I am writing to provide you with some background about our
organization and its concerns. The CCEO was founded in order
to ensure that our public officials are aware of the strong
support within the special education community for maintaining
and improving the continuum of placement options mandated by
the IDEA. The CCEO now has over 1200 members. Our membership
is drawn from every county in Maryland.
We are concerned that some of the largest and best-funded
disability advocacy organizations are seeking to either
dismantle specialized pull out programs, self-contained
classrooms, and separate schools or shift funding from such
programs to fund inclusion efforts.
The CCEO recognizes that many students would benefit from
improvements in the availability and quality of inclusive
education. Accordingly, the CCEO supports those members of the
special education community who seek inclusive educational
services for their students. However, many students' needs are
best served by educating them in specialized settings such as
self-contained classrooms. It is our understanding that many,
if not most, parents of students with special needs in
Maryland are of the opinion that their children need to
receive educational or related services in specialized
settings including pull out programs, self-contained
classrooms, and schools that specialize in educating students
with special needs.
We are concerned that the strong support in Maryland's special
education community for continuing to provide educational or
related services in specialized settings is obscured by the
efforts of advocacy organizations, seeking to roll back or
dismantle the specialized programs needed by many students
with disabilities. It is our hope that the Maryland General Assembly
will recognize the depth and breadth of the support for
maintaining and improving the continuum of placement options
existing within Maryland’s special education community. It
is our opinion that those organizations supporting educational
options (including the CCEO) should be among the stakeholders
consulted on any occasions that seek public or parental input
into issues affecting special education, in particular those
affecting LRE, inclusion or the continuum of placements.
Some members of CCEO recently met with the State
Superintendent of Schools, and we are pleased that the MSDE
did not recently adopt the most onerous recommendation
contained in the Blueprint for Change (BFC), specifically, the
BFC’s recommendation to divert funding from non-public
placement to inclusion programs.
The Bridge to Excellence plans made public by Local
Educational Authorities (LEA) raise an additional concern.
Some of these plans set forth goals in which the LEA’s
success in implementing inclusion is to be measured by the
percentage of time spent in the general education setting by a
particular percentage of special education students. This
suggests that placement decisions could be made on a
categorical basis rather than the case-by-case basis mandated
by The IDEA and its implementing regulations, which mandate
that the IEP team must determine the educational placement for
each individual student based on that individual student’s
specific needs.