next up, we have Amanda Selogie and Vickie Brett from the Inclusive Education Project, which has a fantastic podcast if you don’t already know about them. We also discuss LRE and strategies that you can take to help advocate for inclusive education, wherever you are on your inclusion journey.

Okay, y’all ready? After a short break, my interview with Amy Langerman as well as Amanda Selogie and Vickie Brett of the Inclusive Education Project. Thanks for listening.

Tim Villegas:
Why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself and how you came into special education law?

Amy Langerman:
None of us who went to law school actually started out thinking, “I’m going to be a special education lawyer.” Like many who end up in this profession, we get there with a diagnosis. We all ended up in a doctor’s office one day, where a doctor gives you a doom and gloom diagnosis. The one who did that to me is someone I affectionately refer to as Doctor Doom and Gloom. Back in 1995, she told me that my then two-year-old would end up in a group home on social security, would never have a job, not get married. And that my three-month-old baby would probably benefit if I had another child so that he would have a sibling.

I walked out of there in a daze, had a last weekend, and then woke up the following Monday and decided to become the world’s leading expert on my kid. In the process, I learned quite a bit about autism and special education. I had to file due process five times against my son’s three different school districts to get the free and appropriate public education to which he was entitled.

That’s how I got into it. I decided I no longer wanted to be a trial lawyer and wanted a more peaceful existence. So I decided I would work with children full-time. In California, I’m a consultant because I’m not licensed as a lawyer here. I go to IEP meetings and help plan for educational outcomes. In Arizona, I still handle due process litigation when advocates and social workers are unable to get a FAPE at an IEP table.

Tim Villegas:
Do you see a big difference between Arizona and California in how they deliver services and interpret the law?

Amy Langerman:
Absolutely. California is ahead of the game. That’s why I moved here. Arizona required my son to go to a private school and be segregated. The public school system was unable to individualize a program. They saw autism and placed him in what was called an MR program—a self-contained class with low expectations—even though he was several years above grade level.

If we had better inclusive education, he would have stayed in inclusion where he started. But we didn’t have the support for that in Arizona. In California, about five to eight years ago, there was a huge audit of San Diego Unified, one of the largest school districts. They were found to be segregating students and in one year abolished most of their self-contained classes and said, “We’re going to be an inclusion model.” They don’t do it well, but it was a start.

Other districts followed suit. The district I consult for has two full-time inclusion specialists, each with an assistant, a curriculum adapter, and a TOSA (teacher on special assignment) supporting inclusion district-wide. Inclusion cannot be successful without support.

In Arizona, LRE is a dirty word. They never first consider an inclusive placement. They just offer a segregated classroom. We’ve had to fight hard to get inclusive placements. Even then, districts don’t support it. It’s hard to impose that on a general education teacher without training and support.

Arizona has vouchers where you can take your special education money and leave public education. Many of us recommend parents take the voucher and go to a private school. It’s tragic because inclusive placement should be at your neighborhood school.

I do see a significant difference, especially as it relates to LRE. That’s something I’m now training on nationally and support for many students, particularly those with intellectual disabilities.

Tim Villegas:
Do you see this as a viable strategy for parents and families in other states who are having this problem with trying to get their child included in preschool?

Amy Langerman:
Yeah. It’s not just preschool, it’s all over the place—first grade, kindergarten, middle school, whatever the case may be. Particularly high school. It’s like, oh my goodness, how are they going to be successful? Or, you know, it’s calculus and it’s geometry and integrated math one. There’s no way that we could possibly include these children in such classes.

I actually had a program manager say to me at one point years ago, “In middle school they do plate tectonics. How meaningful will plate tectonics be for Billy?” (That’s a fake name, but you get the point.) Literally, that was her argument. She said, “This won’t be meaningful to him because it’s over his head. So we ought to put him in a class where we can dumb it down and lower the expectation and give them something more palatable, like counting to 10 and playing barnyard bingo.”

When she said that to me, I looked her straight in the eye without missing a beat and said, “Well, how meaningful was it for you?”

Amy Langerman:
She looked at me with this quizzical look because I was being impertinent. I’m 61 years old, so an old lady being impertinent—that’s something. I said, “You know, the reason I ask that is, I’m not just trying to be a smart aleck here, but I had to take plate tectonics when I was a kid. And I’m in my fifties or sixties, and I’ve got to be honest with you—until today, I’ve never mentioned those words in my entire educational or professional lifetime. So however meaningful it was for you or for me, I find it to be a useless curriculum. But the state mandates it. So I think that Billy should have the same opportunity to participate in the same useless curriculum that everyone else gets to participate in.”

Amy Langerman:
You asked me what’s the strategy for the parent. The only way for the parent to overcome any of this is through due process. Imagine what that looks like: you have a dispute with your school district. They want to put your child in a self-contained class, or he’s already in one, and you want him in a more inclusive class. They say “no.” So you file.

The problem is your child is in their control, and they control the data and the evidence. They can make it say whatever they want. The teachers will always come in and say, “Oh, he’s doing horribly. He makes no progress. It isn’t meaningful for him,” whatever the case may be. It’s not that they’re necessarily lying to sell the party line, but in their mind—the general education teacher’s mind—progress is measured the way it is for non-disabled children.

Tim Villegas:
Fantastic. Thanks for being on the podcast, Vickie and Amanda.

Vickie Brett:
Thanks for having us!

Tim Villegas:
Oh yeah, absolutely. I’ve been looking forward to this conversation for a long, long time. Would you mind—one of you—letting our listeners know who you are and what IEP California is?

Amanda Selogie:
Sure. This is Amanda. I’ll go ahead and start with a little bit of my background. In college, I was a child development major, kind of going back and forth trying to figure out my path in life and what I wanted to do. Initially, I thought I was going to go into CP and special education. I had the wonderful benefit of working at a full inclusion charter school in California called Chime Charter, where 20% of the population were children on IEPs or had special needs and were fully included in the general education population.

It’s one of those schools—still is—that is one in a million. They do amazing work to ensure that inclusive education practices happen on a day-to-day basis. I fell in love with the students I worked with.

Amanda Selogie:
I really found how wonderful the inclusivity of the school helped all of the kids. I realized the roadblocks that teachers face going into this field. My aunt’s a special ed teacher, so I saw it firsthand from her as well. I realized that it may not have been my path. I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to speak out and stand up for the kids as much as I wanted. So it kind of led me to law school.

I heard about families having to get attorneys. I never thought I would be an attorney, but it made sense to me. This is what I was supposed to do. It interconnected the advocacy work I wanted to do and really working hands-on with these families.

Amanda Selogie:
So I went to law school specifically to do this area of law and met Vickie.

Vickie Brett:
Yeah. I was a year ahead of Amanda in law school. We actually met abroad studying in Spain. I needed a couple more units and she said, “Hey, I’m doing this special education clinic.” Our law school at the time was one of the very few that had a special education clinic.

I enrolled in the class very quickly but got pulled out of her class to go to the Orange County section because I speak Spanish. So we didn’t end up getting that class together, but we kept in touch. I went off and worked at a small boutique law firm that did a little bit of special education, family law, and personal injury.

Vickie Brett:
Once Amanda graduated, we’d get together every so often and talk about our cases. We always felt really great after leaving each other. After Amanda had been an attorney for two years and me for almost three, we decided to take the plunge and create our nonprofit, as well as a private law firm.

With the Inclusive Education Project, we found a bigger medium to reach out to people. We actually have a podcast—the Inclusive Education Project Podcast. We can talk forever—we’re attorneys. One of the things we came across with our families was that their resources were so limited. They didn’t even know other families were affected in the same way.

Vickie Brett:
Part of the reason for the podcast was just to record ourselves and put it out there. As it’s grown—this will be our third year—we’re noticing that it’s doing something much bigger. Just like Think Inclusive, it’s getting the awareness out there and creating understanding so that people don’t segregate or label others.

Our nonprofit has become more than just the advocacy we do on an individual basis for our clients. It’s really becoming a movement.

Tim Villegas:
For Think Inclusive, we get a lot of questions via email about specific situations, and it’s always difficult to answer a question about a specific situation where you don’t have the whole context. So just in general terms, we want the least restrictive environment for a student. The law provides specific alternate placements as a continuum—a continuum of placements. So when you look at LRE, the law assumes that at least some kids will be served in another placement. I’m wondering how you navigate that discussion with the family and with the district in a collaborative way.

Amanda Selogie:
That discussion about LRE is one of the biggest mistakes that IEP teams make. I’d say nine times out of ten, when I’m at an IEP meeting, this conversation is glossed over. Maybe they mention the part in the document where it discusses it, but the law requires a true discussion—meaning multiple people providing opinions and discussing the ins and outs of the options, not just one person making a recommendation and everybody else taking it at face value.

We often say the most important part of an initial IEP is that discussion of placement, because where you start from the initial IEP is often where you’re going to be for a while. Once a child is placed in a segregated special day class or home instruction or residential placement, it’s more difficult to come back to a less restrictive environment.

Amanda Selogie:
That very first discussion is of high importance, and I don’t think many IEP teams really illuminate that importance. So when we’re in an IEP meeting—say for an initial—one of the first things we recommend is having the team discuss their thoughts. The law requires you to first talk about general education, not jump to a special day class discussion. The law really requires the team to say, “Okay, we’ve established goals, present levels, accommodations, and supports that we believe the student needs to accomplish these goals. The next step should be: can we provide these supports and accomplish these goals within a general education setting?”

The team should dive really deep into this conversation. If there is a goal on math, cutting, or articulation, the conversation needs to stem from: can this goal, can this accommodation, be provided in a general ed class?

Amanda Selogie:
More often than not, that question is never asked. A lot of times schools will say, “Okay, we talked about all these goals and accommodations. We have this special day class that has all of this already embedded in it.” So it sounds great. A lot of families hear that and think, “Wonderful.” They don’t question it because they think, “You’re telling me my child needs this support, I agree they need the support, and you’re saying this classroom has it—great.”

But what’s missing is the conversation that just because it’s embedded in this segregated classroom doesn’t mean it can’t be provided in the general ed classroom. More often than not, the answer to the question “Can it be put in the gen ed class?” is yes.

Tim Villegas:
I really like how you laid that out. I completely agree that the placement discussion often gets glossed over. I find that especially toward later in the school career of a student. By the time you’re in middle school and the student is already in a special day class or self-contained special education class—for students with intellectual disabilities—when you get to placement, everyone’s like, “All right, so we’re good,” right? Like we don’t have that robust discussion again.

Amanda Selogie:
Right.

Tim Villegas:
What are some strategies for those families who maybe hadn’t advocated for their child at the beginning, but now are coming in later years and still want to? How would they advocate for inclusion?

Vickie Brett:
I think you start with the inclusion the child already gets. This is something else that’s also glossed over. Let’s say the child—I’ll start with elementary. I really liked your hypothetical, and I had this thought while Amanda was talking and I just want to be sure I share it.

You say, “Hey, I really think my kid needs to be included more.”

Vickie Brett:
“Well, they are at recess, and art and music. Oh yeah, art got cut. So it’s just music and assemblies.” Okay, so then I think you need to start asking more questions. Because at recess, what ends up happening is a lot of the special ed kids are led out to recess and then they all hang out with each other. So what are you doing to actually include the child with other children?

Vickie Brett:
Do they have somebody that’s prompting them to socialize? I think you start with that. Then you really get a sense of how this team operates. If the team’s already doing that, then you’ve got a great foundation to say, “One of Bobby’s strengths is reading. I think maybe at least for the first 20 minutes when a class is talking about reading—where they’re reading a story—maybe he should be pushed into that classroom.”

Because you already do a great job on the recess, etc. Most of the time, that’s not going to happen. They’re not including them in recess. They’re not really doing stuff, and you have to force it.

Vickie Brett:
If they’re receptive to it, then you have a team that’s going to be receptive to pushing in for classroom instruction, again using the child’s strength. If you get to where most teams are—not receptive—then you say, “Okay, how are we going to make this happen?”

You’re just very consistent and persistent in making it known that your child is entitled to be in the least restrictive environment. Recess, when they aren’t even doing what they’re supposed to in including them appropriately, is not good enough. Assemblies are not good enough.

Vickie Brett:
From my perspective, that’s how a client can build that case. It might get to a point where you need us—we hope you don’t—but most of the time, if you come from that inquisitive place: “How can we make this happen? How can we do this together?”—they’re not waking up and saying, “I don’t want to include this kid.” They just don’t know how.

If we start questioning and everyone is together and can talk about it collaboratively, we see a lot more progress that way in pushing the child into being included. And include that general education teacher—do not excuse that person. You’re going to find that the child is probably like a lot of the other sixth graders. That helps you include your child more.

Tim Villegas:
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Thank you to all of our supporters for the last eight years of the podcast. Also, a special shout out to my producer and love of my life, Briahnna. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter.

Thanks to my boys—you know who you are—for your feedback and suggestions. It is greatly appreciated. You are never going to get me on that paddleboard.

Thanks for your time and attention. See you next season.

Children:
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