Is being mainstreamed ever NOT what you desired?

[Anonymous]

Everyone always says how great mainstreaming is and how that is what we should want. However I'm not sure that's actually what's best for my kid. He is HFA and can easily keep up with all academics, but his behavior is horrendous. I feel like his home school has no idea how to work with him and it is just so frustrating. Although I want him to continue to be challenged, I feel that he might be better in a self contained ED class so that he can actually work on his behavior. I am concerned about a long bus ride and picking up negative behaviors, but I think that might be better so he can have a trained special educator. For those of you who have had high academics children, how has self contained gone?

He is 2nd grade in mcps. We have an upcoming annual review and I believe they would consider a switch if we pushed for one.

Thanks in advance.

[Anonymous]

I have a very bright child who has been in self contained classes for behavior.

Do whatever you can to say in the regular classes. The academics are NEVER as good in the self contained. Imagine your son in a class of 10 kids, all equally or more disruptive than he is. Ten kids at ten different academic levels, most of them significantly behind. You will be shocked at how poor the academic education can be in those classes. Also, we were told that many children spend a year or two in the self-contained classes and then move back into mainstream once they have learned better skills, but we have never observed a child move into a less restrictive class. Most children seem to stay in the program until middle school and some go further into more restrictive settings (SN only schools etc.)

The problem I think is that there is very little real evidence based skills-teaching. How to develop self-control, how to problem solve, etc. It feels like warehousing kids just to keep them from bothering the regular kids.

[Anonymous]

Has he had an FBA?

[Anonymous]

Thank you for your detailed post pp. You included a lot of information to consider. My understanding was that the children were mainstreamed as much as possible within the self contained class. Is that true in your experience? Did your child get any opportunity to interact with the nt children?

To the immediate pp. Yes, he had an fba/BIP done but it was not thorough and just done by the same special ed teachers that don't seem to get HFA. I was considering asking for the psychologist to help create a better one.

[Anonymous]

I had a child with big behavior problems. I would ask for as much support as needed to enable him to stay in the mainstream class. This has worked for us; his current teacher s loved him and a couple gears ago he was in th office in a daily basis.

[Anonymous]

When I say his current teacher loves him I mean that he is well behaved.

Have you read Lost at School?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thank you for your detailed post pp. You included a lot of information to consider. My understanding was that the children were mainstreamed as much as possible within the self contained class. Is that true in your experience? Did your child get any opportunity to interact with the nt children?

To the immediate pp. Yes, he had an fba/BIP done but it was not thorough and just done by the same special ed teachers that don't seem to get HFA. I was considering asking for the psychologist to help create a better one.

In our experience, some of the kids are mainstreamed some of the time into the "regular" class. BUT it is not dependent on what is best for that particular child. It depends hugely on staffing. If they can't spare an aide to go with the children into the regular class, the mainstreaming doesn't happen. And a lot of times, the aide is busy (teacher and aide for each class, but 10 kids with behavioral issues tends to suck up a lot of teacher time. We were promised a lot of supports and time with the general ed students that didn't happen because of staffing (although they would never admit it was a personnel/$$ issue). Your child will be going into the regular class for the amount of time and during the part of the day that works best for the schedule, not your particular child.

I would exhaust all your resources at the current school. I would ask for a behavioral specialist through the school system to observe and make suggestions. If that BIP didn't work I would pay for my own psychologist to come in and observe.

[Anonymous]

Oh - you should definitely ask that the FBA be redone by someone qualified to do one. I have heard that it makes all the difference!

I also have an HFA child. His interfering behaviors are that he gets emotional and upset. We have asked for an FBA.

Have you asked about getting him into one of the Aspergers programs in the county? I think there are 2 locations. I'm not sure what they look for in the kids that get placed there.

[Anonymous]

For a bright, HFA kid I think the Asperger's program would be a better fit.

We toured one of the two locations and in the classroom we saw the teacher told us all the kids were working above grade level. From speaking with her and the program director there seem to be a lot of "little professor" types so it sounds like it could be a good for your DC based on the description you gave.

Even though they must follow Curriculum 2.0 they have the leeway and, more importantly, the time to provide enrichment opportunities as the classes are tiny.

Most of the kids are in a self-contained classroom for the literacy block and social skills and spend the rest of the time in a mainstream classroom. I think most of them may also spend lunch in their self-contained classroom but have recess with their mainstream peers.

Every child is on a behavior contract that helps them work on whatever their issue is, be it completing work or following directions. When we were on the tour we saw no behaviors whatsoever. All the kids were very well behaved but it was just a half hour.

It is considered an excellent program and extremely difficult to get in to unless you have an advocate. We weren't able to get in.

You can get a tour by calling the autism unit of the county.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you for your detailed post pp. You included a lot of information to consider. My understanding was that the children were mainstreamed as much as possible within the self contained class. Is that true in your experience? Did your child get any opportunity to interact with the nt children?

To the immediate pp. Yes, he had an fba/BIP done but it was not thorough and just done by the same special ed teachers that don't seem to get HFA. I was considering asking for the psychologist to help create a better one.

In our experience, some of the kids are mainstreamed some of the time into the "regular" class. BUT it is not dependent on what is best for that particular child. It depends hugely on staffing. If they can't spare an aide to go with the children into the regular class, the mainstreaming doesn't happen. And a lot of times, the aide is busy (teacher and aide for each class, but 10 kids with behavioral issues tends to suck up a lot of teacher time. We were promised a lot of supports and time with the general ed students that didn't happen because of staffing (although they would never admit it was a personnel/$$ issue). Your child will be going into the regular class for the amount of time and during the part of the day that works best for the schedule, not your particular child.

I would exhaust all your resources at the current school. I would ask for a behavioral specialist through the school system to observe and make suggestions. If that BIP didn't work I would pay for my own psychologist to come in and observe.

IME teaching (albeit not in MCPS), the above is frequently true for kids based in a self-contained class where the self-contained staff are also supposed to support inclusion/mainstreaming time. A class that requires 1:5 normally is often going to have issues that prevent one of those staff from accompanying 1 or 2 (or even half) of the class to another location, and thus the mainstreaming support is likely to be very inconsistent. You really need a school staffed/modeled differently for it to work (where others are providing mainstreaming support, or there is some arrangement for coverage, etc).

[Anonymous]

NP. I'm curious about this as we heard that if it's in the IEP that students get x number of hours in a self-contained classroom and y number in gen ed they absolutely have to meet those numbers and must be staffed adequately to handle this unless of course it's an emergency.
The law is LRE after all.
If this happened to your child what is the response when you brought up the issue?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you for your detailed post pp. You included a lot of information to consider. My understanding was that the children were mainstreamed as much as possible within the self contained class. Is that true in your experience? Did your child get any opportunity to interact with the nt children?

To the immediate pp. Yes, he had an fba/BIP done but it was not thorough and just done by the same special ed teachers that don't seem to get HFA. I was considering asking for the psychologist to help create a better one.

In our experience, some of the kids are mainstreamed some of the time into the "regular" class. BUT it is not dependent on what is best for that particular child. It depends hugely on staffing. If they can't spare an aide to go with the children into the regular class, the mainstreaming doesn't happen. And a lot of times, the aide is busy (teacher and aide for each class, but 10 kids with behavioral issues tends to suck up a lot of teacher time. We were promised a lot of supports and time with the general ed students that didn't happen because of staffing (although they would never admit it was a personnel/$$ issue). Your child will be going into the regular class for the amount of time and during the part of the day that works best for the schedule, not your particular child.

I would exhaust all your resources at the current school. I would ask for a behavioral specialist through the school system to observe and make suggestions. If that BIP didn't work I would pay for my own psychologist to come in and observe.

IME teaching (albeit not in MCPS), the above is frequently true for kids based in a self-contained class where the self-contained staff are also supposed to support inclusion/mainstreaming time. A class that requires 1:5 normally is often going to have issues that prevent one of those staff from accompanying 1 or 2 (or even half) of the class to another location, and thus the mainstreaming support is likely to be very inconsistent. You really need a school staffed/modeled differently for it to work (where others are providing mainstreaming support, or there is some arrangement for coverage, etc).

[Anonymous]

Op here. This is definitely an eye opening thread for me. I think I need to address the FBA better. Thanks for all of the insight!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For a bright, HFA kid I think the Asperger's program would be a better fit.

We toured one of the two locations and in the classroom we saw the teacher told us all the kids were working above grade level. From speaking with her and the program director there seem to be a lot of "little professor" types so it sounds like it could be a good for your DC based on the description you gave.

Even though they must follow Curriculum 2.0 they have the leeway and, more importantly, the time to provide enrichment opportunities as the classes are tiny.

Most of the kids are in a self-contained classroom for the literacy block and social skills and spend the rest of the time in a mainstream classroom. I think most of them may also spend lunch in their self-contained classroom but have recess with their mainstream peers.

Every child is on a behavior contract that helps them work on whatever their issue is, be it completing work or following directions. When we were on the tour we saw no behaviors whatsoever. All the kids were very well behaved but it was just a half hour.

It is considered an excellent program and extremely difficult to get in to unless you have an advocate. We weren't able to get in.

You can get a tour by calling the autism unit of the county.

OP should definitely do a tour. We looked at the Model Asperger's Program at Ivymount last fall for DS with Asperger's who was having a lot of behavioral issues in 2nd grade. While the program was highly recommended by our dev ped and educational consultant (We were told it was similar to the MoCo Asperger's program), we were not impressed with the academics particularly in Math (follows common core and no acceleration) and Foreign Languages (don't have one).

Good luck with the FBA! Done correctly by an experienced behaviorist who only does FBA/BIP, it was pretty miraculous for us.

[Anonymous]

How do you get a trained behaviorist to do a fba rather than a special ed teacher? Is this something you request at an iep meeting? Thank you.

[Anonymous]

You may want to consider hiring a BCBA to come observe at the school and review all the records and come up with a better FBA.
I wouldn't let all the negativity on this board discourage you from looking in to the ED cluster a bit more.
There are some schools with very good reputations for helping kids improve and moving them quickly back into mainstream gen ed classes 100% but it may vary from year to year so you should talk to current parents. We have a good friend who has a child at an ED cluster school and has three NT DCs who are mainstreamed but friends with kids in the ED program or graduated out of the program.

Anonymous wrote:Op here. This is definitely an eye opening thread for me. I think I need to address the FBA better. Thanks for all of the insight!