Least Restrictive Environment - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

As part of the U.S. Individuals with Disabilities Education Act

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act is a United States federal law that governs how states and public agencies provide early intervention, special education, and related services to children with disabilities...

, the least restrictive environment is identified as one of the six principles that govern the education of students with disabilities

Special education

Special education is the education of students with special needs in a way that addresses the students' individual differences and needs. Ideally, this process involves the individually planned and systematically monitored arrangement of teaching procedures, adapted equipment and materials,...

and other special needs. By law, schools are required to provide a free appropriate public education (FAPE) in the least restrictive environment that is appropriate to the individual student's needs.

"Least restrictive environment" means that a student who has a disability should have the opportunity to be educated with non-disabled peers

Peer group

A peer group is a social group consisting of humans. Peer groups are an informal primary group of people who share a similar or equal status and who are usually of roughly the same age, tended to travel around and interact within the social aggregate Members of a particular peer group often have...

, to the greatest extent appropriate. They should have access to the general education curriculum

Curriculum

See also Syllabus.In formal education, a curriculum is the set of courses, and their content, offered at a school or university. As an idea, curriculum stems from the Latin word for race course, referring to the course of deeds and experiences through which children grow to become mature adults...

, , or any other program that non-disabled peers would be able to access. The student should be provided with supplementary aids and services necessary to achieve educational goals if placed in a setting with non-disabled peers. Academically, a resource room

Resource room

A resource room is a separate special education classroom in a regular school where some students with educational disabilities, such as specific learning disabilities, receive direct, specialized instruction and academic remediation and assistance with homework and related assignments as...

may be available within the school for specialized instruction, with typically no more than two hours per day of services for a student with learning disabilities. Should the nature or severity of his or her disability prevent the student from achieving these goals in a regular education setting, then the student would be placed in a more restrictive environment, such as a special school, classroom within the current school, or a hospital program. Generally, the less opportunity a student has to interact and learn with non-disabled peers, the more the placement is considered to be restricted.

To determine what an appropriate setting is for a student, a team will review the student’s needs and interests. The types of educational settings for students with disabilities will vary. With the differences in needs and interests among students with disabilities, there is no single definition of what an LRE will be for all students.

Court rulings

Because the law does not clearly state to what degree the least restrictive environment is, courts have had to interpret the LRE principle. In a landmark case interpreting IDEA's predecessor statute (EHA), Daniel R.R. v. State Board of Education (1989), it was determined that students with disabilities have a right to be included in both academic and extracurricular programs of general education. But, the Court stated, IDEA does not contemplate an all-or-nothing educational system in which [disabled] children attend either regular or special education. Rather, the Act and its regulations require schools to offer a continuum of services. Thus, the school must take intermediate steps where appropriate, such as placing the child in regular education for some academic classes and in special education for others, mainstreaming the child for nonacademic classes only, or providing interaction with non-disabled children during lunch and recess. The appropriate mix will vary from child to child and, it may be hoped, from school year to school year as the child develops. If the school officials have provided the maximum appropriate exposure to non-disabled students, they have fulfilled their obligation under IDEA.

In Board of Education, Sacramento City Unified School District v. Holland (1994), four factors were identified as things needed to be taken into consideration when determining if the student’s LRE is appropriate. They are:

the educational benefits of integrated settings versus segregated settings,
nonacademic benefits (primarily social interaction with non-disabled peers),
the effect the student with a disability can have on the teacher and his or her peers, and
the cost of supplementary services that will be required for that student to stay in the integrated setting.

Simply stated, the student should receive an appropriate version of the educational and social benefits which non-disabled students routinely receive in school. In broad theory, the court does not allow the education of the student’s non-disabled peers to be negatively affected, although applying this test fairly to all the facts and circumstances of a specific situation may be very difficult. The final factor, cost of supplementary services, provides a safeguard for schools so that they do not exceed spending on one particular student.