Evaluating Co-teaching as a Means for Successful Inclusion of Students with Disabilities in a Rural District

With the opportunity for a special education teacher to teach side-by-side with a general education teacher at every grade level, "the district is providing [an intensive support system] for our children with disabilities to join their non-disabled peers in a least restrictive environment." The special educator "is a co-teacher in a heterogeneous classroom with a general education teacher, and provides expertise for the special education students who are on that grade level. Although only one-third of the students have IEP's [in any given classroom], the special education teacher also provides resources as a preventive measure for those students who are not classified," but struggling. By the adding this teacher to the classroom, "the student-teacher ratio is lower and the students [often] have services provided in the classroom instead of being pulled out" (Eaton, 2001).

In the middle school classrooms (grades 6, 7, and 8), there is a special education teacher at each grade level and a teaching assistant at Grade 6, who also has elementary teacher certification. The additional teaching assistant is needed due to a higher percentage of students with mild disabilities identified at that grade level. The special education teacher follows the students with greater academic needs through their general education classes each day. Simultaneously, the teaching assistant follows the rest of these students through their daily schedules. These teachers participate in advisory groups, grade-level team meetings, and study groups, so they can communicate with their peers generally about students having difficulties. Co-teaching also has begun in high school classrooms, but was not included in this evaluation.

Evaluating the Co-teaching Model

In 1997, Geneseo Central administrators were interested in a formative and summative evaluation of the co-teaching component of their special education reform effort. Two local university professors were hired and assisted the administration in the design of the evaluation. Table 1 lists the goals and objectives of the co-teaching program.

The evaluators developed a variation on the CIPP model of program evaluation (Stufflebeam, 1983), a management-oriented approach to evaluation designed to address the administration's goals and objectives (Worthen, Sanders, & Fitzpatrick, 1997). Table 2 lists the evaluation questions that were created to address the goals and objectives of Geneseo's co-teaching program as well as the methods used to address each question.

As seen in Table 2, the evaluation incorporated a mix of quantitative and qualitative measures to answer questions about the structure of the co-teaching program (input questions), the implementation of the program (process questions), and the results of the program (output questions). The evaluation was conducted over a two-year period in the elementary and middle schools, with periodic reports to administration and yearly reports to the Board of Education. The high school was scheduled to adopt the co-teaching model in the third year of implementation.