Included but Not Supported (Part 1): An Honest Conversation About Inclusion

Blog #17 | The System and the Child series

TL;DR

Inclusion is not a bad word — but it is being used badly. IDEA's Least Restrictive Environment mandate was never meant to mean all children in mainstream classrooms regardless of readiness or support. It was meant to ensure each child is placed where they can actually learn. Two students but completely different outcomes — the difference was never the child. It was the timing, the preparation, and the support behind the placement.

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Disclaimer: This post speaks honestly about inclusion, placement decisions, and the impact on children when support is absent. If you are currently navigating a diagnosis or school placement for your child, some of what I share may be triggering to read. That is intentional — but it comes from a place of care, not judgment.

There is a word in special education that has become so loaded it is almost impossible to say without someone getting defensive. That word is inclusion.

I am pro-inclusion. I want to say that clearly before I say anything else.

But I am pro-inclusion under three conditions.

First, that the placement actually fits the needs of the child. Second, that there is real, meaningful support in place to address those needs. Third, and this one does not get said enough — that the receiving classroom teacher is prepared and supported. When a teacher models inclusion, the peers will follow. That is how a classroom becomes a community rather than just a room a child is placed in.

Inclusion should not fall entirely on the child. It should not be the child's job to fit the mould, and carry the weight of adult expectations they were never asked about. It is a shared responsibility and when the adults in the room are not equipped to hold up their end of it, the child holds it alone. Let that sink.

Remove either of those conditions and inclusion becomes something else entirely. A box ticked. A word on a document.

And the child pays the price for that.

What the law actually says

In the United States, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act ( IDEA) mandates that every child with a disability be educated in what is called the Least Restrictive Environment, or LRE. For anyone unfamiliar with the term: LRE means a child is educated alongside their general education peers to the maximum extent appropriate.

That phrase, 'to the maximum extent appropriate', does a lot of work. It is not a blanket mandate for full inclusion. It is a mandate to consider each child individually and find the environment where they can actually learn.

IDEA outlines a continuum of settings precisely because no single environment suits every child:

• Setting 1 — spends majority of the school day in mainstream general education classroom

• Setting 2 — spends most of the day in mainstream and receives targeted support (reading, writing, math, social skills) from a resource special education teacher

• Setting 3 — spend majority of the school day in a self-contained special education classroom and 40% time with general education peer. Activities such as breakfast, lunch, recess and specialists lessons (art, music, library, P.E)

• Setting 4 — public separate special education school ( for severe behaviour challenges such as aggression and violence towards self and others)

• Setting  5 — private separate special education school (in Minnesota)

• Setting 6 - 9 — private/public residential facilities, homebound and hospital setting

The Netherlands has a parallel structure, though it is not always discussed in these terms. So, we have Dutch mainstream primary school (basisschool) and Dutch special education, where the continuum looks like SBO (speciaal basisonderwijs) — provides specialised primary education for children who need more support than a mainstream school can offer. They offer the same learning objectives as a mainstream primary school since the goal is reintegration back into mainstream. 

SO (speciaal onderwijs) — a dedicated special education school for children with more significant needs or specialised needs. Here the learning objective differed from that of SBO and SO is categorised in four clusters. 

• Cluster 1 - for children with visual impairment

• Cluster 2 - for children with hearing impairment and speech and language disorder

• Cluster 3- For children with chronic physical and intellectual disability or chromic illness

• Cluster 4 - for children with severe behaviour problem (autism) and psychiatric disorder

And then for children with the most complex profiles, there are centres — not schools in the formal sense, but structured environments designed to support children whose needs go beyond what any school setting can address.

The point of a continuum is that movement along it should be driven by the child's needs and their readiness — not by ideology, not by what looks good on paper, and not by what feels most comfortable for the adults involved.

Two children, two different outcomes

I want to tell you about two students. I am sharing these stories because I think lived examples say more than frameworks ever can.

The first, a child who was quiet, docile, and clearly struggling. He was placed in a mainstream classroom with twenty other students and almost no individualised support. The thinking, presumably, was that proximity to his peers would be enough. It was not. He made no academic progress that year. He was held back to repeat the grade. 

Somewhere in that second year, he discovered that screaming got him the attention he had been unable to get any other way. A child who had been quiet and compliant learned a new behaviour because the environment had taught it to him. Bureaucracy and indecisions had cost this child more than a year of learning. What he gained instead was a behaviour pattern that would take considerable work to unlearn..

That is what happens when inclusion is a placement decision rather than a support decision.

The second, a student with mild to moderate learning disability. The difference was that he had been in our special education programme for two years. I worked with this student for a year together and another teacher worked with him the previous year. We built skills systematically. We tracked his progress. And at the end of that time, when he was genuinely ready, we were able to transition him to a mainstream school. He became one of the success stories of the programme.

Both children had some kind of learning deficit, but a completely different outcome. The difference was not the child. It was the timing, the preparation, and the support.

Inclusion at what cost?

I am going to ask a question that I think gets avoided too often in these conversations.

When we push a child into an environment before they are ready, before the support exists, before the team is in place, before the plan has been thought through. Whose needs are we actually serving?

The mother of a student I worked with shared an eye-opening story with me. She had been struggling to accept her daughter's diagnosis. Somewhere in that process, someone asked her to sit with a difficult question: was her resistance really about her daughter — or was it about her own sense of herself? The grief, the fear, the stigma she had absorbed without even realising it.

She shared that conversation with me. And it stayed with me.

Now, I shared this with you because the same dynamic often plays out in placement decisions. There are two parties involved: the school and the family. Not every family, of course. But often enough that it is worth naming honestly.

Shame, fear, stigma, and pride are powerful forces. And when those forces drive decision-making, it is usually the child who pays the price.

I empathise with parents, I truly do. As a professional, I have a broader view of the situation — I can see what they sometimes cannot. But for parents, especially in those early years, it can feel like tunnel vision. In their minds, mainstream means normal. And normal is good.

But, what is normal? It is normal to need help..

See you next Thursday!

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Part 2 next week: two more students, the fears parents carry, and what good inclusion actually requires.

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