Why the Philadelphia school district will phase out a special education program

“Sign up for Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s free newsletter to keep up with the city’s public school system. The Philadelphia school district plans to wind down a special education program that separates some students with additional learning needs into their own classrooms. The program, called Intensive Learning Support or ILS, is meant to boost students who are significantly academically behind their peers. Classes are generally small, with fewer than 20 students, and include special education interventions along with general curriculum instruction. The district declined to share how many students were in the program this school year. But the district plans to end the program at the end of this school year in an effort to educate more special education students alongside their peers, said Nathalie Nérée, the district’s chief of special education and diverse learners. Many ILS students will be placed into general education classrooms, which can have more than 30 students, and will get additional services throughout the school day, she said. “We look at student data, we look at their growth. For the growth of students in intensive learning support, it was minimal to none,” said Nérée. The district looks at students’ standardized test scores and progress on their Individualized Education Program goals to monitor growth. The move, Nérée said, is part of her effort to end Philly’s practice of educating a large share of special education students separately from their peers. Including all students in mainstream classrooms is backed by a body of research that has found students with disabilities benefit socially and cognitively when they learn in a general education environment. But some experts contest those findings, and several Philly teachers said they feared the decision would leave students without necessary support and stretch teachers impossibly thin. The change does not impact what services and how many hours of support students in ILS classes are supposed to receive. Rather, it would largely reorganize when and how students receive those interventions. Officials want special education teachers to “push in” support to general education classrooms and “pull out” students to receive additional services. The district would mostly reassign ILS teachers to learning support positions to provide these services. The program supports students who are several grades behind in some academic skills, like literacy. But in some schools, ILS has “become a bit of a dumping ground” for students whose needs are not well understood, said one ILS teacher who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because she was not authorized by the district to speak publicly. The teacher said she believed some of her students could thrive in a general education classroom too, so long as they got the additional support they needed. But she feared the district does not have enough resources or staff to guarantee that. “There are certain kids who are just going to get lost, who do need more support,” she said. Philly wants more students with disabilities in general education Nérée said her commitment is to work with every school and family to ensure kids get the special education services they need while accessing high-quality curriculum. But she also said she worries about how much the district has historically relied on separating kids with disabilities and additional learning needs from their peers to educate them. Federal law requires that students with disabilities learn alongside their general education peers, in what’s called the “least restrictive environment,” as much as possible. But in Philadelphia last school year, fewer than 40% of the district’s 23,000 special education students spent the vast majority of their school time in general education classrooms, according to state data . That’s a far smaller proportion than the state average of 60%. It means Philly’s special education students spend more time secluded from their peers than in most other districts. Since Nérée joined the district in 2023, she said she has been working to undo a system that frequently separates special education students. Assigning students to ILS classes was meant to give students extra help to reach grade level academic skills, “not a forever sentence of being in a segregated classroom,” said Nérée. “Unfortunately, there are places where that’s what it resulted in.” The wind down of the ILS program doesn’t put an end to all separate special education classrooms. There will still be other kinds, including autistic support, life skills, and emotional support classes. Some ILS students could attend these classes if their evaluation team determines it would be the best fit, Nérée said. Margie Wakelin, senior attorney in the Philadelphia office of the Education Law Center, said she supports Nérée’s focus on including more students with disabilities in general education classes. But she said the district needs to provide more resources, like staff training and support teachers, for that effort to be successful. “It’s not just an easy, ‘Oh, we’ll close out a program, and then these kids will be included,’’’ said Wakelin. “Time and time and time again, we’ve learned that inclusion works, but it takes thoughtfulness, it takes resources, it takes support for these kids to be successful.” Views differ on best approach to special education The change is part of a national conversation — still hotly debated — about how best to educate students with disabilities. Many experts and advocates have long urged schools to include special needs students alongside their general education peers, and studies have supported that strategy . But other experts question that approach. Douglas Fuchs, a fellow at the American Institutes for Research and a research professor at Vanderbilt University, said there is no conclusive evidence that students with disabilities do better in general education classrooms. Fuchs’s review of research into inclusion , published last year, found the method of how schools teach those students can make a difference. Research shows that intensive, systematic, and consistent instruction can help boost the achievement of students with disabilities. But that kind of instruction is often difficult to provide in crowded general education classrooms, he said. Moving special needs students from an intensive environment like ILS to larger general education classes is “precisely the wrong strategy,” he said. That’s the concern some Philly teachers have as well. One ILS teacher said leaders at her school have told her to recommend all her students to general education classrooms for next year. But she disagrees with that directive. Some of her students, who are middle-school-aged, are still working on writing their names and addresses. “My kids could never be successful in those rooms,” she said. Rebecca Redelmeier is a reporter at Chalkbeat Philadelphia. She writes about public schools, early childhood education, and issues that affect students, families, and educators across Philadelphia. Contact Rebecca at rredelmeier@chalkbeat.org .

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