Full Inclusion and the REI: A Reply to Thousand and Villa

Full Inclusion and the REI: A Reply to Thousand and Villa We thank Jacqueline Thousand and Richard Villa for their thoughtful reply, which continues the dialogue we invited in our article (Jenkins, Pious, & Jewell, 1990). The differences in the way that Thousand and Villa and we "read" the regular education initiative (REI) confirm the fact that there is a legitimate diversity of viewpoints under the REI umbrella; these differences also confirm our suspicion that there is need for further discussion. We need to remind Thousand and Villa that our article was an attempt to test one interpretation of the REI literature, not to propound or advocate for specific procedures. Based on our own experience in regular education classrooms into which students with disabilities have been mainstreamed, we have to agree with Thousand and Villa that the teacher tasks we extrapolated from the literature are indeed Herculean and that it is unreasonable to expect all teachers to assume them. Since preparing our article, we have continued to work in mainstream classrooms, examining "REI-like" programs, observing and trying to help teachers implement regular education-based treatments for students with disabilities. The work of these teachers is not easy. Further, there is almost as much heterogeneity among teachers as there is among students. Some teachers can manage the responsibilities we identified with apparent ease and even some gusto. Many other teachers neither can nor want to take on these responsibilities, arguing with some justification that even the "normal" heterogeneity of the mainstream classroom poses challenges that are too daunting. This diversity of teachers will likely remain in our public school system. Thus we, like Thousand and Villa, do not think that it would be realistic to expect all teachers to manage all of the responsibilities we discussed in our article. How, then, can teachers' needs be reconciled with the legal mandate to educate students in the least restrictive environment? Perhaps a realistic and, to us, moderate interpretation of the REI philosophy is to assume that (a) education for students with mild and moderate disabilities starts in the general education setting; (b) classroom teachers and specialists work together to develop and test treatment programs in that setting; and (c) if satisfactory child outcomes are still not observed, then interventions conducted outside of the general education classroom may be tested and evaluated against student outcomes. Even this moderate view of the REI is clearly a departure from standard practice because, in many schools, disability automatically results in separate education. A critical element in the preceding sequence is the team approach--people working together to manage the mainstream classroom's diversity. There is no doubt that teams are the model of choice in many schools, and the examples provided by Thousand and Villa represent useful models of cooperation that should be considered and studied. We (Leicester, O'Connor, & Jenkins) are currently developing and testing still another model, a nonhierarchical model that enables classroom teachers and specialists to work together in a problem-solving process; a spirit of inquiry is the prevailing ethos. Our intent is to create a framework in which specialists and classroom teachers can participate equally in analyzing a student's learning problem, examining the existing instructional environment, and proposing modifications. After reaching agreement on a problem solution, either the teacher or the specialist or both may implement it, but the validity of the solution is determined by its measured effect on student performance--the original problem indicator. A summary of our own view on this issue is that whoever is involved in educating a student should also be involved in attempts to solve problems related to the student's development and achievement, and that these people should be empowered to do so. …