Examining coteaching to lessen and/or preclude the segregated placement of students with emotional disturbance via Southern California school districts

This mixed methods case study examined the systems thinking component of collaboration through coteaching at inclusive public school environments to facilitate the needs of special education students who are presently segregated at nonpublic schools. This study first analyzed qualitative data in the form of interviews from a sample population of 5 district representatives to disclose the chief reasons for such failure on the part of a plethora of public school districts in southern California to facilitate the needs of their students (characterized with emotional disturbance and/or another disability who also display behavior issues) in inclusive and collaborative environments. Secondly, this study used quantitative data in the form of surveys to investigate the preliminary openness of collaboration through coteaching from a sample population of 51 teachers who currently instruct (or had experience instructing) students at a nonpublic school campus. And lastly, this study investigated whether that same sample population of teachers felt that a coteaching model/approach at inclusive and collaborative school campuses are feasible for the students they currently teach (or had experience teaching) at nonpublic school environments. The findings from this study are three-fold: First, the qualitative interviews exposed that there are considerable deficiencies among certain school districts in southern California in the effort to educate all students with disabilities on public school campuses. The following themes were developed from the responses of the district representative participants: (a) inadequate support for teachers in coteaching classrooms, (b) negative aspects of segregated placements, and (c) positive aspects of segregated placements (please note that subthemes also emerged from each of the three areas). Second, the findings from the quantitative portion revealed that participants’ age, gender, educational background, and years of teaching experience did not influence openness to coteaching and coteaching responsibilities. Next for the EXAMINING COTEACHING TO LESSEN AND/OR PRECLUDE xiv quantitative portion, the study uncovered that participants’ responses were almost evenly split regarding the feasibility of coteaching models, however slightly more participants felt that the coteaching model was not a feasible alternative to nonpublic school placements. Lastly, the study also uncovered that the nonpublic teacher participants indicated that the most beneficial model out of all the coteaching options presented in the survey (to best facilitate their nonpublic/segregated students in a public school settings) is that of team teaching. Consequently from this study’s findings, it appears that until certain individual school districts substantially increase their teacher and auxiliary staff supports, shift monetary spending, and provide strong leadership to enhance collaboration among its special and general education teachers, nonpublic school placement for some students with ED and behavior issues may be an appropriate placement. EXAMINING COTEACHING TO LESSEN AND/OR PRECLUDE 1 Chapter 1: Overview of the Study This mixed-methods case study explicitly scrutinized the options for educationalacademic settings for students with disabilities, the recompenses and the detriments of those settings, and the overwhelming controversy that has ignited between the inclusive and segregated placements of students with emotional disabilities. The substance of this first chapter includes a statement of the problem concerning the delinquency of various southern California public school districts to educate all of their students categorized with special needs within their own district confines through inclusion and collaboration, the purpose of the study, research questions pertaining to the reasons that public school districts are unable to facilitate all of their students on inclusive and collaborative campuses, the measure of openness that teachers (with experience instructing in segregated environments) have for inclusive and collaborative environments, the significance of the topic to scholastic leadership, key definitions, assumptions, limitations, and delimitations of the study. The immediately following background section in this chapter exposes the compulsory and contextual information needed to understand why certain districts outsource their students and the journey students with special needs have faced in the past and continue to battle both contemporarily and in future years. Background of the Study Byrnes (2005) articulated that at its very essence, special education positions itself in quarrel and divergence, “special education was born of controversy. Controversy about who belongs in schools and how far schools need to stretch to meet student needs. The debate continues” (p. xiv). Following the civil rights movement of the 1960s, “the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s witnessed several landmark court decisions that led to increased legislation in favor of individuals with disabilities” (Sabornie & deBettencourt, 2004, p. 12). Some of those EXAMINING COTEACHING TO LESSEN AND/OR PRECLUDE 2 groundbreaking and extraordinary legislative acts included the 1975 Education for All Handicapped Children Act (Public Law 94-142), the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (Public Law 101-336), and the 1990 Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA), along with its Amendments of 1997 (Public Law 105-17), and its reauthorization in 2004. Although the past 30 to 40 years have carried some distinct and positive changes with consideration to the education of children with disabilities, the question remains: “Is all of this working or are educators simply grasping at straws” (Lohman, 2011, p.2). Every year seems to embrace the potential for innovative and successful implementation of educational policy and application; nevertheless, every year appears to bring with it the problems of years’ past, which become progressively more out of control (Lohman, 2011). Overall, the description of special education in the public school system has progressed throughout the years to include both very explicit components and philosophies, and yet at the same time, some ambiguous components. Some of the more unequivocal elements of special education are considered to be: (a) the application specifically designed instruction, (b) the implementation of the necessary related services, (c) the declaration that instruction and services are to be provided without cost to the parent-guardian of the student, and (d) the assertion that the students’ educational requirements cannot be completely met with modification of the general instructional program (California Legislative Information, 2007). Accordingly, special education is grounded on the significant ideas of individualized instruction for each student, a continuum of program options and services, and the placement of students with disabilities in the least restrict environment possible (LRE; California Teachers Association [CTA], 2011). However, it is this last fundamental principle of the LRE (see Appendix A; List of Abbreviations) that brings into cross-examination the parameters of its intent, and thus creates EXAMINING COTEACHING TO LESSEN AND/OR PRECLUDE 3 issues that are contiguous to the placement of students with disabilities. The legal term of LRE refers to the awareness that children with disabilities should be educated with their nondisabled peers to the maximum extent appropriate, depending upon the nature and severity of their needs (California Legislative Information, 2007). Traditionally, students with disabilities have received academic instruction in dispersed and/or isolated classroom settings, “Special education emerged as a separate system of special classes or residential schools for children with specific categories of disability like mental retardation, emotional disturbance, or sensory impairments” (Nevin, 2008, p. 656). Nevin then quantified the reasoning and/or impetuses for that separation as it “ranged from providing humanitarian treatment of vulnerable children concurrently with alleviating or removing the children who were viewed as interrupting the routines of the general education system” (p. 656). Consequently, with society’s modern view of all persons with disabilities, the progressive decisions of historical and monumental court cases of years’ past, and the previously mentioned legislation, which is decisively more inclusive of students with disabilities, we no longer (as a nation) retain the hard and steadfast arrogance to separate automatically students with disabilities from their nondisabled peers. Therefore, although the language behind the parameters of the LRE for students with disabilities continues to be ambiguous, the intent behind the legislation is not. Consistently throughout the United States, public schools follow what is considered to be a continuum of placement in the LRE for students with disabilities; the paradigm can best be described by utilizing the cascade model by Evelyn Deno (1970). As Shepard (2012) indicated, Deno systematized the scholastic guidelines regarding special education delivery and services, the word cascade is used since the services acknowledged (in the waterfall type model) flow EXAMINING COTEACHING TO LESSEN AND/OR PRECLUDE 4 from the most fully integrated and/or inclusionary environments such as general education campuses, to the least integrated environments, for example a fully segregated school or residential institutions (Cengage Learning, 2010). Often, when students with emotional disturbance (ED), autism, or students categorized with other disabilities exhibit severe behaviors, it is not uncommon for public school districts to refer those students to a more restrictive venue such as segregated school settings; henceforth, the students with disabilities are separated from their nondisabled peers. Statement of the Problem The p