Overcoming Barriers to Inclusive Education

News Story: Tonight, the King Five investigators show us the incredible change that can happen to a child with disabilities, with one simple adjustment in their education, giving them a seat in the classroom with other kids in school.

Tim Villegas: Tell me if you’ve heard this one before. A student with Down syndrome or autism is educated for the vast majority of their day in a segregated special education classroom. In 2018 King Five News in Washington State conducted an investigation which they called, “Back of the class.” The series exposed the reasons why Washington State lags behind much of the country in serving students with disabilities. Here’s Susanna Frame from King five News.

News Story: Many kids with disabilities in Washington spend a majority of their day separated from the typical learners in school, even though state and federal law states they have the civil right to be included as much as possible.

So check out the changes for one student when his new school said, “Yes, you have a seat in the class with everybody else.” The new experience for Sam began this school year on day one of high school as a freshman at Decatur in Federal Way. For the first time in three years, school administrators allowed him to learn alongside his non-disabled peers, like in this music class.

He also took general education pottery, and a leadership class and garden. Did you make that? Yeah. Where fellow students helped Sam with projects like this one, then signed their names and words of encouragement. Big hug. There we go. And now we’re starting to see the old Sam kind of reemerge and be more confident and silly and, you know, social.

And so it’s such a blessing to see that again, because by the third year of middle school we were feeling pretty despondent about things. For three years at Tabits Holy Middle School, Sam spent every day, all day in his segregated classroom. Even at lunch, he sat separately. None of the other kids even knew his name.

It breaks my heart that there are kids in his school who may not understand. They don’t understand what Down syndrome is and may be afraid of it. Last year, Sam’s mom, Sandy, described those isolating middle school years where the family watched him become withdrawn, not wanting to go to school and not making much academic progress.

And I think it’s just wrong on so many levels and not just for Sam. But for, you know the other kids in the school, it’s, it’s an opportunity lost. We can’t get these three years back. Like Sam, thousands of children in Washington state are shut out of regular classrooms. Our investigation found only 54% of our kids with disabilities spend a majority of their day in General Ed.

And for students with intellectual disabilities like Down syndrome and autism, that number’s down to 5%. Only two states in the country, Nevada and Illinois have a number worse than that. Outcomes for kids with disabilities are not better when they’re in segregated classrooms. Dr. Eileen Schwartz is a special education expert at the University of Washington. What the research tells us is that children with disabilities do better when they’re in inclusive classrooms and children without disabilities do as well.

School records show Sam did do better. Alright. With noticeable improvements in math, reading, and social skills. What we’re seeing now in just the first year of high school shows so much promise, and I think, you know, it can only go up from here. This video taken in middle school last year shows just how much Sam was left out attending his first ever school dance. While Sam was surrounded by kids. He was actually alone. No one spoke to him. No one came and said, “Hi, Sam.” No one danced with him.

No one took a selfie with him. He was aware. Woo. He was aware that there were no kids around him. Compare that to this year’s high school band concert where Sam, alongside general education musicians opens up the show. Listen to what happens at the end of the song. It’s the sound of inclusion of kids knowing a fellow student who happens to have a disability.

They were so fully 110% supporting him with what he was doing up there in that performance. And he knew that. You could see it on his face. I got really choked up and thought, this is amazing. This is for Sam. It was just really amazing to see them recognize Sam that way. I don’t know if you could tell, but the kids were yelling, Sam, Sam, and such a great moment, and the parents absolutely loved it.

We’re so glad they got it on videotape. As for the Federal Way School District, they wouldn’t tell us why Sam was completely segregated. His entire middle school career or why now he’s able to participate in general education classes and they also wouldn’t let us inside Decatur High School.

Tim Villegas: What Sam’s family, teachers and classmates realized when he was included with his typical peers was that he was more than capable of learning, growing, and making an impact in the classroom.

What is tragic about this situation is that it took a news investigation for Sam’s family to get any traction to have Sam be included

Tim Villegas: Today on the podcast, we interviewed Dr. Julie Causton, a former professor at Syracuse University, who has devoted her career and research to giving families practical strategies to include their children with disabilities.

Tim Villegas: In general education classrooms with their typically developing peers. Julie shares with us six strategies that you can use immediately to advocate for inclusive education for your child or student. My name is Tim Villegas. After a short break, our interview with Dr. Julie Causton. Also a special thanks to Susanna Frame from King Five News in Washington State for giving us permission to re-broadcast this story.

Tim: Julie, what do you think is the most significant barrier to inclusion for students with disabilities?

Julie Causton: I think there are many, but I would say, a huge barrier is just to think about how hard change is in school and the fear of change. So literally what I’m talking about is a pretty big paradigm shift moving away from this idea that, you know, kids with disabilities are so different and need a, a separate place to, humans are humans and all students need support in all kinds of ways.

And so that paradigm shift is a change. And if you even think back to like when we went to school. Schools don’t look that different schools are averse to change. Compare, like compare technology to education, right? Technology changes at lightning speed. And yet you still walk into a classroom and it looks very familiar to most of us from 40 years ago where there’s a teacher at the front, everybody’s at desks, right?

Like it’s not different. And so I think our biggest barrier to inclusion is how schooling struggles to change for a variety of reasons. The other thing I think is fear of difference and the me and kind of like the medicalization of disability. So we’ve been told, we’ve been taught, we’ve believed that children with disabilities deserve to do better when, you know, need to be in separate spaces. And that’s a convenient thing to think because those students then are somebody else’s problem, right? Someone else’s challenge. And so that fear of difference and the medicalization of disability is used as kind of an excuse to keep students separate.

I always, and I probably said this to you last time we talked to him, I always talk about Brown versus Board of Education because when anyone asks me, well, why isn’t it different? I say, well, I don’t know why in 1954 were we saying it’s okay to keep black and white kids separate. It’s the exact same thinking, and unfortunately it reveals a pretty unattractive truth about the way we think about people with disabilities.