Placement Options: The IEP team must determine where to place the student to best achieve the goals in the least restrictive environment. IDEA requires that students be educated with their non-disabled peers unless their needs cannot be met. Schools should have a variety of placement options in order to comply to this requirement.
Residential Setting: This is the most restrictive placement option. Students live in either a school or hospital setting. This was the setting used most often for children with visual or auditory disabilities before IDEA was passed.
Home-bound Setting: Children with some disabilities or medical conditions are best placed at home. Instruction for these children is delivered by the school district.
Special Schools: Most students placed in special schools have sensory deficits, intellectual disabilities, serious emotional disturbance, and autism spectrum disorders.
Self-Contained Classroom: This option was often used prior to the passing of IDEA. Students in self-contained classrooms spend most of the day in the same classroom with the same teacher providing most of the instruction. In the past, students in self-contained classrooms were often segregated from non-disabled peers for lunch, recess, and field trips.
Resource Room: This is a pull-out model where students with disabilities spend the day in the general education classroom and are pulled out for part of the day for instruction.
Inclusion: In this model, students with disabilities belong in the general education classroom and are only pulled out if their needs cannot be met in the classroom. In the inclusion model, all students belong
Consultation-Collaboration: In this model, the special education teacher acts as a consultant to the classroom teacher. The special education teacher offers suggestion about how to meet a student's needs in the general education classroom. This model requires effective communication and time to collaborate.
Co-teaching Model: In this model, a special education teacher and a general education teacher share a classroom. Most of the time general classroom teachers are responsible for content and the special education teacher is responsible for accommodations and modifications.
Teacher Support Teams: In this model, teachers identify students with problems, present a case study, and get suggestions from other team members. Teacher teams meet weekly to discuss students and ask for suggestions. This model requires teachers to be honest with each other and open to new ideas.
Peer Support Teams: This model includes non-disabled students being peer buddies with disabled students, focusing on social supports or peer tutors.
(Smith, 2016)