{"id":792,"date":"2017-03-06T00:41:21","date_gmt":"2017-03-06T00:41:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lilstar2.com\/?p=792"},"modified":"2017-10-03T19:34:17","modified_gmt":"2017-10-03T19:34:17","slug":"inclusion-2-a-bumpy-road-gets-even-rougher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/2017\/03\/06\/inclusion-2-a-bumpy-road-gets-even-rougher\/","title":{"rendered":"Inclusion Part 2: Bumpy road to inclusive education gets even rougher"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gordon Porter, this country\u2019s guru of inclusive education, is fond of saying that it\u2019s a simple idea. \u201cIt means kids go to their neighbourhood schools with kids their own age in regular classes.\u201d But for such a simple concept, inclusive education \u2013 I\u2019ll call it fuller[1]<\/a> inclusion – has had a very complicated history in this province. And its future could become even more difficult.<\/p>\n

I first became actively engaged with the issue in 1991 when our son started school but became aware of the movement before that. We had been living in New Brunswick in 1986 when the Conservative government of Richard Hatfield made a bold move, and one that was inspiring to parents of a young son with Downs syndrome. With the urging of Gordon Porter and advocates for the mentally challenged, the New Brunswick legislature amended the Education Act to provide access to public education to all students and to mandate placement of \u201cexceptional\u201d- aka \u201cspecial needs\u201d students into regular classrooms.<\/p>\n

The Conservatives governing Nova Scotia at the time showed no immediate interest in keeping up with their Red Tory neighbours to the northwest. In 1967 Nova Scotia had been one of the first jurisdictions in North America to require that all children be given an education. But 20 years on the province was no longer in the vanguard. It took a court case to start the process of extending that access to the regular classroom.<\/p>\n

The 1986 Elwood case, argued by Dalhousie law professor Wayne MacKay, was settled out of court after Justice Constance Glube granted an injunction against the Halifax County-Bedford school board, thus mandating that Luke Elwood could remain in his regular class at Atlantic View School. That case, based on what was then an almost brand new provision of the Charter of Rights, had an immediate effect in some classrooms and led directly to the 1991 provincial policy on \u201cintegration\u201d now known as inclusion.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

That policy on integration came into effect the same year our son Sam entered a regular primary class at Hawthorne school where there was a teacher\u2019s assistant (TA) to help out. His situation was not groundbreaking, but it was nevertheless exceptional. Although there were a few instances of students with physical or mental challenges in the regular classroom prior to Luke Elwood and the new provincial policy, the period between 1967 and 1991 had witnessed the growth of a special education system emphasizing segregated classes.<\/p>\n

Resources Inadequate<\/strong><\/p>\n

An all-party committee of the legislature had reported in 1991 after extensive consultations that special education resources and teaching methodologies were not meeting students needs. Nevertheless, the largely segregated system was substantial.<\/p>\n

A spreadsheet prepared at the time by the Department of Education is instructive. It shows that in 1991-92 there were 224 \u201cspecial class teachers\u201d working for the 22 school boards in existence at the time. Over half taught \u201cmentally handicapped\u201d students at all levels. Another 28 taught \u201cmultiply handicapped\u201d students, 19 taught \u201clearning disabled\u201d students. The three school boards in Halifax county even had teachers assigned to elementary and junior high students with behaviour disorders \u2013 13 classes in all.<\/p>\n

The same spreadsheet showed that in 1992-93 the number of special class teachers dropped by 30%, but there were significant increases in other staff \u2013 resource teachers, integration support teachers and educational assessors, leading to an overall increase of 10% in professional staff. Para-professionals \u2013 primarily TAs \u2013 also increased, from 542 to 706 \u2013 30% in a single year.<\/p>\n

This statistical snapshot from the early 1990s helps to illustrate two large bumps on the runway just as inclusion was taking off. First, inclusion was being superimposed on an already existing system. Such a regime would naturally have its supporters and vested interests.\u00a0And a bigger bump is revealed when the year-to-year staffing requirements are compared. Those comparisons suggested inclusion required more staff and would therefore be more costly \u2013 at a time when the provincial government was reining in spending.<\/p>\n

Telling school boards to carry out a policy that may be more costly while restraining spending is never popular. But there was an additional wrinkle with special education funding. To encourage boards to improve services, the province had introduced a targeted special education grant, based on some notion of service ratios. The grant, introduced in 1981, never kept pace with amounts boards were actually spending on special education.<\/p>\n

When their overall grants started to stagnate or drop (as they did in the early 1990s) it was not illogical for boards to cut special education to bring services more in line with the service ratios \u2013 such as resource teacher\/student or TA\/student – actually covered by the grant. My first experience of parental advocacy was in 1992, in front of the Dartmouth school board, arguing against cuts to TAs \u2013 cuts that the board justified by saying it was already spending more on special education than was covered by the grant.<\/p>\n

SEIRC \u00a0abandoned<\/strong><\/p>\n

So right from the beginning there were claims that inclusion was under-funded, and that did not change even when the policy became part of an amended Education Act in 1996. Indeed, the Department of Education\u2019s Special Education Implementation Review Committee (SEIRC) reported in 2001 that an immediate injection of $20 million was required to improve services and staffing levels. Some of the issues identified for action were still being talked about last week in the context of Bill 75 \u2013 more prep time for teachers, class size guidelines and support for emotionally\/behaviourally challenged students.<\/p>\n

Instead of an \u201cimmediate injection\u201d of $20 million, the Conservative government of the day waited a year before announcing an expenditure of $17 million over three years. Worse, about one-third of that injection went for an initiative that was not even among the 34 SEIRC recommendations – pilot projects to introduce \u201ca range and continuum of services.\u201d Over time, the pilot projects evolved into \u201clearning centers\u201d or \u201ccongregated settings\u201d separate from the regular classroom in most schools.<\/p>\n

If anyone ever compiles a definitive history of the rise and decline of fuller inclusion in Nova Scotia schools she would probably identify as pivotal the year and a bit \u2013 June 2001 to September 2002 – that passed between release of the SEIRC report and the Conservative government response. SEIRC had laid out a model for inclusion based on providing professional and para-professional support to enable the regular classroom teacher to teach all the kids in the class including \u2013 most of the time anyway \u2013 those with special needs. The key recommendation was to hire over 330 resource teachers to provide the support classroom teachers needed to make inclusion work. Instead, the government of the day seemed to opt for only a few more professionals, usually working out of learning centres, and more para-professionals, usually TAs assigned to individual students.<\/p>\n

Placement and Leadership Issues<\/strong><\/p>\n

This retreat from the regular classroom setting was also in response to a third bump in the road – not all parents and educators believed that the regular classroom was the best setting for all students with special needs. Doubts about the goal of fuller inclusion were initially expressed on behalf of students diagnosed with a Learning Disability (LD) or Attention Deficit\/Hyperactivity Disorder (AD\/HD). In the pre-1991 period, they would likely have been in one of the classrooms for \u201clearning disabled.\u201d Some advocates for students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) also questioned the goal of full inclusion.<\/p>\n

The move to congregated settings was too little too late for some parents who lobbied successfully for the Tuition Support Program. Through that program qualified students with LD, AD\/HD or ASD are subsidized to attend one of three designated special education private schools on four campuses \u2013 two in Dartmouth and one each in Wolfville and Truro. (Disclosure \u2013 my son Joe teaches in one of the designated schools) The Tuition Support Program, introduced in 2004 and renewed in 2009 following a review, not only moves special education of some students out of the regular classroom but out of the neighborhood school.<\/p>\n

The fourth obstacle to fuller inclusion is a combination of all of the above and can be summed up as a lack of commitment and leadership to overcome obstacles. Provincial governments have paid lip service to inclusion but have not made either the political or fiscal commitment needed to bring it about. Some school boards \u2013 notably the now defunct King\u2019s county board \u2013 have shown some initiative. But otherwise, leadership would have to come from principals and teachers, and the NSTU.<\/p>\n

If the NSTU ever supported the goal of fuller inclusion, that support was contingent on a level of resources that was not forthcoming. In 2002 the NSTU formally withdrew its support for inclusion, citing the lack of resources. The union edged back onside in 2006 after negotiating more time for work on Individual Program Plans (IPPs), but by then fuller inclusion was not on its radar. According to the NSTU 2009 Position Paper on Inclusion<\/a> \u201cregular classroom placement may best serve\u201d the needs of some students but \u201clearning centres and other environments may be the most appropriate short and long-term placement options for some children.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, to recap. Over its 25-year history there has been a steady movement away from the simple idea that students with special needs should have the right to be educated in the neighbourhood school, in regular classrooms with students their own age. The question now is how whether the Liberals will re-commit to that goal, as laid out in policy and legislation or move further away from it.<\/p>\n

Inclusion Commission<\/strong><\/p>\n

As we await the appointment of a three-member Commission on Inclusive Education under Bill 75, the portents are not encouraging. On a positive note, there is the first \u201cwhereas\u201d clause of Bill 75, stating that \u201cthe Minister and the Union are committed to inclusive education and recognize that the current model of inclusive education needs improvement.\u201d Amen to that.<\/p>\n

But then the second clause goes on to say the job of the Commission will be \u201cto reform inclusive education\u201d and \u201cidentify creative and sustainable solutions to the challenges faced in delivering quality education for all students within an inclusive education model.\u201d Wariness is recommended around the word \u201csustainable.\u201d As we know too well by now, \u201csustainable\u201d means affordable within the right-wing fiscal framework that has dominated for decades now and held back fulfillment of disability rights in the classroom and beyond. And the needs of students seem to be less important in Bill 75 than those of the deliverer, i.e. the teacher. That concern is made explicit in the penultimate part of the whereas \u2013 solutions should ensure that \u201cteachers feel prepared and supported.\u201d<\/p>\n

The verbiage in Bill 75 is less a concern than the fact the Premier has said several times that the current model isn\u2019t working. Whether he actually knows what the current model is questionable \u2013 each time he has made the declaration he has attributed it to teachers or to parents and teachers. Knowledge, or lack of it, about the model is not a trivial point. New Brunswick , while facing the same, or worse, resource problems as Nova Scotia, has continued to pursue the path towards fuller inclusion. (Not without a lot of flack from the media and parents of kids with AD\/HD, LD and ASD- but that\u2019s another story).<\/p>\n

New Brunswick has even had two major inquiries into inclusion. One was in 2005-06, led by Wayne MacKay, the second, in 2011-12 was led by Gordon Porter. After nearly 30 years of pursuing inclusion, the system Porter described would hardly be considered a tidy model. The review found a wide variety of practices across the system. For example, thousands of students were enrolled in small alternative settings and resource teachers and TAs were performing in a variety of roles. Does Premier McNeil possess some detailed overview that enables him to pass judgment on the inclusion model in Nova Scotia? Doubtful.<\/p>\n

Nova Scotia\u2019s Inclusion Commission has been given until June 30 to come up with an interim report and recommendations for reform, to be followed by a final report about a year from now. If New Brunswick\u2019s recent experience is anything to go by, it\u2019s unlikely the narrow timeframe will allow the commission to understand the true shape of the model it is being asked to reform. The two most recent reviews touching on inclusion will be of little help. Neither the Levin report of 2011 nor the Freeman report of 2014 did the kind of detailed on-site research carried out in New Brunswick. Levin is now a footnote, but the report of the Freeman panel still has some currency in the education debate so is worth considering.<\/p>\n

Freeman flawed<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Freeman panel\u2019s main research tools were surveys and consultation. The panel reported hearing from 19,000 people \u2013 about one third parents, one third students and the rest divided almost evenly between teachers and \u201ccommunity members.\u201d What\u2019s interesting is that the opinions of those surveyed and consulted were quite different from the recommendations of the Freeman report. The section in the report that deals with inclusion is pretty much fact free. But the consensus of opinion reported is one that has been heard consistently over the many months of education system strife, namely:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026that current levels of funding and other resources are hindering the educational experience of all students in the system because the resources are not keeping pace with the growing needs of students.\u201d<\/p>\n

The panel\u2019s recommendations ignored participants\u2019 opinions about inadequate levels of funding and resources and inserted its own views. According to the panel, the inclusion model should be examined to ensure it is \u201csustainable within the broader resources of the government.\u201d It should also be flexible and \u201csupported for timely access to assessments and special programs and services.\u201d And finally, schools and school boards should be helped to \u201ccreate a range of learning environments for students with special needs, including congregated classes taught by highly qualified specialist teachers, where appropriate.\u201d[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

The direction in the Freeman report, presented without any supporting analysis, is clear. Lacking a significant increase in funding, system resources \u2013 in many cases TAs \u2013 employed to support students with special needs in the regular classroom would be diverted to more timely assessments and placement in congregated classes. The danger is that facing a deadline less than four months away for an interim report the commission may latch onto what\u2019s already on the shelf from the Freeman panel, its dubious validity notwithstanding.<\/p>\n

This approach would likely satisfy many parents and advocates for students with LD, AD\/HD or ASD. It would respond to the NSTU\u2019s calls for more \u201clearning centres and other environments.\u201d It would also mean more jobs for teachers. Increased employment of TAs instead of special education teachers has been an issue with the teachers union for many years. The SEIRC report, with its emphasis on professional support for the classroom teacher, tried to address that, but it was rebuffed by the government of the day.<\/p>\n

Teachers\u2019 frustration with that rejection was expressed in 2011 in the NSTU response to the Levin report. The document claimed that:<\/p>\n