Volume 1, Number 3
Douglas Fuchs, Ph.D.
American Institutes for Research, Vanderbilt University
Hilary Mirowitz, Jenny Gilbert, and I recently published a scientific paper (“Exploring the Truth of Michael Yudin’s Claim: The More Time Students with Disabilities Spend in General Education, the Better They Do Academically”) in the Journal of Disability Policy Studies. In the article you are reading now, I have tried to make that paper (D. Fuchs et al., 2023) more accessible to a greater number of readers by making it briefer and in several respects simpler. I’ve also updated its message. The 2023 paper began with a description of a speech given by Michael Yudin, who was Assistant Secretary of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, to a 2015 Leadership conference in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP; U.S. Department of Education). Yudin’s topic that morning in 2015 was the importance of placing more students with disabilities (SWDs) in general education full-time.
Yudin’s Claim
I was in the room for that speech. As I took my seat with hundreds of academics, practitioners, advocates, and policymakers, I was aware of Yudin’s advocacy of full inclusion, a policy calling for the full-time participation of virtually all SWDs in general classrooms and elimination of special education placements like resource rooms, self-contained classrooms, and special schools. Yet, I was still surprised when I heard him declare repeatedly and emphatically that, “The more time SWDs spend in general classrooms the better they do academically.” I had never heard this claim, let alone from an Assistant Secretary of Education speaking to a room full of academics. His “more time” claim was remarkable on two more counts. First, it was expressed without qualification. He didn’t say, “The more time SWDs spend in general classrooms the better they do when their instruction is a blend of grade-appropriate standards and individually tailored curricula,” or “if their instruction is supplemented by frequent tutorials conducted by experts in the science of reading.” In other words, it seemed Yudin was trying to convince his audience of a general principal or immutable law: All (or virtually all) mainstream classrooms are preferable for SWDs over other instructional placements. The second noteworthy aspect of the speech was that he didn’t provide any evidence. Yet, he staked his claim with the surety of a guy who had all necessary documentation in his back pocket.
Full Inclusion and IDEA
As suggested by the foregoing, Assistant Secretary Yudin used his position as a bully pulpit to advance the notion that general education should be responsible for the education of SWDs. He wasn’t alone in his effort. Full inclusion has been endorsed by professional organizations, advocacy groups, academics, and policymakers, and has been implemented by state education agencies (SEAs) and school districts across the country. It and its more moderate cousin “inclusion,” which does not call on educators to eliminate special education placements, have arguably been among the most consequential education policies in the last four decades.
Because of Yudin’s high-profile government position, his public support of full inclusion had to be more muted than full-throated—a form of self-restraint no doubt reflecting recognition of a generally accepted view that full inclusion, despite its popularity, likely conflicts with the free appropriate public education requirements of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). More specifically, this law requires SEAs and school districts to ensure that SWDs are educated in the least restrictive environment (LRE): “[T]o the maximum extent appropriate, children with disabilities . . . are educated with children who are not disabled” and can be removed from the general classroom “only when the nature or severity of [their] disability . . . is such that education in regular classes with the use of supplementary aids and services cannot be achieved satisfactorily” (IDEA 20 U.S.C. § [a][5]). In other words, IDEA directs educators to work hard to accommodate SWDs’ academic, social, and behavior needs in mainstream classrooms. But it also recognizes that not all SWDs will benefit from such a setting. And, for these students, alternative placement options must be provided.
Since passage of the Education for All Handicapped Children’s Act of 1975, which eventually became IDEA, most SEAs and school districts have attempted to comply with this LRE provision. To guarantee that each SWD is appropriately placed, public schools have established a continuum of alternative placements to meet their needs—the very continuum that advocates of full inclusion want dismantled—both in response to the law and because of a widely held belief (advocates notwithstanding) that general classrooms cannot by themselves provide all SWDs the education to which they are entitled (see D. Fuchs et al., in press).
In the years following Yudin’s OSEP talk, his “more time” declaration kept playing in my mind, partly because of the provocative and unsubstantiated way he expressed it, partly because similar pronouncements continue to serve as a rallying cry to place all SWDs in general classrooms (e.g., Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities, 2019). The “more time” claim reflects a dose-response hypothesis. In simple form, it says that if an intervention or setting is believed to be beneficial, then more of it is better than less. For our 2023 paper, Mirowitz, Gilbert, and I set out to investigate the validity of this belief for students with high-incidence disabilities like learning disabilities, speech and language problems, and behavior disorders.
Exploring the Truthfulness of Yudin’s Claim
We used electronic and hardcopy documents from multiple sources to bring together in one place two national databases covering the same 18-year period (1998-2015 inclusive). For nine of these 18 years, an OSEP database provided percentages of 6- to 11-year-olds with individual educational plans (IEPs) who were placed in general classrooms for at least 80% of the school day (OSEP’s operational definition of “inclusion”). For the same 9 years, a second database from the National Center for Educational Statistics contained National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data on the proportion of fourth graders with IEPs or Section 504 plans reading at a “Basic-or-Better” level. “Basic-or-Better” signifies academic achievement one grade below a child’s grade level or higher. Displaying the trajectories of OSEP placement data and NAEP reading data on the same graph for the same 18-year period facilitated examination of the correspondence between the two trends over a considerable period. Increases in both trajectories would signify that more inclusion co-varied with more SWDs reading above criterion. Such co-variation in turn would suggest, however tentatively, a dosage effect.
After collecting the data across the 18 years and for all 50 states, and conducting appropriate statistical analyses, we found the following. Whereas the proportion of SWDs in general classrooms for 80% or more of the school day was increasing steadily and statistically significantly over time, the trend for the proportion of SWDs meeting or exceeding a basic-or-better level of reading performance, although positive, was decelerating such that the gap between the two trends was widening. Moreover, across the 18 years, only 8% to 10% of SWDs read with proficiency (grade level or higher); just 22% to 37% read at a basic-or-better level. Among the 10 states/jurisdictions with strongest accelerating trends for general class placement, there was no uniform pattern of reading performance over the years. In Alabama and Washington, D.C., there was a positive trend for NAEP scores; in Mississippi, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin, there was no growth in scores; and in Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, Texas, and Virginia, there was an initial positive trend that then decelerated. Thus, our analysis indicated that SWDs’ very low reading performance on the NAEP did not track the increasing amount of time they were spending in regular classrooms. There was little corroboration of a dosage hypothesis; scant evidence to support the truthfulness of Yudin’s claim that virtually all SWDs’ academic achievement is strengthened by their participation in mainstream settings.
Our 2023 paper did not explore the causes of SWDs’ poor reading performance across the 18 years despite their placement in general classrooms. However, Mirowitz, Gilbert, and I reported that many students without disabilities were also reading poorly. We suggested that likely reasons for this was that K-12 schools have been chronically under-funded, talented young people are avoiding the profession in favor of more attractive career options, and those motivated to teach are unready for the challenges of the classroom because many schools of education have failed to prepare them properly.
Change is necessary, we wrote in our 2023 paper, to strengthen the education of many students with and without disabilities. And, in the past decade, there has indeed been encouraging change. There is growing recognition, for example, that SWD (and other at-risk youth) require more intensive forms of instruction. The National Center on Special Education Research (Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education) and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute on Child Health and Human Development (National Institutes of Health) have funded research and development that has produced scores of reading and mathematics programs, requiring one-to-one tutoring or small-group instruction that has benefited students with serious learning disorders, including many with learning disabilities and dyslexia. Moreover, OSEP has created technical assistance centers (e.g., the National Center on Intensive Intervention) to support teachers’ and others’ use of these and other evidence-based programs.
“And yet,” we wrote, “this activity has had only modest impact on SWDs’ academic achievement, partly because of a still popular belief in full inclusion—a zeitgeist…that often works against the delivery of intensive instruction.” And “It is past time for leaders ‘from the state house to the schoolhouse’ to rethink the zeitgeist. Such rethinking will require hard work, open-mindedness, and an ability to think outside the box. Most importantly, it will require leaders to speak truth to stakeholders. Truth-telling requires recognizing that many educational issues and problems—especially those that matter most—are inherently complex; and that they almost always require different solutions for different children and youth.”
On Abolishing IDEA
Many years of evidence—like the correlational evidence I’ve just described, and experimental evidence produced by others (e.g., L. Fuchs et al., 2015)—indicates full inclusion has failed many SWDs. This is fact, not opinion. Nevertheless, many continue to champion the policy and practice. Moreover, some of these proponents are now voicing a belief that it is time to terminate not just the continuum of special education placements and services but the whole of IDEA as well. Taylor and Sailor (2024) have opined: “Special education today is better thought of as a specialized (italics in original) education and no longer requires a separate statute to guide its mission. Today’s special education has more in common with Title I programs” (p. 131). And, “We recommend that the Executive Branch create a commission to…consider moving support for current special education programs into a Title I program [under]…Title I administration” (p. 131).
A brief story. In 2012, when Yudin was Assistant Secretary of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services, and Melody Musgrove was Director of OSEP, Yudin and Musgrove gave the University of Kansas’s Wayne Sailor US $24.5 million to establish the Schoolwide Integrated Framework for Transformation Center. Its purpose was to assist schools in 16 districts in five states to implement fully inclusive education (Sailor & McCart, 2014). The award, one of the largest ever given by the agency, was incontrovertible evidence that Yudin and Musgrove were strong supporters of full inclusion. Not long after retiring from her OSEP post, Musgrove (2017) reflected on her long career in special education. She wrote, “Soon after becoming director of…OSEP, someone asked me: ‘If you could wave a magic wand, what would special education look like in your perfect world?’ My…response was, ‘Every child could go to school and get what they need—without an IEP.’” She continued, “Unfortunately, that perfect world…is still very far away. Our…federal laws, regulations, [and] court cases…enforcing IDEA, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Rehabilitation Act reflect why we still need…laws and policies [regarding] the education of students with disabilities.” Musgrove concluded, “If Congress repealed the IDEA, there is little evidence that schools would welcome students with disabilities and provide programs and services designed to achieve positive outcomes for children and families.”
So, whereas Musgrove was an unquestionably committed and influential advocate of full inclusion, she fully understood the larger context. She understood general education’s priorities, limitations, and biases, and that special education’s mission and the students it serves require support and protection. Abolishing IDEA would destroy that support and protection. Based on the above quotation, we have no doubt that if Musgrove were alive today, she would reject Taylor and Sailor’s (2024) recommendation that stakeholders reverse their half-century support of IDEA. Such a rejection would underscore just how much of an outlier Taylor and Sailor’s dangerous proposal is—even among adherents of full inclusion.
Authors’ Note: Because we explore the benefit of full inclusion in terms of reading performance on the NAEP, our study and related commentary are more focused on high incidence disabilities (e.g., LDs) than on low-incidence disabilities (e.g., intellectual disabilities).
References
Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities. (2019). Least restrictive environment: A requirement under
IDEA statement of principles from the Education Task Force of the Citizens with Disabilities. Author.
Fuchs, D., Gilmore, A., & Wanzek, J. (in press). Reframing the most important special education policy
debate in fifty years: How versus where to educate students with disabilities in America’s K-12 schools. Journal of Learning Disabilities.
Fuchs, D., Mirowitz, H.C., & Gilbert, J.K. (2023). Exploring the truth of Michael Yudin’s claim: The
more time students with disabilities spend in general classrooms, the better they do academically. Journal of Disability Policy Studies.
Fuchs, L. S., Fuchs, D., Compton, D. L., Wehby, J., Schumacher, R. F., Gersten, R., & Jordan, N. C.
(2015). Inclusion versus specialized intervention for very-low-performing students: What does access mean in an era of academic challenge? Exceptional Children, 81, 134–157.https://doi. org/10.1177/0014402914551743
Musgrove, M. (2017). Education policy’s critical role in improving the futures of individuals
with disabilities. Inclusion, 5(2), 136-148.
Sailor, W. S., & McCart, A. B. (2014). Stars in alignment. Research and Practice for Persons with Severe Disabilities, 39, 55-64.
Taylor, J.L., & Sailor, W. (2024). A case for systems change in special education. Remedial and Special Education, 45(2), 125-135.
