ED or CD?

I have a new student who, like most of my students, is labelled as emotionally disturbed. He mostly maintains in the classroom fine but he has conflicts with male peers that lead him to some extreme behavior. This behavior has manifested as this student causing serious injury to other students as well threatening students, staff and parents (with some truly vile language). Because he is a student who qualifies as needing special education a school's ability to punish him is limited. Basically you can suspend a kid for ten days after which you need to determine whether his behavior is a result of his disability. If it is, you can't suspend, never mind expel the student.

None of that is terribly interesting to me because I'm not much for punishment since it's mostly a form of revenge. However, the rub is that if a student as violent as this one gets into trouble with the law he would then be able to access all sorts of resources that he would otherwise not be able to access. So, there's been some discussion of reevaluating this student to determine if he truly is emotionally disturbed. It could be the case that he simply has a conduct disorder. The former is a label served by special education, and thus protected by that ten day suspension rule I mentioned, and the latter is not. So you can suspend and expel a student labelled as CD but not one labelled ED. Makes perfect sense, right? It gets worse.

If he's labelled CD the county would have to pick up the tab on whatever services he receives because it would be outside of school. This is strong incentive in a school district feeling a pretty serious economic crunch. Also, there's the possibility of this student ending up as part of the juvenile deliquent system. And there's some suggestion that this may be what he really needs. It's hard to argue with that when you read what he's done to other kids. But it's not hard to argue with that when he sits in your class and smiles at jokes in the novel we're reading.

Home friends, school enemies

I have a very social phobic 8th grader and a far too social 6th grader. They can't really be in the same room together without lobbing comments at each other because they make each other so anxious. I always try to avoid having them in the same place at the same time but today there was some overlap. So one started to say something about the other being crazy and the other says something about hurting the first one, etc, etc. I got the 6th grader calm enough to go to his next class which quieted the 8th grader down. However, he was still too anxious to do any work so we just talked for 20 minutes.

When I asked him about why he doesn't like the 6th grader he told me that they get along fine when P. is there. I asked him to explain and he told me that the 6th grader and their mutual friend P. often stop by his house on the weekends and they all play or hang out or whatever. It turns out that they all live quite near each other and spend a lot of time together away from school. I found this all so strange- they're buddies at home but foes at school. What could cause this?

My hypothesis is that they do things at home which would get them into trouble at school and that makes them nervous. Also, the 6th grader is relatively popular while the 8th grader isn't. It wouldn't be "cool" to be seen hanging out in school together. Or something like that. Though it's my job to seek to understand the minds of these students, in social situations like this, they remain obscure.

New Students

I'm getting two new students. One has already started and seems like a very sweet kid. His file reads like he's got some serious behavior issues and he's coming from a private school paid for by his previous district. He says "please" and "excuse me." Not typical for most students with behavior disorders. Today's journal question was, "Would you rather be twice as strong or twice as smart as you are right now?" He said, "Twice as smart because I come from a difficult background."

My other new one hasn't started yet but he's a 13 year old, 180 pound 6th grader with a history of drug use and who is under investigation for arson. Sweet. More to come I'm sure.

Fruits and vegetables are the new candy

Many of my students come to school without having eaten breakfast (and sometimes dinner). This is a need that I can help them with. I've been buying granola bars by the ton in order to combat their hunger. I have them in a cabinet where students can help themselves. I get the generic version of the Nature's Valley granola bars that you can get just about any where. It's kind of a pain because they're a bit expensive and they're tasty so I think students eat them when they just feel like eating rather than just when they're actually hungry. And I sometimes eat one at lunch though I bring plenty food to eat- just something to do while I do paperwork.

Yesterday, the only variety I had left were "Honey & Oat" - an unpopular flavor. One student who was having a really rough day told me he hadn't really eaten in the last 12 hours but he didn't like the granola bars. I told him the only other thing I had was an apple. He was psyched to eat an apple and devoured it. So I cracked that I'll just buy apples for everybody from now on. This was met with, "Yeah!" 's all around. Then another student said, "And celery. I love celery." Followed by, "Broccoli would be good too. But keep it in the fridge."

So today I'm going to buy a bunch of apples.

Bribery

In the parlance of behavior management systems, rewards or incentives are code for bribes. "If a student gets an A she is rewarded with a sticker. In order to have control of your class, you should have an incentive system in place." These systems are quite common place and they generally fades out quickly after elementary school as most teachers and administrators favor moving toward intrinsic rewards for academic achievement. (Or at least that's what they claim. An 'A' on a report card isn't exactly intrinsic.) However, the use of incentives is widely accepted and encouraged in behavior programs of all ages and grade levels including the initial design for the program I currently teach in.

I see most of my students twice a day- the first period we work on self-management skills and the second period, which is the last period of the day, we work on some basic study skills and we do homework. Originally, the last period was conceived of as 'reward time' for those students who earned it. A student would earn this reward time by meeting a goal of attaining a certain number of points that are given out by their teachers throughout their day and recorded on a behavior communication form. I was supposed to have games and computers available for the students and I could allow them to break school rules regarding use of portable music and video game players. But we haven't really ever gone there because of this guy whose writing hipped me to the fact that rewards don't really work the way we want them to. So initially, I was running the program with zero rewards. Things have changed a bit since then.

My students have to travel throughout the day with the behavior communication form so that there is a record of quantitative data of their progress towards the goals on their IEPs- which are reflected by the goals on these behavior sheets. A problem I had run into though is because I wasn't rewarding them like they were used to there was no motivation to actually complete the form. So I made the decision to institute a reward system for turning in a completed behavior communication form with a parent signature. Students earn points toward rewards that they have selected. For most students these rewards are small toys, candy. magazines or soda which they can get right before lunch or at the end of the day.

This worked pretty well so I began to rewarding points for other similar activities: writing down their homework in their planners and preparing their own behavior sheets with their individual goals ahead of time. I reasoned (rationalized?) that these are all behaviors that don't really translate to any thing meaningful outside of school so there shouldn't be much intrinsically rewarding about them. Thus, extrinsic rewards should be OK. I drew the line at rewarding students for their actual classroom behavior.

But two students continued to be completely unmotivated by academic success and continuously got themselves into trouble. Their teachers and parents were getting tired of it. One parent even started to talk about requesting a publicly-funded private school setting for her child. At this point, with...encouragement from the guidance counselor and school psych I began tallying up all the points the students earned throughout the day on their behavior sheets. What had simply been data for use in tracking progress toward goals now became part of a token economy. So quite clearly, these two students are being bribed to behave.

Discussing the merits of incentive systems is not of interest to me at this time. Suffice it to say that I believe they should be avoided. Yet, here I am, running a reward system in my own classroom.

It's my hope that I can phase these rewards out and that the the young age of most of my students gives me enough time to expose them to academic and positive social success so that these become the incentives and not Skittles. Until then, the bribery will continue.

Motivation

Apparently my school hires a motivational speaker every year. Last year a person who was born without arms due to exposure to Thalidimide spoke. He also played drums and piano in front of everyone. Folks were amazed. This year they hired a person with spinal cord injury who uses a power chair with mouth controllers. He had some good messages, including how terrible Million Dollar Baby is, but overall he was so-so.

It's hard for me to decide what to think of this speaker. This person overcame some serious adversity to rejoin the workforce, become a husband and father and generally get on with his life after an unplanned life-changing event. Unplanned life-changing events are what most of our at-risk students struggle with. The speaker's message was that problems can make you stronger or bitter. OK, true.

But this person only became a motivational speaker when he couldn't get a job as a school counselor (after fininshing his master's degree in that field). So...he's using his disability to make a living in the only way that the non-disabled world will let him. Good for him to find a hole to sneak through but that's not actually the way it should have to be. Furthermore, he wasn't a very good motivational speaker and he leaned on some traditional tropes that the non-disabled world pushes when gazing at people with disabilities (fear of dependence being the primary one). The students were extremely respectful and many students went to speak to him afterwards so I guess they found it worthy of their time.

It seemed to me that the message overall was that despite his disability he was happy and productive. Seems obvious to me but I guess it hasn't always been so and everyone has to hear this somewhere. Still, all those kids staring at the person in the wheelchair....

Tone

Through speaking with people who know me it's become obvious that this blog is a bit of a downer. I don't know how to lighten the tone and I don't want it to sound like this job is always so heavy. I work with middle school kids because they're hilarious. My job involves hanging out with kids all day. And I don't even have a set curriculum that I have to get them through. I'm not held accountable for their test scores. And their behavior is not thought of as a reflection of my work. Like everyone I would rather work less - 30 hours a week would be about right - but I love my job. There's no other career type of job I can imagine having. So, no worries about me. I report to you what may be heavy and tragic but there's a lot of laughter and fun. My job rules.

Slow Week

There were no real emergencies this week but a slow week here is rather eventful anyway. For your enjoyment and edification (and edubacation), what follows is a list of things that happened during this uneventful week to the ten students I currently have on my caseload:

- a student who had been spitting out his meds decided he was going to take it now because he could notice a decline in his behavior when he was off his meds
- a student asked if he could have his schedule switched so that he would have no classes with his best friend because now, after failing every thing in the 1st marking period, he wants to get good grades and can't do that when his best friend is around
- 4 students caught up completely on all of their missing work
- a plan was formulated with an outside agency to get one student help with drug use
- I was called an idiot 4 times by a student who loves me (He didn't understand his math test; he completed it later following some reteaching.)
- two students came all week without their meds - this caused endless quiet cursing on the part of one and chasing, spitting and general over-excitement on the part of the other
- a student was able to attend the holiday dance for the first time in three years
- two students attended principal's lunch on the recommendation of their general education teachers
- a parent told me her child could decide for himself whether to take his meds or not and she was only doing it to satisfy "outside sources"
- a student became the highest achiever in his math class to date for the 2nd marking period
- a student received in-school suspension for wearing gang related apparel to school
- a student was suspended for two days for threatening and intimidating another student
- a student received five stitches when another student kicked open a door that smacked him in the face
- our most notorious work avoider completed the final draft of a major project in his humanities class
- a student couldn't stop talking about getting to visit his dad this coming week
- ditto for another student but his mom
- a student made a song using Garage Band and played it for me

And more, always more.

Return to Medlandia

I asked a student to promise to stop by the nurse's office to take his meds on his way from my class to lunch. This is a student who doesn't like to take his meds and whom I've had to walk to the nurse's office in order to ensure that he got there. Before I started escorting him he would skip it and have to be called out of his class and to the nurses office following lunch. Though he promised he would actually do it this time, I found out he skipped the office and went straight to lunch when I stopped by the nurse's office five minutes later. So I tracked him down in the cafeteria where he was chowing on a plate of nachos. I asked him why he didn't stop by the nurse's office to take his meds and he said, "Because it's Friday." That seemed reasonable to me. I suppose I could have coerced him into leaving the cafeteria right then or told him he couldn't go to recess now or taken some other form of revenge. But I just asked him to take his meds before he went to his class after recess. He did.

Meds? Meds. Meds!

One of my students takes a very small dosage of meds for ADHD. This student just told us he has been faking it for the past three weeks. He says that when he takes the meds he can focus but he can't do any thing. When he doesn't take his meds he can learn and do whatever he wants. This is true, I think. He's one of those rare people who can actually multi-task if one of the tasks is listening and the other doesn't require much concentration. The part he leaves out is that he gets frustrated and destructive when he's off his meds. But he sat in the office and cut box tops for an hour quite happily. At that point he could talk a little bit about what got him removed from class. Today I bought a football to play catch with him when he needs to have something in his hands when he's frustrated. We'll see.

Another student is perfectly well behaved and hardworking here. At home he throws things, yells at his guardian, walks out of the house and possibly hits people. Apparently he takes his meds regularly.

A third student had a very long history of violent incidents and was 5 years behind in reading and math. He recently was transferred to a therapeutic day program. He's never been on meds.

Nice try?

One of my students has been having a serious attendance problem. Working with him we rearranged the schedule so that this student would be an office aid first period and miss a class with a teacher this student dislikes. The receptionist has plenty of help first period but she decided that this student needed the support so she would find something for this student to do. I worked it out with this student's teachers, administrator and guidance counselor. The guidance secretary immediately changed the schedule and I gave the brand new schedule to the student 8th period yesterday. The student was psyched. The student didn't come to school today.

UPDATE (12/5/06): The student came today after missing 5 days. Right away he learned how to find the slope of a line and finished the homework the math teacher assigned. I made him promise that he would come in again tomorrow.

12/7/06: Three days in a row! Also we've arranged to have help from outside agencies come to the school for his mental health and attendance issues.

Triage is the New Revolution

As a proponent of a more...er...progressive political ideology than the Democrats I was surprised to find myself rather ecstatic about the results of the recent election. Democrats truly do not represent progressives so I only vote for a Democrat when it's a very tight race with a Republican. And even then I usually don't feel good about it. I'm looking forward to the day when I can make a choice for actual progress but for now I'm just hoping that the bleeding can stop. Literally and figuratively.

Some will say, "What about the plan for universal health coverage & raising the minimum wage? That's pretty progressive." If we consider helping folks when they're sick and making sure that people are adequately remunerated for their work progressive then we are in trouble. It's 2006, not 1906, right? The labor movement happened, didn't it?

I don't think we ought to boast about no longer committing human rights atrocities after decades of doing so; we ought to boast about proactively addressing issues before they ever become human rights atrocities. The fact that a person can work for under $6/hr. in this country is absurd. The fact that that same person can work forty hours a week, get $240 (gross) and then not be able to take her child to the doctor is immoral.

Conclusion: It's great the Dems won because ending what should be considered despicable violations of the rights of every human being is better than continuing them. But we should do better than that.

Yeah triage! Woo hoo...

Providing a Person with SDI

SDI is specifically designed instruction. This is usually indicated on an IEP in an area a student has had difficulty accessing general education curriculum. For instance, if a student with a learning disability has particular trouble with reading she may be alloted 90 minutes of SDI in reading a week. This means that a special education teacher must provide curriculum tailored to this student's needs, modify/adapt general education curriculum and/or modify instruction/delivery of general education curriculum in order to make it more accessible to this student. An example of modified curriculum would be that our student with difficulty in reading might get phonics during independent work time when everyone else is working on making inferences in the novels they have self-selected.

Another method of delivering SDI would be to work with general education teachers to alter delivery of instruction. Some children with a learning disability have a very difficult time understanding oral instructions but when they read instructions they can do the work. So you might work with a teacher to make sure all of his instructions are written somewhere - on the overhead machine or on chart paper for instance. Another example would be that a particular student might need to only receive one step in a series of directions at a time. So you work with a teacher to make sure that this is happening.

Now here's the tricky part: If the teacher is now providing instructions in written format on the overhead, this is accessible to all in the classroom. This will probably make it easier for any number of students as well as the child labeled LD. But since it's used by the entire class it's no longer considered SDI by the Oregon Department of Education because it's not S and more. Which means you're no longer providing that child with her legally required SDI in this way.

You might say, "Wait a minute, that makes no sense." And I might reply, "You're damn right." But it would be true nonetheless.

What are the implications?

1) If the student starts to perform better and no longer needs support in that class to work at grade level because of these class-wide interventions (and if this were to happen it would be because of a series of similar interventions and not just the two listed above) you could have a team meeting and alter the IEP to remove the SDI in that subject area. In some ways this student is no longer disabled in reading because she is accessing the general education curriculum with no help from support staff. (So she's no longer disabled in reading...?)

2) Since altering the IEP is unlikely (in some instances parents won't want that because they want to make sure their child is receiving necessary supports OR it's next to impossible to get the parent in AND these meetings are time-consuming and teachers are overworked) one must conclude that passing good teaching techniques on to general education teachers is punished.

There are whole programs built around serving high needs students by altering teaching techniques that are very successful - Mel Levine's "Schools Attuned" is one. I'm a much better teacher in general and specifically to high needs students because of this. But in NYC we weren't punished for adopting good teaching techniques.

The Caste System

Any one who has looked at disability rights can see that people with disability are treated as, at best, second class citizens. And anyone familiar with Disability Creep knows that you too can be denigrated if you associate too closely with a person with a disability. (Note: Disability Creep has been used in different contexts to mean different things but this is the usage I find most...Useful.) Special education teachers, among many others, experience disability creep by being excluded in any number of ways from the goings-on in schools because we "got some on us". As advocates for those who are excluded and as those who are excluded ourselves, it seems to me that we should know better than to create hierarchies among school staff. Yet, in my experience, it's quite common to find special educators and other staff excluding educational assistants/paraprofessionals (EAs/paras).

My experience in New York City, which was limited to working with under 10 para-professionals in 6 years, was that the paras were more or less lousy which might excuse their treatment in some minds (though I'd be willing to bet that it was the treatment that caused the behavior and not the other way around). Where I am now in Oregon, it's been my experience that the educational assistants (same job, different name) are excellent and still they are treated badly. For instance, presence of EAs at IEP meetings is strongly discouraged at every level. But some of the EAs who work here have been working with students for 2 or more years whereas, in my case, I've been working with these students for two months. It makes sense no me to exclude those staff members who are most knowledgeable about a student when planning that student's individual educational program.

Unlike many other schools, teachers here are routinely recognized for excellent work. However, EAs are often excluded from recognition even when their part in a project or response to a situation was much greater than that of a teacher's. Also, the principal here is in most ways excellent. But he has a very clear negative disposition towards EAs...and the principal has a background in special ed and talks about special education as a civil rights issue.

I guess I'm surprised by this because I see such a clear link between imposing hierarchies on people with disabilities and hierarchies between staff members at school. I mean, it's right here in the same place! But it goes unseen or it's somehow justified. I would think it would induce cognitive dissonance but instead it's ignored. And we wonder why our student have cliques and mini-hierarchies amongst them.

How many educators does it take to make you emotionally disturbed?

The other day I participated in a meeting in which we (the school psych, two special ed teachers, a general ed teacher and the assistant principal) decided that a student was emotionally disturbed. The student met the qualifications set by the district for this label. Now the student can work with me on improving his/her behavior in school. This was the 3rd of three meetings we held - none of which the parent attended though the parent told us she/he would attend all of them. So the five of use sat together and determined that this student is no longer learning disabled but emotionally disturbed. Why did I agree? It was going to happen either way because I wasn't a required member of the team. And I actually think we're going to help this student now. Or more specifically, I'm going to help this student now. His previous casemanager was useless. So when we hear that someone is emotionally disturbed or autistic or retarded or learning disabled we need to remember that it's just a little group of people who sit around and decide that it's so.

So...what do you do?

I have to explain my job a lot. When I tell people that I work with emotionally disturbed kids I can't imagine what they think. Or, I can and I want to dissuade them that it's any thing like what they think. It's not some altruistic service that I do because I need to feel good about myself or pay penance for my privilege (though we do need to pay penance for our privilege). Mostly I do the same thing I did when I was a general education teacher when I worked with these kids but now it's my sole duty rather than a sideline that was time consuming, necessary and satisfying.

Since my school more or less does inclusion I spend 3 periods teaching a small group of kids. Two of those periods we do self-management skills like anger control, empathy training, bullying awareness, etc. One period each day I try to fill in some basic academic gaps like how to memorize information, how to read a chart or map and how to take notes. Then we do homework for the rest of the period. For two other periods I work in classrooms with students on my caseload making sure they can access the curriculum by monitoring their behavior and modifying curriculum. For two other periods in the day I do paperwork, meet with staff, make phone calls, plan curriculum and put out "fires". The two educational assistants I work with spend all day in general education classes making sure the curriculum is accessible to our students. Sometimes students misbehave, sometimes they get frustrated and sometimes they get themselves in hot water. Most of the time they do what they can despite the overwhelming obstacles they face.

Working with students classified as ED it has become clear to me that most of the disability they are classified as having is environmental (which would call in to question whether these students are actually disabled...although, that's true for most disabilities, right?). For instance, one of my students was removed from his parents at a young age due to drug use and has spent time with innumerable foster parents; another has no father and the mother provides almost no oversight; another lives with both parents but has had all other siblings removed due to neglect and comes in having not been put to bed and wearing extremely dirty clothes. Still another student has grown up in a house where the parents scream at each other and have extreme social phobia; another is dirt poor and seemingly unloved; and another is continuously told by the mother that school is a waste of time. The student I have with the most extreme behavior lives with an adoptive father who has an occasional relationship with a woman who may or may not be the mother who spends most of her time wandering the streets trying to score whatever drug she is currently addicted to. This father doesn't clean, put to bed or take any educational interest in the child. He also calls his "grandmother", who carries a gun, over when he misbehaves and beats him up when called. So, why are these kids misbehaving I wonder? I believe it when it's said that most misbehavior is a response to unmet needs.

So when I tell people what I do I might say I work with the bad kids - emphasizing 'bad' so it's clear I don't actually think they're bad. And sometimes I say, "emotionally disturbed" kids because the label ED causes most people to take notice pretty quickly. Other times I just say I teach or that I teach special education. But if you want to know what I really do, I'll tell you right now: I try to make a few hours of each day that I work with my students better than they would be otherwise in whatever way makes most sense at the time. And hopefully, hopefully this leads them out of where they are and onto something better where they don't have to pay for the mistakes of their parents, often caused by factors out of the parents' control, for the rest of their lives.

LRE as LEE

Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) is a measure built into IDEA that protects a disabled student's right to receive an education with non-disabled students whenever possible. Essentially, the student should be placed in as close to a regular setting as possible. Sometimes the least restrictive setting that is appropriate is a very restrictive setting. For instance, a high school aged student with with severe mental retardation coupled with numerous physical impairments might be best served in a separate school designed to help prepare this student to live as independently as possible. That's pretty restrictive because there are no non-disabled peers in that setting but it's probably appropriate.

Just as LRE is sometimes MCE it is also LEE - Least Expensive Environment. The district office has denied a transportation request for cab service for a student for whom we have serious safety concerns. They say it's because they are concerned that it's too restrictive and there is no data to back it up - which, by the way, is false. It seems to me that it's much cheaper to plead LRE in this case than to pony up the dough to get this kid to school in the way that is safest. If, as a parent, I knew what the situation with this students was, I wouldn't let my child ride that bus.

Update 11/20/06: This student called the bus driver a terrible name, called all the kids on the bus the same name, was reportedly harassing a female student and was reassigned to the mini-bus. Two weeks later we got a risk assessment report back from an outside agency that recommends that this student NOT attend the home school due to the high risk factor. This student has since been placed in a private therapeutic setting.

Why I oughta...

I was absent from school on Tuesday at an all day training that was actually relatively useful. Apparently, the substitute was a wheelchair user. When I came in on Wednesday a teacher said to me, "I thought it was ironic to have a substitute in a wheel chair with the behavior kids." I think she meant something about the blind leading the blind...wait, that's abelist....but you know what I mean. I wasn't sure how to respond without ruining my working relationship with her. I just said, "Oh yeah?" and let a long uncomfortable pause sit there between us. As she was walking out the door she mumbled something about chasing kids down the hall in a wheelchair. Of course, no chasing went on of any sort and everyone reported that she was quite competent.

FAPE 'em

Recently I noticed a colleague heard FAPE used as a verb. Free appropriate public education (FAPE) is mandated in IDEA for students with disabilities. This was the first time that it was made explicit in federal law that students with disabilities had to be educated at public expense in an appropriate manner. And remember, IDEA was passed in 1990 so...rather recently. As noted elsewhere, the word "appropriate" is rather, well, inappropriate because it's so open to interpretation. However, what might be even more inappropriate is the use of FAPE I have recently heard at meetings of the special ed teachers in my district. The usage went like this:

"So what happens when a student attending private school does not come to the nearest public school for his special education services [as mandated in our state guidelines]?" asked one special ed teacher.

Replied the special education program manager, "You FAPE 'em. Send the FAPE letter [a district-wide standardized letter] indicating that we stand ready to provide FAPE whenever he might begin to show up for his services."

And that made me think that's what we're doing to our students all the time - FAPEing them. Modified your curriculum! You've been FAPEd. Provided alternate setting for your test! Consider yourself FAPEerized! FAPE up to the facts!

Note on 10/6/06: Earlier this week at a district training of all SPED teachers and related service providers the phrase "Fape 'em" was used repeatedly by folks at all levels. So clearly this is part of the lingo that as a newbie I'm just not familiar with.

Most Convenient Environment

A major section of IDEA is the Least Restrictive Environment clause (LRE). LRE is defined as the educational setting where a child with disabilities can receive a free appropriate public education (FAPE) designed to meet his or her education needs while being educated with peers without disabilities in the regular educational environment to the maximum extent appropriate. This means that we can't have self-contained classes of students with disabilities unless less restrictive settings are inappropriate. You can seee that you've got that mushy word "appropriate" in there which can, and does, cause all sorts of problems. It seems to me that "least restrictive" is often reinterpreted to mean "most convenient" and not for the student but for the teachers. It's inconvenient to have a student in your class that learns differently and/or acts differently from most other students because that means you might have to change your teaching. It's that or move the student to a different class. Which one happens most often, I wonder?

So, in my district, it's no wonder that there is a good deal of resistance to the push to include students with disability in mainstream classes by ending self-contained classes that took students away from their home schools and relegated them to spending the whole day with one teacher and a bunch of other "high needs" students - a recipe for disaster if there ever was one. That and the district office keeps reminding everyone that we have to do this because it's part of No Child Left Behind that is being enacted this year and the district got in trouble last year from the state department of ed. for having too many students in self-contained classes. Notice that no one mentions that inclusion is more ethical, leads to better educations for all and the LRE for the vast majority of students.