EVALUATION OF THE INTEGRATION OF SEVERELY HANDICAPPED STUDENTS IN REGULAR EDUCATION AND COMMUNITY SETTINGS
Authors: Brinker Richard P. , Thorpe Margaret E. 
Published: September 2014

The Education for All Handicapped Children Act (P. L. 94–142) requires that all children have access to free appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment. As this law is applied to severely handicapped (SH) students, the requirements of an appropriate education may compete with the requirements of education in the least restrictive environment. The question addressed by this report is whether integration of SH students into regular schools can constitute a “least restrictive setting” without seriously compromising the appropriateness of the education offered. This project provided an initial empirical basis for considering the impact of integration in terms of educational improvement of SH students and attitudes of nonhandicapped (NH) students toward the handicapped. In addition, the evaluation was designed to examine factors at various levels of the educational process which might facilitate integration. These factors included information from the state district, school, teacher, and individual student assessments. Subjects were 245 severely handicapped students from 14 school districts located in 9 states. All students were in integrated school or community settings in which nonhandicapped students were present between 3 and 16 hours per week.

The criterion for degree of integration was the observed rate of interaction between SH and NH students in schools evaluated. Multiple linear regression analysis was used to determine which information best predicted the rate of interaction between SH and NH students. Subsequently, the rate of interaction between SH and NH students was used to predict the proportion of educational objectives met by SH students. Finally, NH students' attitudes toward the handicapped in schools which were not integrated were compared to NH students' attitudes in integrated schools.

Results indicated that severely handicapped students had more social opportunities for interacting with other students in integrated settings in comparison to these same students' opportunities when in segregated settings. NH students responded to more social bids from SH students in comparison to responses by other SH students. The best predictors of social behavior of SH students was the interactive behavior of other students. The rate of social interaction with nonhandicapped students accounted for a statistically significant (p < .025) proportion of objectives met on SH students' Individualized Educational Plans (IEP) when those SH students' functional abilities were statistically controlled as a covariate. NH students in integrated schools had more positive attitudes toward handicapped students in comparison to NH students from nonintegrated schools which were comparable in size, resources and SES. However, when attitudes measured at the beginning of the year were controlled statistically, it was found that NH students in integrated schools had less positive attitudes at the end of the year if SH students interacted more with other SH students when they were in integrated settings.