16 How Do I Serve Disabled Students?

Reginald seldom felt any irritation at accommodating his many disabled students, often as many as a quarter to a third of the 150 or so students whom he usually taught each term. Reginald instead deeply respected the goal of the disabilities laws and their many impositions on his teaching practices. Yet with 30, 40, or even 50 disabled students to teach each term, each with their own individualized education plan, in addition to his 100 or so non-disabled students, Reginald sometimes felt like all he did anymore was accommodate disabilities. He couldn’t even really tell many of the disabled students apart from his non-disabled students. He also couldn’t even tell what disabilities many of the disabled students had. All Reginald knew was that he had reams of additional paperwork to read, comply with, and complete, and a plethora of alterations to make to his teaching practices, to serve all of the accommodations. 

Disabilities

Disability laws have spurred a revolution in education. Increasingly, educators can find themselves looking at student academic performance and behavior through a disability lens, as much or more so as through instructional, attitudinal, motivational, or disciplinary perspectives. When a student fails, educators may attribute the cause to the student’s medically or physiologically based mental, physical, or emotional condition rather than to the quality of instruction, the character of the student, or the degree or quality of the student’s effort. Accordingly, schools refer and diagnose disabled students, medicate disabled students, and accommodate disabled students with all kinds of equipment, furnishings, environmental alterations, and services. Accommodations may include not just ramps, lifts, wider doors, and more railings but also service animals, readers, signers, writers, note takers, extra time on exams, exams in seclusion, modified lighting, modified schedules, more-frequent breaks, and the constant presence and coaching of aides and attendants. 

Mandates

Disabilities mandates have definitely increased access to education for students with qualifying disabilities. The old days of warehousing disabled students in poorly served and equipped special rooms, or refusing them school access entirely, are largely gone. Disabilities mandates have mainstreamed disabled students back into the classroom, with or without their equipment, services, accommodations, aides, attendants, and animals. Disabilities mandates have also definitely brought about a new age in education, where large numbers and percentages of students have mandated disabilities plans with which teachers, administrators, and staff members must comply on threat of civil liability and other sanctions. The federal laws, bolstered by similar state provisions, include the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The laws differ somewhat in their scope, requirements, and applicability to K-12 or higher education, or public or private schools. But educators, teachers included, simply cannot ignore or minimize their mandates. 

Teachers

Teachers can have an uneasy role in accommodating students with disabilities. Appreciate the sensitivity of your teaching position. While schools can have legal obligations to identify and accommodate disabled students, those students may not want their teachers or classmates to know of their disabilities. If the school can accommodate the disabled student without the teacher knowing, or at least with the teacher not knowing the nature of the disability, then the student may prefer not to share that information with the teacher. Yet teachers may also be in the best position to notice the academic and behavioral impact of a suspected disability, and be in the best position to recommend and institute an accommodation. As a teacher, you definitely can play a big part in carrying out the school’s responsibility to disabled students. Do as your school’s accommodations officer requires, recommends, and directs. Participate in the disability services planning and implementation process according to your school’s invitation and requirements, while giving disability services your all.

Diagnosis

Schools at the K-12 level have a duty to identify children with suspected educational disabilities and to refer them, with parent consent, for disability testing at the school’s cost. You may be part of that identification, diagnosis, and referral process. Watch for anomalous patterns in student behavior, such as repetitive actions like rocking, compulsive behavior, or avoidant stance and demeanor. Watch also for inexplicable academic struggles that appear inconsistent with the student’s otherwise high degree of discipline for, interest in, and attention to instruction. Watch also for unusual and persistent difficulty focusing, organizing, following directions, reading, or writing. Watch also for social withdrawal or other issues with peers and for emotional difficulties like aggressive outbursts, uncontrolled behavior, or depressed behavior. The frequency and persistence of anomalous behavior, and the absence of any particular relationship to conditions or stimuli, may suggest a student disability. Record and report these observations to your school’s accommodations officer, following the school’s legally mandated child-find procedures. By contrast to K-12 education, students in higher education generally have the obligation to notify school officials of their asserted disability and need for accommodation. 

Procedure

Participate as your school requests, recommends, and requires in any procedure related to a student’s actual or suspected disability. If the parents consent to a K-12 student’s referral for disability evaluation, the professional evaluator will make any relevant diagnosis and recommend related services and accommodations. The parents may have their own professional evaluate their child and may request and require a second opinion to the school’s evaluator. The school must then convene an individualized education program (IEP) team to review the evaluations and recommendations, and adopt an IEP, for a student with a qualifying disability. The student, parents, school accommodations officer, classroom teacher, and any other administrators the school wishes to be involved form the IEP team. The IEP team adopts and modifies the plan by consensus. Parents disagreeing with the consensus plan may appeal the determination, typically to a district official or panel. Advocate sensitively for the student’s interests in any IEP meeting you attend. Share your informed opinions about the suitability and necessity of any recommended services or accommodations, while preparing to comply with the adopted plan. 

Reasonableness

You shouldn’t have to worry unduly about accommodating disabled students in ways that fundamentally alter or unduly interfere with your instruction of students. Students with qualifying disabilities do not get every potential educational service or accommodation that they demand. Schools instead have the legal duty only to reasonably accommodate qualifying disabilities. The reasonableness of an accommodation depends on the facts and circumstances of each individual case, not on any hard-and-fast rule. Accommodations must not fundamentally alter your course, its instructional objectives, or your instructional program. Accommodations must also not impose undue financial or administrative burdens on the school. Accommodations should also not compromise your safety, the safety of other students, or the quality of your instruction of other students. Advocate appropriately to preserve the fundamental structure of your course and instruction, to meet the needs of all students. Beware accommodations that, instead of serving the disabled student, remove from the disabled student’s responsibility instructional activities that the disabled student could reasonably perform. Don’t, in other words, further disable an already disabled student. Instead, work with the student, parents, and school officials to fashion reasonable accommodations. 

Modifications

Just because a disabled student’s individualized education plan (IEP) calls for accommodations does not mean that the student must use them or that the accommodations must continue beyond their useful life. If, instead, the student is able to gain the full benefit of your instructional activities without the accommodations, and prefers to do so, then allow the student to do so, while documenting the instance. Schools have the obligation to annually review IEPs and to review an IEP whenever a change in circumstances recommends it. You, the parents, or another school official may call an IEP team meeting to consider modifications to the plan. If you find that a disabled student needs additional services or accommodations, no longer needs services or accommodations, or is struggling with academics or behaviors despite the current IEP, request an IEP team meeting and advocate for changes to the plan. The student, the parents, the accommodations officer, and other school officials may all have valid opinions about accommodations and services. You, though, as the classroom teacher, may have the best view for their need and their impact on the disabled student’s learning. 

Challenges

Teachers can face significant challenges accommodating disabled students. One of those challenges can include the effort to keep a disabled student in the classroom, when the student has severe emotional disabilities with frequent outbursts that regularly disturb the classroom. Students with especially severe emotional disabilities may quickly become violent without any apparent trigger or other warning, throwing chairs or engaging in other uncontrolled and endangering behavior. Another challenge can include a disabled student with a seizure disorder or other serious medical condition that may unexpectedly erupt into an alarming and traumatizing event requiring medical intervention. Events of this violent or traumatizing type, although over quickly, can disturb students, distract from instruction, and interfere with learning for a day or more. Another challenge can include a disabled student whose repetitive or compulsive behaviors, while not outright disruptive, significantly increase the distraction and tension in a classroom, making it harder to learn. Patrol these boundaries diligently to ensure that you can accomplish your instructional objectives without undue interference from overly ambitious school efforts to accommodate severely disabled students. 

Alternatives

Your teaching services and your classroom instruction may not be the only alternatives that severely disabled students have for their education. Seek the help and intervention you and your students need, when you recognize that a disabled student’s care is interfering with other students achieving your instructional objectives. Public K-12 schools can receive substantial federal funding to pay for aides and attendants for disabled students. If you can’t manage the classroom on your own with a certain disabled student present in the classroom, then the school may have the resources and obligation to provide that student with the student’s own aide or attendant. If you and aides cannot maintain a disabled student in the classroom without the student’s disability interfering with instruction, the school may be able to pull the disabled student out of your classroom before or upon an outbreak, or for an extended period until outbreaks desist.  

Placements

Some disabled students have conditions so severe that they cannot persist meaningfully in the regular classroom, with appropriate educational benefit, and without disrupting the learning of other students. In those cases, school districts may have special schools or specialized classrooms for those severely disabled students, with the specialized instruction, environment, and services that they need. Removal from the regular classroom need not constitute inappropriate and demeaning warehousing, as in the old days before the federal disabilities laws and taxpayer funding of special education services. Special schools and classrooms, supported by substantial taxpayer funding, may instead be the better learning environment for some disabled students. Don’t ignore the negative instructional impacts of uncontrolled behavior or other issues related to severely disabled students who cannot persist meaningfully in the regular classroom. Better services and accommodations may be available for them.  

Reflection

How many disabled students do you typically teach each term? What percentage of your students do they represent? Are you routinely aware of which students have qualifying disabilities and an individualized education plan? Are those IEPs available to you to review and for you to comply with their terms? Are you able to incorporate their services and accommodations without undue hardship and without altering the fundamental requirements and structure of your course? Do some accommodations and services disrupt your classroom instruction? Should you be addressing that disruption so that all students receive the instruction they deserve? Do you properly complete the recordkeeping that the school asks of you, related to disability accommodations and services? Do you participate in IEP team meetings involving the disabled students you teach? Do your school officials, students, and parents respect your opinions and observations at IEP team meetings, as to the accommodations and services, and their impact on the disabled student, other students, and your instructional objectives and methods? 

Key Points

• Serving students with disabilities is an important duty of a teacher.

• Federal laws mandate disability services and accommodations.

• Teachers play an important role in serving students with disabilities.

• Schools at the K-12 level must identify disabled students for testing.

• Parents consent to testing and participate in disabled service planning.

• Schools need only supply reasonable, not impractical, services.

• Advocate for changes to a plan that is not working for the student.

• Expect challenges over disability accommodations, and persevere.

• Seek alternatives to classroom accommodation when necessary. 

• Special placements may be necessary for the severely disabled.

  Read Chapter 17.