What Instruction And Interventions Do Students with IEPs Get?
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Understanding Instruction in Special Education
One of the most fascinating thing about special education is how little the education part of special education is written into IDEA.
Students with IEPs are entitled to a Free and Appropriate Public Education (FAPE). That includes “specially designed instruction” to meet the student’s needs or the help them access the general education curriculum. Ideally, that should be “based on peer-reviewed research to the extent practicable.” There is also a section on providing grants to help teachers and preservice teachers with an “increased focus on academics and core content areas.”
That’s about it on instruction. The most important part of special education– the education itself– is actually the least defined part of special education.
As a result, what special education services look like– what interventions or instruction students get– is incredibly different from site to site, district to district, and state to state.
What Is Special In Special Education?
Intervention Pull Outs
Special education services can include targeted interventions. Most commonly, these are delivered in a small group in a pull out (aka special education only) setting. For example, a student might get pulled out two times a week for 30 minutes to work on phonics or reading comprehension strategies. During that time, the special educator would, most likely, try to pair the student with students with similar needs. Ideally, the special educator would have a few, research-based curriculum to draw on for the interventions. Most commonly, special educators are not given research-based curriculum and instead hobble together their own curricula. Curriculum is expensive and because it is not written into IDEA– unlike other parts of special education– districts will often choose to fund pretty much everything else before they will fund specialized curriculum.
What IDEA says about interventions:
(3) Specially designed instruction means adapting, as appropriate to the needs of an eligible child under this part, the content, methodology, or delivery of instruction—
(i) To address the unique needs of the child that result from the child’s disability; and
General Education Curriculum Focused Pull Outs
Special educators might also pull students out to work on the general education content. This might be a re-teach, support on a big project, or providing an alternate means of explanation of a classroom assignment.
There is a common misconception that special education teachers only work on interventions. The goal, however, of special education is general education access and IDEA is clear on this when they define specialized instruction as ensuring “access” to the “general education curriculum.”
What IDEA says about supporting the general education curriculum:
(3) Specially designed instruction means adapting, as appropriate to the needs of an eligible child under this part, the content, methodology, or delivery of instruction—
….
(ii) To ensure access of the child to the general curriculum, so that the child can meet the educational standards within the jurisdiction of the public agency that apply to all children.
Push In Supports
Special education teachers can also provide services in a general education classroom. That is where co-teaching often comes in. With co-teaching, a general and special educator share a classroom and content delivery. In addition to co-teaching, a special educator might go into a classroom to support a particular assignment or on a regular basis to run a small group. These hours are written into the IEP as direct instruction but the environment is listed as general education. Just like with the pull outs, special educators might be working on interventions or on access to the general education curriculum. If the intervention is on a really below grade level skill, however, the odds are that the intervention will be a pull out– it looks weird to work on a student on counting coins when the rest of the students are multiplying fractions. A more common approach would be the special educator making the grade level curriculum accessible like helping a student use their voice dictation tool to write the classroom essay and providing editing and organization support on the classroom assignment.
Alternate Curriculum
Some students receive an alternate curriculum. They might be 18 and working on recognizing the letters in their name. Or they might be twelve and working on reading signs in their community and school.
Many of these students will receive some socialization time with general education peers, but the bulk of their instruction, regardless of where it is delivered, is focused on an alternate curriculum.
