Special Education

Least Restrictive Environments

I interviewed Dianne Hawkins, Director Special Education Services, Fort Worth Independent School District. She was very helpful and knowledgeable about least restrictive environments and shared a lot if information with me.

Dianne’s definition of least restrictive environments is “a requirement and essential component of providing free and appropriate public education FAPE for qualified students. The mandate to provide special education services in the least restrictive environment appropriate for the student to garner benefit from the services provided also requires local education agencies to also consider the general education environment first and foremost and then justify removing the student from that setting. When followed as intended, this assures that students are not removed to special education settings arbitrarily and/or without need.” This definition makes sense to me and really helped me to understand a little of what goes into special education services in my district.

The next question I asked Dianne is how is service delivery determined in order to provide LRE in the school district, and if she could explain to me each type of service delivery. Dianne responded with “LRE and service delivery – much of what was stated in question one, also applies here, more specifically a student’s admissions, review, dismissal committee ARD is, of course, required to determine a student’s present levels of academic and functional performance across areas that affect educational programming. From these, the committee is then able to discover deficit areas that are addressed through goals and objectives. The committee then decides the least restrictive placement in which these goals (in the form of an individual education plan or IEP) can be implemented. Committees must first consider the general education setting and then justify the reason(s) why the IEP cannot be implemented in that setting. Most of the students...