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Effective Instruction for Inclusive Education Essay

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In recent years, several events have contributed to the increased participation of students with disabilities in regular classroom setting. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) stipulated that no more than 2% of the population be excluded from federal or state mandated testing. This means that all but the most severely disabled students will be held responsible for the material on yearly achievement tests and high stakes tests at the high school level. NCLB also requires that the teacher of record in a classroom be highly qualified in the subject area that they are teaching. When The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) was reauthorized in 2004, it not only reaffirmed the highly qualified requirements of NCLB, but …show more content…

My experience was that once they were pulled out, they very rarely were able to return the pace and level of the regular classroom. If they did attend regular classes for a portion of the day, those classes had to be greatly modified, not to only to accommodate their disability, but to accommodate their learned helplessness and lack of basic skills. With the passage of NCLB and the reauthorization of IDEA, this issue was addressed and students with mild learning disabilities began to be included in all classes with a special educator acting as a co-teacher or a consultant. The special education teachers use their knowledge in areas of disability and instructional practices geared toward students with disabilities combined with the content expertise of the regular education teacher to help students succeed in the regular curriculum.
As we go through this current wave of changes brought about by the Tennessee Diploma Project, the next level of more moderately disabled students are being included in the regular classroom. While it won’t be a success for all of them and some will need to be appropriately placed elsewhere, many students are going to graduate with a much higher level of achievement than the students I taught at the beginning of my career. The challenge is to the best practices for effectively teaching in this setting. I am currently co-teaching Biology to a group of mild to moderately disable

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