The Harsh Realities of Segregated Classrooms

The Harsh Realities of Segregated Classrooms (Tim Villegas)

The vast majority of school districts serve students with complex support needs in special education classrooms. By complex support needs, I mean learners on the autism spectrum, those with intellectual disabilities, learners who have emotional and behavioral challenges, and even those with multiple disabilities. By special education classrooms, I mean segregated classrooms designed specifically for these learners. These classrooms typically don’t spend much time, if any, with their typically developing peers in schools. They often hold multiple grade levels of students, usually clustered with the same kind of disability. So, I’m talking about autism classrooms, classrooms for students with mild, moderate, or severe intellectual disabilities, you name it.

But why do we educate learners in this way? And how should we really think about segregated classrooms? Hey friends, I’m Tim Villegas. You are listening to or watching Think Inclusive from the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education. Our podcast explores inclusive practices in schools and communities through conversations with those doing the work of inclusion in the real world.

Our work begins with a conversation, and that is what we hope this podcast will provide for you—a way to start a conversation with your friends, family, or colleagues about why inclusive education is vital for all learners. This is the first episode of the new season of Think Inclusive. And this time around, it’s just going to be you and me. I want to talk to you about segregated classrooms, what my experience was like teaching in them, what lessons I learned about why they exist, and even how we can move beyond segregated classrooms.

Before we take a quick break, I wanted to share with you about our new sponsor for season 12, IXL.

IXL is a personalized online teaching and learning solution that helps educators improve achievement, empower teachers, track progress, and more. This one platform for K-12 helps teachers accomplish what normally would require dozens of other tools. IXL is used in 95 of the top 100 school districts, and over 1 million teachers use IXL in their classrooms every day for one reason—they really love it.

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Okay, so because I like a good episode structure, we’re going to tackle this topic about segregated classrooms in three parts, or acts, as Ira Glass likes to say in This American Life. So after a short break, Act One: What’s so special about a special ed classroom?

We’ll be right back.

Welcome back to Think Inclusive. Okay, here we go.

Act One: What’s so special about a special education classroom?

First of all, I’m going to tell you the reasons that I typically hear about why a student should be in a segregated classroom, special education, self-contained, however you want to say it.

Number one: Safety. Why would a student be in a segregated classroom for safety, or why are special education classrooms safer? The argument is that you have more people in the classroom. Maybe you have a special education teacher, one or two paraprofessionals, and an additional support person like a healthcare provider, depending on the makeup of the classroom. The classroom has specialized equipment, maybe safety equipment, and people are specifically trained to support children with challenging behavior. Maybe it is the safety of the students in the regular classroom. It’s just not safe for certain students to be in the general education classroom.

Number two: Specialized support. When I was a district support specialist in one of my last jobs in public schools, I served classrooms that had students with autism, intellectual disabilities, and those who needed support with their emotions and challenging behavior. The argument was that you have certain teachers who are specially trained or “experts” in working with students who are autistic. You also have students who require adaptations or modifications to their lessons, typically those with intellectual disabilities. Teachers have specialized training in delivering behavioral support. This is a big reason why some districts cluster support services. You might have one elementary school with a class for autistic students, one for students with intellectual disabilities, and one for students who need emotional and behavioral support.

Number three: Individualized support. The argument here is that general education classrooms are too big, with 30-40 students in one classroom. A student with complex support needs wouldn’t get the attention they deserve in that class, so they need to be in a smaller group with individualized support. Sometimes this means a one-on-one aide, often a paraprofessional.

Now, what does that really look like in reality? Special education classrooms typically have many students with a wide variety of complex support needs. For instance, when I was a self-contained segregated special education teacher, I taught a class that was kindergarten through fifth grade. That’s six grade levels of students, with anywhere from six to eight students. There would be myself and maybe two to three other adults in the classroom. At one point, I had a nurse in the classroom to attend to various medical and healthcare needs.

Special education classrooms have a lot going on. It’s not just the teaching and lessons. For students with multiple disabilities and healthcare issues, there’s a lot of stopping, starting, and pausing to support learners throughout the day. This causes a lot of wait and downtime. For example, in my experience, and I think other special education teachers would agree, supporting students in this kind of segregated setting involves a lot of the same ideas and stories.

I remember going into my job in this K-5 setting, being completely new to this particular population of students. The paraprofessionals were training me on what the previous teacher had done. They were so proud of what they had built—a table with various lights and music options, an old cassette player, a fan, and different light-up things that made noise. It was all attached to a switch, which was something you plugged in at the end of the line of these options. You would hit a button, and all those things would turn on, providing stimulation for the student sitting there

At the time, it seemed like a great idea. We could help these students during stations by having them sit in front of the lights and music station area to be entertained while we took care of everyone else. But looking back, it seems a bit ridiculous. It wasn’t about delivering standards or weaving this into the lesson plan; it was about life skills. If we could teach a student to hit a switch, we could teach them to operate other things. This was presented as a novel idea, and I thought it was perfect at the time.

The point is, when you have so many students with varying support needs, you have to split up your day. Often, students were doing nothing but being “stimulated” while we worked with others. This is a problem when running a classroom and delivering instruction. What’s specially designed about that? It’s not actually teaching anything necessarily. There are more functional ways of teaching students to use a switch.

Back to the one-on-one support—there’s really nothing special about it. It’s not an example of specially designed instruction, yet it’s how many schools and districts solve the problem of families wanting inclusive education for their children because the infrastructure isn’t available. The same idea applies to small group classrooms. Learners get more attention in a smaller group, but there’s nothing special about it. Everyone benefits from one-on-one interaction with a teacher, but what’s the specially designed instruction that a one-on-one provides?

In my opinion, one-on-one support means the teacher doesn’t have to worry about that student as much because an adult is taking care of them and maybe helping teach them. But that’s not specially designed instruction. Specially designed instruction involves collaboration between special education and general education teachers, working together on lessons and delivering support across a grade level or school. It includes looking at a lesson and determining what specific supports each student needs, like a graphic organizer or reminders to pay attention.

One-on-one paraprofessionals can be useful if they facilitate independence with academics and behavior support, directed by a special education teacher with different strategies. The focus should be on helping the learner be independent and interdependent, asking for assistance from the paraprofessional, peers, or teachers.

To sum up, special education classrooms aren’t really that special. The idea is to have a small group, highly trained staff, and individualized supports. But what ends up happening is that the teacher’s attention is divided among many students with various support needs. The argument in general ed classes is that a student takes up too much time and it’s not fair to other students, so they need to go somewhere else. But that “somewhere else” is a classroom with many students needing various levels of support, making it practically impossible to support all of them.

When all these students are in one class, what about those kids? They’re in another class, out of sight, attended to by special education teachers and paraprofessionals. But it’s nearly impossible to manage over six grade levels, even if all the students had mild or low support needs. This is the reality in many classrooms and districts, with disability-specific classrooms for autism, intellectual disabilities, and emotional and behavior support.

A lot of times, teachers would say, “I’ve got a great class, but if this one student could be in another special class, they could get the support they need and require. Then my class would be perfect.” But think about that for a minute. If that’s the situation we’re putting our special education teachers in, where they have a class of five, six, seven, maybe 10 or 12 students, and it’s just the two students—like if only these two students were somewhere else—what about those students? How are we supporting them?

So, real quick before I let you go, and we’re going to have another break, I’ll tease this for Act Two: What if there was a way that we could have students with complex support needs spread out across a grade level, across a school, across a district, so they weren’t clumped together? What would that look like, and why would that be better than the current system we are in right now? All right, we’ll be right back after a short break with Act Two.

And we are back.

Act Two: There’s got to be a better way

If you’re watching on YouTube, you may notice that I’m wearing something different. I’ve got my Atlanta Falcons hat on, and a red background, just gearing up for the football season. Sometimes I record episodes on multiple days to make it a little bit easier. So that’s what’s happening today.

Let’s talk about why we even educate learners in segregated classrooms in the first place. Here’s a very quick explanation: Before 1975, learners with disabilities did not have any legal protections to attend school. Some schools and districts did educate learners with disabilities, but that was pretty rare. When the law now known as IDEA was passed, students from segregated schools and institutions started going to public schools. That was a really good thing, and we’re happy that happened. Things are much better now, but it’s been nearly 50 years since the law was passed. We know from research and good instructional practices that when learners with complex support needs are included and supported in inclusive classrooms, their outcomes are much better than if they were segregated into disability-specific classrooms.

What does that even look like? For starters, school leaders are at the forefront of what makes a school. If you’re an educator or a teacher and you’ve ever worked in a school, think about how the principal sets the tone and culture of that school. Think about what that person brings to how everyone works together and sets a vision. That may be influenced by the district, but the school leader is probably the most important piece of leadership for that building. School principals and district leadership are what make a movement toward inclusive practices possible. What we’ve seen at MCIE around the country, in Maryland and with our partners in other states, is that you can have a very inclusive school within a school district, but the change is typically driven by the principal. Just like we talked about school culture, the tone and how people get along with each other. When the change is driven by the school district and the leadership team at the district level, they are more likely to have sustainable change because that is the vision of the district—it’s inclusive.

So, what is an inclusive vision? We have a few talking points when we talk about inclusive vision and present about inclusive education. Hold on a second, let me take a sip of my coffee here.

Okay, so number one: Each and every child who lives in that school’s neighborhood belongs in that school. Some districts don’t have what you would call neighborhood schools, but the idea is that the vast majority of schools are that way. If you live in the neighborhood of that school, you belong in that school.

Next, all children are general education students. Some receive services. There are special education services, but there are not special education students. There are only general education students, some of whom happen to receive services. When we call students special education students or SPED students, even if it’s not on purpose or intentional, you are othering those students. Quick story: My kids go to our local public school district, the one I used to work in. I saw a social media post this morning that gives the block schedule for the high school. There are four blocks, and the third block tells you when everyone goes to lunch. You have the social studies classes, the math classes, and then I saw English and SPED. It signals that SPED students are separate. Maybe it’s a segregated classroom, I don’t know exactly, but it struck me because I wasn’t expecting it. I wonder what kind of message that sends, that we are separating students like that even when talking about lunchtimes in the school day.

Next, there are no inclusion classrooms. Students are not separated by label. The vast majority of school districts have inclusion classrooms. For example, in an elementary school third grade, one classroom is the inclusion classroom with a general ed and a special education teacher, probably co-teaching, and maybe a paraprofessional. Around half the students have an IEP or are receiving special education services. That just isn’t inclusive. If that is an inclusive classroom, what are all the other classrooms?

Services are delivered through collaboration of general education and special education teachers. Inclusive schools change the expectations of the roles between general and special education teachers. A lot of times, general education teachers believe they are only supposed to be teaching learners in general education classrooms because they’ve been told by someone in leadership or a supervisor that they can’t deliver services to a particular student.

That’s what the special education teacher is for, which isn’t true. Special education teachers are really great at specially designed instruction, modifications, accommodations, and adaptations. While general education teachers typically specialize in content and standards, both kinds of teachers can have expertise in all these areas. The idea is not to silo these roles but to collaborate as a team to deliver educational services to all learners.

Part of that vision is planning for students who need more. If we think about everyone as a general education student, some students receive additional services. For those who need more, how are we going to plan? MCIE has a number of tools for learner planning in our resources. Anytime you can use a tool to plan for a learner, to foster more belonging, engagement, membership, and friendships in the class, and to facilitate participation and engagement, it’s beneficial. You also need to figure out what students are actually learning and where the standards are in the lesson.

I’m reminded of my time in segregated classrooms and supporting learners in those settings. A lot of times, especially in middle and high school, you have a canned curriculum created by a third party that is theme-based and teaches life skills supposedly embedded with standards. But the curriculum often skims the surface, lacking rigor. In segregated special education classrooms, you have multiple grade levels, making it impossible for a teacher to cover all the standards.

Interventions are provided for all learners who need them. When you think about multi-tiered systems of support, it’s not about tier one, tier two, or tier three kids. Those are just levels of intensity of services. Tier one is universal core instruction, tier two provides a bit more intervention for those who need it, and tier three is the most intense intervention, whether social, emotional, behavioral, or academic. Any learner can receive any part of that system at any point.

How does this actually work? It starts with leadership. When district leadership sets an inclusive vision, it’s much easier to change the system than when a small group of educators tries to make change in a school. I’ve heard stories of educators making change in particular schools and being successful. One example is Seaholm High School in Bellingham, Washington. Sonia Cole, now the principal, was part of a cohort of educators that moved inclusive practices forward for that school. Now, she runs probably the most inclusive high school I’ve ever experienced.

Wherever you are, you can be a leader. Collaboration between general and special education teachers means all teachers teach all learners. Special education teachers are experts in specially designed instruction, but teachers or even paraprofessionals can deliver SDI, making things more flexible. An all-hands-on-deck approach gets more done efficiently.

Scheduling makes a big difference in inclusive schools. Inclusion classrooms should spread students out across a grade level, ideally in natural proportions. If about 10% of a school has an identified disability, no one classroom should have more than 10% of students with identified needs. This spreads out students and allows for more efficient support from special education teachers.

In a few weeks, I’ll have an episode with my colleague Brittany Salmons, who does a lot of training on scheduling for our partners. We have a fascinating discussion, so I hope you tune in for that one.

When you schedule learners in natural proportions, it takes the pressure off certain educators to only work with a particular kind of student. It goes back to the philosophy and vision that all teachers teach all kids. You also avoid over-representation of learners in one particular classroom.

Another reason often cited for segregating students is significant or complex medical support needs or behavior issues. If a student requires something significantly different for their support, a school can and should plan for that student. If that means time spent outside of a general education classroom to receive some service, the school team can figure that out creatively. The point is that all students start in general education first. Unfortunately, districts often create programs and classrooms designed for particular students or profiles, like autism classrooms, intellectual disability classrooms, and behavior classrooms.

When you have classrooms, you’re going to put students in them, especially when general education teachers and special education teachers do not feel equipped to support learners in a general education environment. It’s certainly plausible for an inclusive school to provide support for a particular kind of learner with significant behavior challenges or complex medical support needs. But that does not mean we are going to send them to a special education classroom forever, which is what often happens.

I want to reiterate that it doesn’t mean you stop trying to include the learner. What ends up happening is a student will be removed from the general education setting and then never come back. How are we going to ensure that we are always re-evaluating and making sure the student doesn’t have to prove they belong in general education? I’ve seen situations where a student is removed, and it’s like, “Okay, their behavior hasn’t improved,” or they have to reach a certain threshold to be “ready” to go back to general education. A better way to think about it is to constantly look at the general education environment, try different things, and have the student come back where they belong to see if their needs are supported.

If you have specific questions about a particular learner, we’d be happy to talk about that. But that’s the general idea. We had a Summer Institute at the beginning of August, and one of our keynotes was Jordan Zimmerman. I told her about a learner I had in one of my segregated classrooms. This particular girl was a kindergartner, used a wheelchair, and was a non-speaking individual.

Early in the year, we were going to our specials activities like music and art. One day, we went to the PE gym because I had a good relationship with our PE teacher, and our class was included with a general education segment of PE. The girl got into the room and started crying and yelling, clearly not having a great time. It looked like she wanted to leave. My paraprofessionals asked me what to do, and I said we needed to take her out because her behavior was communicating that she didn’t want to be there.

We eventually figured out it was the noise in the room that was overwhelming for her sensory needs. When we had PE outside, where there wasn’t as much echo, she was fine. We realized it was the environment, not that she didn’t want to participate in PE. We made different plans, but that doesn’t mean we stopped trying to include her in general education PE.

Jordan told me that when she was in school and didn’t have a reliable communication device, sometimes her behavior would communicate to the staff that she didn’t want to be somewhere. But sometimes she did want to be there; she just didn’t have the words or communication mode to let them know what was bothering her. This reminded me that we shouldn’t assume what a student is thinking based on their behavior alone. We don’t have their thoughts and feelings, and they may not be able to communicate that to us.

So that was Act Two. How does this all work? We’re going to take one more quick break, and then we’ll be back for Act Three, where we’ll talk about what we actually do about all this and close out the episode. We’ll be right back.

Act Three: Go Tell It on the Mountain

So, Tim, what do we do about all this? Great question. I’m glad you asked. Typically, this is not how I do podcast episodes. Usually, I’m much more scripted, although I do have notes in front of me. I don’t often do solo podcasts, so if you made it to Act Three, thank you for listening. Thank you for being a part of what we’re trying to do here with the Think Inclusive Podcast. We want this podcast to be a way for you to start conversations with people. Many university professors have contacted me, saying they assign particular episodes for their classes or share them widely. Thank you so much for that. That’s the vision for what we’re doing here—to provide a resource that edifies you and equips people you know to share what you know about inclusive practices.

There’s one thing I want to leave you with, and it’s very simple: Our work begins with a conversation. Think about someone in your life who is on the fence about inclusive education or inclusive practices. Maybe someone who genuinely believes that special education classrooms are the best for learners. Think about someone you already have a relationship with—a colleague, a family member, a friend. Visualize talking with them about one thing you learned from this episode or something else you heard from our many episodes or something you can’t stop thinking about regarding inclusive education.

My friend Mark Crenshaw has said this before: systems change is really just conversations over time. Hearts and minds need to change, and typically, hearts and minds don’t change through shame, embarrassment, or harsh tactics. Think about the last time you had a behavior change. Was it because someone shamed you into doing something? Perhaps, but think about if that change was long-lasting. I would argue that long-lasting change happens through relationships and investment in the people you are supporting or having a friendship with.

I want you to think about something, especially for those who are not fans of applied behavior analysis or behavior principles. I’ve often heard that kids do well if they can. What if it is also true that adults do well if they can? What if the same grace we want teachers to give children is given to the adults struggling with the change about how things have been done for years?

I want to challenge us, especially those of us who call ourselves inclusionists, to look at our own behavior with how we want people to change and examine some of our own tactics. Could they possibly be the barrier to lasting change? For some people and some school systems, there have been many times when we at MCIE have been in a school district where some of the most vocal educators who said, “This is not a good idea. I don’t like this. We need to keep segregated classrooms,” have become the biggest advocates for change. Because while hearts and minds need to change and conversations should be had, the biggest determinant of that change is actually people experiencing success in their own practice.

So, who are you going to talk to? Find that one person in your mind. Visualize what you’re going to say, and then have a conversation. Our work begins with a conversation.

That’s it for this episode of Think Inclusive. A big thank you to IXL for sponsoring this episode. You can learn more at ixl.com/inclusive. Think Inclusive is written, edited, designed, mixed, and mastered by me, Tim Villegas, and is a production of the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education. Original music by Miles Kredich, additional music by Melod.ie.

A huge shout-out to our listeners and YouTube subscribers. If you’re watching on YouTube, make sure you subscribe and hit the like button so we can get our videos out to more people. We have a wonderful lineup of guests coming this season.

Next week, we will have Danny and Tara Whitty from the All Our Brave Hearts podcast. So definitely check that out. You are not going to want to miss that. Thanks for your time and attention. And remember, inclusion always works.

We did it. We did it. We did it.

Download the complete and unedited transcript here.