Friday, February 23, 2007

Least Restrictive Environment (LRE)

Is LRE the best solution for ALL children? Many people say yes, it is the best solution but I disagree. I agree that many great accomplishments have been made in education for children with disabilities. I also agree that children who have a disability can receive many benefits by being placed in the mainstream classroom; they connect with children their age, gain positive social benefits and learn to be independent as much as possible. However, what I do not agree with is that LRE is the best solution for all children. If a student is placed in the mainstream classroom, even with sufficient aid, and is still unable to communicate effectively with his or her peers or teachers the child is not being helped in this situation. I believe that the LRE needs to be decided on case by case and not just a general statement that; the least restrictive environment is the mainstream classroom because sometimes the LRE for a child with a disability might not be the mainstream classroom. I don't know if I'm getting my point across very well here but I'll try and sum it up; the least restrictive environment is a great idea and has and will provide many great benefits to children with disabilities but we also need to look at the negative benefits that it may place on other children with disabilities and in those cases the least restrictive environment is not the main classroom.

2 comments:

Lauren said...

how did you group your links?

-Lauren

Kimberly said...

Joe- This seems like a really thoughtful analysis of LRE. I do completely agree with you. I think often we try to group people in what would be the best, if it were a perfect world, but it obviously is not. I think that it is important to keep our own biases out of deciding the LRE and realize that the student should be the one benefitting. Period. No questions asked. Great analysis!