The ISSP & Pathways Commission Report - Government of ...

In the early 1970’s, this parental activism resulted in the Newfoundland andLabrador government’s giving local school boards the option to enroll children withdisabilities if they so wished (Encyclopedia of NF. V.5). This permitted schools toaccept students with disabilities if schools had the will, resources and space. Whatemerged were highly segregated classrooms in the school building known asOpportunity Classes operated by well intentioned, though often untrained, workers.Placement that resulted from this optional clause continued until 1979 when theMinister of Education amended the Schools Act by changing the word if to shall andby so doing, established mandatory education of children with disabilities inNewfoundland and Labrador schools (Philpott, 2003a).This establishing of Equal Opportunities Legislation (Rothstein, 2000) as anargument for educational rights of children with exceptionalities echoed, in itself, aglobal trend seen in countries as diverse as Britain, Africa, and Greece, and wassupported by the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child in 1979(Philpott, 2003a). The process, however, also initiated two concepts that haveremained central to special education: the individualized plan and the cascademodel.The Individualized PlanAn Individualized Education Plan (IEP) was envisioned as the framework formanagement approaches to disability services in the school setting.Originating from the 1975 American legislation as an accounting procedure toensure that funding mechanisms were properly implemented and that allocatedteachers were working with the appropriate students, the IEP grew to be the modelof documenting and accommodating a student’s individualized needs (Smith,1990). Special education teachers designed these plans, which detailed theFocusing on Students:A Report of the ISSP & Pathways Commission182