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Meeting "Individuals with Disabilities Education Act" Standards with Service-Learning
by Mary Zimmerle

The release of the Department of Education’s Twenty-third Annual Report to Congress on the Implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in May provided a thorough overview of our nation’s successes and failures in the schooling of children with disabilities. It states that the latest standards explained in the IDEA Amendments of 1997 “provide many students with disabilities new opportunities to participate in and benefit from a wide array of general courses and learning experiences. A major goal of accessing the general curriculum is to prepare students to earn a standard diploma and help prepare them for adult life.” One of the challenges that hinders the success of special ed schooling and the fulfillment of IDEA requirements is the integration of transition services with the general curriculum. The report notes that many schools have failed to fully comply with the regulations that assure this integration. Because performance often is assessed only on academic standards, many of these non-academic specifications and transition goals are pushed aside to make time for academic learning. At other times, transition is the only facet attended to while general curriculum standards are ignored. The report asserts that all of these requirements can be met, however, through multi-faceted and creative approaches such as service-learning, a methodology that combines academic learning and service work with the community.

Service-learning allows students to simultaneously meet academic, nonacademic and transition requirements in the classroom while remaining on the general curriculum track. Most importantly, the Department of Education report strongly encourages this type of integrated learning, stating that “IEP teams must work to ensure that high expectations are maintained and students are afforded opportunities to develop skills through a wide range of curricular options, including vocational education, service learning, community work experience, and adult living skills.” When implemented properly, service-learning maximizes the potential of success in learning and in life skills for children with special needs.

Such efforts also ensure that the No Child Left Behind initiative, inaugurated by the Bush administration, is taken up and followed through by the nation’s educators. This initiative stresses that “high expectations must be maintained for students with disabilities across the full range of academic and nonacademic courses and programs available within middle schools and high schools nationally.” When properly executed, service-learning inherently moves toward this goal by providing students with a broader base of experiences to reach their maximum learning potential. In this way, special needs children can be mainstreamed and expected to meet the same standards as their classmates. This goal ensures that special needs children are not pushed aside or deemed unteachable, but are given similar opportunities as every other child, and consequently, are better prepared for their adult lives.

Service-learning opportunities for the special education classroom are unlimited and can be tailored to the needs of each class and community. This flexibility helps service-learning programs succeed by providing ways to creatively meet curriculum standards. In this way, learning is not just a required task but can be engaging, exciting and applicable to everyday life skills, while meeting special education standards and transition requirements at the same time.
The PSLA's Special Education Initiative can help special ed teachers discover, explore and utilize service-learning tools for the classroom.

Quotes cited from Twenty-third Annual Report to Congress on the Implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act are from the following documents:

Executive summary
http://www.ed.gov/offices/OSERS/OSEP/Products/
OSEP2001AnlRpt/ExecSumm.html

Results
http://www.ed.gov/offices/OSERS/OSEP/Products/OSEP2001AnlRpt/Section_I.pdf
pages I-19 through I-22

For the full text of this report:
http://www.ed.gov/offices/OSERS/OSEP/Products/OSEP2001AnlRpt/