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Types of Classrooms in Special Education
Types of Classrooms in Special Education
The least restrictive service that schools can provide to a struggling child is a pull-out or push in
service. AIS (Academic Intervention Service) reading, or math, speech, physical therapy, and
resource room all fall into this category. Many schools will try one of these services first to see if a
little extra help is all the child needs to catch up.
With these services, a service provider from the school or an outside agency will either pull the child
out of class for a short session or push into the class to assist the classroom teacher. These pull-outs
or push-ins usually occur two to five days per week for about forty minutes at a time.
If a child is not showing success with the pull-out or push in service, the district might recommend an
integrated classroom. This is a general education classroom with two teachers and sometimes an aid
or a teaching assistant. Districts vary in how this model is set up. But, the class usually contains a
small number of students identified as needing special services and the remaining students being
general education students.
Both teachers are there to service the entire class. Although in some models, the special education
teacher may pull out the students with special needs for private instruction for a portion of the day.
This model allows students with special needs to participate in a general education classroom while
receiving individualized instruction to meet their needs.
The self-contained classroom is the next step in special education services. These classrooms are
usually made up of 4-12 students with one special education teacher and a few aids or teaching
assistants.
In a self-contained classroom, the instruction is individualized to the specific needs of each student.
Each student’s goals are worked on every day along with the grade level curriculum. Many schools
integrate students in a self-contained classroom with the general population for specials like gym,
art, and lunch. They may also work with a cooperating general education class for special projects or
trips.
Some self-contained classrooms have students working towards a general high school diploma while
others may be more geared towards life skills. This depends on the specific disabilities of the
students in each classroom.
Means a hearing impairment that is so severe that the child is impaired in processing linguistic
information through hearing, with or without amplification that adversely affects a child’s
educational performance.
Autism (AU)
Means a developmental disability significantly affecting verbal and nonverbal communication and
social interaction, generally evident before age three, which adversely affects a child’s educational
performance. Other characteristics often associated with autism are engagement in repetitive
activities and stereotyped movements, resistance to environmental change or change in daily
routines, and unusual responses to sensory experiences.
Deaf-Blindness (DB)
Means concomitant hearing and visual impairments, the combination of which causes such severe
communication and other developmental and educational needs that they cannot be
accommodated in special education programs solely for children with deafness or children with
blindness
Means a condition exhibiting one or more of the following characteristics over a long period of time
and to a marked degree that adversely affects a child’s educational performance:
Emotional disturbance includes schizophrenia. The term does not apply to children who are
maladjusted, unless it is determined that they have an emotional disturbance as defined in this
section.
Means a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in
using language, spoken or written, that may manifest itself in an imperfect ability to listen, think,
speak, read, write, spell, or to do mathematical calculations. This category does not include learning
problems that are primarily the result of visual, hearing, or motor disabilities, of mental retardation,
or emotional disturbance, or of environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage.
Means significantly subaverage general intellectual functioning, existing concurrently with deficits in
adaptive behavior and manifested during the developmental period, that adversely affects a child’s
educational performance.
Means concomitant impairments, the combination of which causes such severe educational needs
that they cannot be accommodated in special education programs solely for one of the impairments.
Multiple impairments does not include deaf-blindness.
Means a severe orthopedic impairment that adversely affects a child’s educational performance. The
term includes impairments caused by a congential anomaly, impairments caused by disease, and
impairments from other causes
Means an injury to the brain caused by an external physical force, resulting in total or partial
functional disability or psychosocial impairment, or both, that adversely affects the child’s
educational performance. Traumatic brain injury does not apply to brain injuries that are congenital
or degenerative, or to brain injuries by birth trauma.
Means an impairment in vision that, even with correction, adversely affects a child’s educational
performance. The term includes both partial sight and blindness.
Means a student between the ages of three through five who is evaluated as having an intellectual
disability, emotional disturbance, a specific learning disability, or autism may be described as
noncategorical early childhood. The student must meet all of the eligibility criteria for the
appropriate handicapping condition, MR, ED, LD, or AU in order to consider the use of NCEC.