The Division for Early Childhood of CEC has a position paper on inclusion that includes the following statement:
“Ideally, the
principle of natural proportions should guide the design of inclusive
early childhood programs. The principle of
natural proportions means the inclusion of
children with disabilities in proportion to
their presence in the general population."
The
DEC guidance is a philosophical one.
No research studies have systematically compared different proportions. About
the only things that can be said from research are that (a) inclusion has
resulted in increased social and functional skills for children with
disabilities, compared to self-contained programs; (b) it has resulted in more
altruism and “acceptance” (hard to measure) by children without disabilities,
compared to programs with no children with disabilities; and (c) old studies of
early childhood special ed settings that might or might not have included
children without disabilities (i.e., reverse mainstream, special-ed-oriented
classrooms) were of lower quality than were inclusive settings.
So
what are ideal ratios? Philosophically, some people, like DEC, say natural
proportions. Programmatically, some people like me prefer a setting where there
are enough children with disabilities that all children benefit from the good
things that come from early childhood special education (e.g., individualization,
specialized information to teachers—from therapists or itinerant ECSE teachers,
family-centered practices, effective instruction) and retain the good
things that come from early childhood education (e.g., developmentally
appropriate practice to promote play, emergent literacy and numeracy, and
social-emotional development). This percentage of children with
disabilities rarely should exceed 50% or it is in danger of becoming too
focused on special ed. The key ingredients in an ideal program, then, are the
two sets of examples I’ve just given. There is no ideal ratio.
