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Individuals With Disabilities Education Act: A Conceptual Analysis

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The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) mandates that all students with disabilities must receive a free and appropriate education. With appropriate education the federal law states that students with disabilities must receive an education equal to the education that receive all other students without disabilities, but with accommodations and modification that can help them to learn regardless their disability. With this purpose special education services are provided and as part of these services students with disabilities must have an individualized education program (IEP) that states annual goals in the education of the student in accordance with his or her academic level with the consideration of the disability. In the other …show more content…

Many educators and administrators believe that structured curriculum including instruction and practices in individual skills is not necessary and detrimental to the process of general learning of students (Vaughn & Bos, 2012). Therefore this is a problem that special educators must deal with constantly, especially when they co-teach students with disabilities with general educators. There may be a collision of perspectives on how education must be provided to students with disabilities, because special education is focused in individualized practices. Students with learning and behavioral problems usually require academic tasks to be broken down into smaller, reachable skills in order to progress, (Vaughn & Bos, 2012), and IEPs as extensions of federal laws mandate educators to use this strategy. Therefore it is the responsibility of the special educator, not only to provide individualized education, but also educate co-workers about the legal aspect of individualized education and its …show more content…

Although this may be a general strategy, being sensible and flexible is essential to successfully deal with these challenges. As each student is different, and individualized education has been demonstrated to be the accurate and efficient approach to use with students with disabilities, the educator needs to have the sensibility and flexibility enough to understand this and to always guarantee individualized education. However, sensibility and flexibility do not imply forgetting about IEPs and standards. In order to meet the desired outcomes in accordance with IEPs’ goals and standards educators must use research-based practices which promote access to and participation within grade-appropriate instructional content and socio-emotional development in the areas of life skills, self-determination, transition, and social skills (Knight et al., 2010). We will not provide a complete education, especially in the case of students with severe disabilities, if we do not integrate the teaching of socio-emotional skills with academic

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