The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act which governs and guides the entire special education process mandates that public schools must offer multiple placement settings for delivering services to students with disabilities. For those with visual impairments, there are four service delivery models employed and each offer a different level of direct services. From most direct services to least, these options are the consultant model, itinerant services, resource room, and the residential or day program specially designed setting.
The consultant model employs a transdisciplinary approach to service delivery in which a single adult provides all instruction, support, and services to the student and family. This way, as few service providers as possible actually interact with the child so there is consistency in routine. Other team members like the TVI collaborate with one chosen team member who is usually the room’s educational aid or the general education teacher. Those professionals inform the representative on how to enhance access to instruction, then that person is the one to interact directly with the student. All Instruction takes place within the general classroom environment with no service being provided in a pull-out capacity or separate area. Some special education teachers still refer to these situations as “inclusion classes”. Though this approach involves the least direct service from a teacher of the visually impaired to the student, it can be effective for higher functioning students who already have most of the skills they need to function at an equivalent level to sighted peers. Needed supports can be provided with the least interruption to a typical school experience.
The majority of visually impaired students are served through itinerant services where they spend nearly all their time in general classroom settings with occasional pull-out sessions with a teacher of the visually impaired or orientation and mobility instructor. These service providers travel around between different schools and districts to visit the students on their caseload and provide vision specific instruction. In theory, students being served under this model should be able to operate well within the general school environment: managing their own equipment and materials, and requiring very little in terms of instructional support to access class work beyond what is provided to all students. But the reality is that in most cases, itinerant services are what is offered and many families do not know of other options to request when their child isn’t doing well. The family will likely need to fight with the IEP team at the school to adjust the frequency and duration of service delivery to meet the needs of the individual student. The advantages of the itinerant model include a high level of inclusion with the general school community while still getting some direct services. These students can attend their local LEA with siblings or neighborhood friends and are not singled out by going to a special room. Disadvantages include limited interaction time with the vision specialist and less frequent opportunities for vision specific expanded core curriculum instruction. These students may develop stronger independence as they have to advocate for their own needs and take care of vision related issues without the help of a TVI or O&M. But they also may receive less support from teachers than they need and be less confident in vision enhancement or substitution techniques.
The resource room approach to service delivery involves bringing the visually impaired students of a certain region to one particular school in the district that has a TVI on staff with their own classroom. Most of the students still visit general classrooms with sighted peers during some part of the day but report to the TVI’s resource room for vision specific instruction on a regular basis. This lets them benefit from disability specific expertise while getting a relatively typical school experience. The advantages include more frequent, consistent, and thorough ECC instruction, the chance to build lasting relationships with vision professionals and get to know other students who also have visual impairments. The disadvantages include not always being able to attend the closest or neighborhood school that siblings are attending, and the expense of maintaining the arrangement with the resources involved in keeping the program going.
Special settings such as schools for the blind that offer residential and day programs were once the primary place of education for these students. Now-a-days, they have become largely centers for students with additional disabilities. These programs offer the highest concentration of vision specific expertise with most teachers having certification as TVI’s, O&Ms, or other similar fields in addition to their content specific credential. Staff at these facilities have significant more experience adapting the environment for students with visual difficulties, using non-visual instructional strategies, and creating accessible materials. Many direct services and resources are available to students on a regular basis at these schools. Another benefit for the students is the opportunity to learn and socialize with other children who have similar challenges and experiences to their own. Disadvantages include not attending the neighborhood school in their local home community and having fewer opportunities to be exposed to and interact with the general public and non-disabled peers. For residential programs, a potentially huge disadvantage is having to live away from parents and siblings during the school week if the family does not live nearby.
If given the chance to choose between these three options, it is important to note that one model is not necessarily “better” than another in a general sense, but one of them is “best” for one individual student. The goal of choosing an option is to determine what will constitute the “Least Restrictive Environment” for that student. In other words, which placement provides them with the greatest balance between effective learning in the general curriculum and provision of the services that enables progress to be made in academics and life skills to occur. Each of these four models have their own advantages and disadvantages, the objective is to determine the one that lets the student operate at their highest degree of functioning. Although in many places, such as rural areas with few low-incidence disability students in the district, only one or two of these options are available and many families are not give an opportunity to voice a preference without active advocacy.