Early Childhood Programs and Inclusion

The regulations dealing with least restrictive environment and having children with disabilities educated and participating with nondisabled children includes students aged 3-5. However, schools have difficulty doing this with this age group. First, states have a choice on whether public schools will serve this age group. So in some states other agencies serve this age group. If the schools serve children ages 3-5 with disabilities, they frequently have few programs for nondisabled children in this age group. The programs they do have typically have specific criteria, i.e. disadvantaged, bilingual, non-English speaking or children of employees.

Often the schools say that children with disabilities can not participate in these programs, even part-time, because regulations do not allow it, the classes are too full, etc. Many times the school could allow the students with disabilities to participate to some extent in these non-special education programs, if they really wanted to. Often the school is reluctant to begin the practice because it fears that more requests will follow. If the school says that state regulations do not allow this, contact the state to verify this. If this is true, someone could try challenging the state regulations, because they are discriminatory to children with disabilities.

Schools could serve children with disabilities in private and religious schools and daycares. Regulations allow this and some states even have pushed this option because it is a more natural environment and gives schools access to more nondisabled children. Public schools tend to resist this option due to lack of experience and fear that it will divert resources and “open a can of worms.” Private schools and daycares may also be reluctant to try this because of lack of experience with the concept and not wanting to give up any control to the public school. There are places where this approach is working effectively. Ask the state agency if some districts are doing this. Letting schools know where it is being done might help. Since it is hard to force schools to do this, parents/individuals must be organized. One approach is to build a coalition of support with parents, community leaders and staff in the private and public schools and daycares. Find out the state’s position on schools working with non-public school entities and build on that. Please comment if you have any experience with innovative approaches to preschool inclusion.