Development and social competence after two years for students enrolled in inclusive and self-contained educational programs

Inclusive programs increasingly have become available for students with severe disabilities, enabling them to receive special education services and supports in general education classes alongside their non-disabled peers. Forty students in two groups were assessed across two years of inclusive versus self-contained educational programming, comparing outcomes on measures of child development and social competence with the Scales of Independent Behavior (SIB) and the Assessment of Social Competence (ASC). Participants were assessed on the SIB and ASC, matched into pairs on chronological age and SIB total scores at first testing, and reassessed after two additional years of either inclusive or self-contained schooling. The inclusive student group made statistically significant gains on the developmental measure and realized higher social competence scores in comparison to the self-contained group at follow-up. Examination of gains on these measures irrespective of group affiliation indicated that participants made small, but significant, gains in two of four skill clusters assessed by the SIB and three of eleven dimensions of the ASC These results challenge a common assumption that self-contained settings in comparison to inclusive settings will result in superior gains on students' IEP-related skill domains. They also support previous research showing social competence gains as a function of inclusion. Results are discussed in terms of expected change over time for students with severe disabilities, the implications of variations from the group results that occurred for individual students, and future research needed on the outcomes of quality inclusive schooling for students with severe disabilities.