Correction:
An earlier version of this article incorrectly said that five years ago about a quarter of special-education students in Montgomery County schools were in learning centers, which offer small, self-contained classes tailored to their needs. County data show that about 7 percent of such students were in learning centers at the time. The article said that learning centers are being phased out; that is true for secondary grades but not elementary grades. It also incorrectly said that 2 percent of special-education students remain in programs that group them only with others with special needs; in fact, the share is significantly higher. And the article drew a mistaken comparison of special-needs programs and enrollment, leading to the inaccurate implication that the overall share of special-education students outside regular classes has fallen over five years from about 25 percent to 2 percent. State data show that the share of Montgomery students with disabilities ages 6 to 21 who are in regular classes less than 40 percent of the day — a government benchmark — fell from 21 percent in the 2005-2006 school year to 12 percent in the year that just ended. This version is corrected.
Video: Megan Taylor, a junior at James Hubert Blake High School in Silver Spring, is captain of her school’s corollary softball team. The modified game was designed to include athletes with special needs. Megan, who has attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, says playing on the team helps her get “closer to having fulfillment in life.”
Mohammed “Kumail” Abbas tossed a small yellow ball onto the lawn on an eye-squintingly bright afternoon outside James Hubert Blake High School in Montgomery County . He and three other students with Down syndrome were playing bocce ball, in a lesson that offered a glimpse at a traditional form of special education that is becoming less common across the country.
“What’s the name of the ball, again?” asked teacher Heather Cory.
“A pa-, pa-, pallino,’’ Kumail said, drawing a rousing “Good job!” from his teacher. When his teammate threw a larger red ball and his opponent threw a larger blue ball, Cory led a discussion on how the relationships among the balls determined a winner.
“Which one is closer to the pallino?” she asked.
In bocce, as in special education, the discussion is often about relationships.
Five years ago, Montgomery schools began phasing out “learning centers” — which offered small, self-contained classes with a pace tailored to special-needs students — for secondary grades. The new policy followed a national trend of mixing as many of those students as possible into regular classes and adding specialists to the classrooms to keep students with disabilities on track. Before the shift, 7 percent of special education students in Maryland’s largest school system were in learning centers.
Now, just 322 students remain in programs that group them only with others who have special needs. They are the outliers in an increasingly integrated education system, which makes it all the more important for teachers such as Cory to ensure that Kumail and his classmates feel empowered as individuals without feeling isolated.
“In life-skills classes, the greatest gift we can give is high self-esteem,” said George Giuliani, executive director of the National Association of Special Education Teachers. “For those who have skills but are not going off to college, we need to teach them to function independently in the world and feel like they are a part of the world.”
In this class, the students had each other. When they all agreed that the blue ball was nearer to the pallino than the red ball, Marvin Hart IV pumped his fist and called out “Yes!”
His best friend, Brandon Davis, hugged him in celebration.
Kumail lost the round. But he got so wrapped up in the excitement that he hugged them, too.
Their home base in the school year that just ended was a classroom at Blake High in Silver Spring, near the gymnasium and the dance studio. The room was filled with colorful maps of the world and the closets were stuffed with cereal, canned foods and crackers.
Kumail, 17, is shaggy-haired and quick to hug. Marvin, 19, loves to dance. Brandon, 19, always wants to help people, which explains why he went inside that spring day to beckon another student to join in bocce ball.
“Come outside with us,” he said. His voice was deep and quick, almost unintelligible.
“When you speak, you have to slow down,” his teacher told him.
Brandon followed the instructions and repeated the message. His classmate, a non-verbal student in a wheelchair, smiled and rolled himself out.
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