| Identifying curricular priorities for students with severe disabilities has always been a challenge to those responsible for planning their instruction. Among the learning challenges of this population of students are significant difficulties with the acquisition, maintenance and generalization of skills. Often students learn only that which is directly taught; incidental learning cannot be expected. Consequently, careful decisions have to be made regarding the most important skills to teach to maximize their potential and to assure that instructional time is not wasted on what is not critical to daily life functioning.
Initially, program planners focused on basic areas of skill development including motor, social, communication, and self care skills and pre-academic skill instruction. Often program planners followed models of normal development in which the same skills taught to typically developing students were taught to students with severe disabilities, but at a slower rate. Critics, however, pointed out that this rarely resulted in students learning functional skills that would enable them to be as independent as possible. Brown, Nietupski, and Hamre-Nietupski (1976) emphasized that instead instruction should target skills that meet the criterion of ultimate functioning which are "the ever changing, expanding, localized, and personalized cluster of factors that each person must possess in order to function as productively and independently as possible in socially, vocationally, and domestically integrated adult community environments" (pg. 6). The focus on functional skills meant that instruction must address skills in the context of socially valid, functional life activities.
This criterion remains critical and many program planners have been successful in designing instructional programs in a way that focuses on functional skill instruction while at the same time teaching basic and academic skills (e.g., teaching communication and measuring skills while cooking, teaching reading skills while teaching appropriate ordering skills in a restaurant). At times, however, instruction in academic skills have been de-emphasized, or even omitted. Many students with the most severe cognitive disabilities have not been provided with the same opportunities as other non-disabled students to have access to the general education curriculum, and for some, this resulted in a further handicapping of these students. We did not expect the students would learn to read and they did not!
In response to that, The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1997 and No Child Left Behind legislation mandated that students, including those with severe disabilities, must have access to the general education curriculum. Subsequently, states have established academic standards, and schools and districts are held accountable for the performance of all students, including those students with the most severe cognitive disabilities, on statewide assessments on those standards. This notion has been a source of confusion and concern for many program planners. When considering the priority needs of some students, learning to read or add seems far less important than learning to lift one's head or developing a consistent method of responding. Many teachers have argued that teaching academic skills is not functional for some students and not critical for survival. It is important to note that present laws do not specify that we are to no longer teach functional skills to students with the most severe cognitive disabilities. Instead we are asked to not summarily dismiss academic instruction for some students, and that we carefully reconsider some of our prior beliefs about what it is possible for students, even those with the most severe disabilities, to achieve. The IEP continues to be the tool that is used by teams to articulate priority objectives for each student, on an individualized basis. Educational program planners, including parents and guardians, must consider each student's needs related to both academic skills and functional skills, and make individualized decisions regarding the proportion of time spent on each area. For most students with the most severe cognitive disabilities, a combination of academic and functional skills is considered to be appropriate. Figure 1 is a graphic designed to aid program planners in thinking about the relationship between academic standards, functional skills, IEPs, and assessment methods. |
