Montgomery County School Board members say they are interested in a survey of the county's full inclusion model used to educate students with disabilities.

"I want to know how people really feel about this," board member David Dunkenberger said at a public meeting last month. "What is this policy and how is it affecting our students?"

Inclusion, considered a philosophy in education rather than a program, is not new. Different levels of inclusion have been taking place since 1975, when Congress required that these children learn in the "least-restrictive environment."

In 1992, Montgomery County garnered national attention for its use of the model because of the documentary "Educating Peter." The film, which followed a Gilbert Linkous Elementary School student with Down syndrome as he went through third grade in a general education class, won an Oscar. The county had put inclusion into its instructional plan in 1990.

Sixteen years later, the board directed Superintendent Tiffany Anderson in early December to look into the best way to assess the practice's effect on all students and teachers.

At this time, no decision has been made to change the practice. The school board meets Jan. 6 and is expected to discuss the issue further.

The board's decision to investigate stems, in part, from concerns over a practice that allows teachers to remove an entire classroom of students when a special needs student acts up. Dunkenberger questioned the practice after it was used at a school in Shawsville and asked for more information on inclusion itself.

Christina Gilley, the county's director of special education, said removing students is not a policy but rather a practice that teachers rarely use. But, she said, it has happened.

"I taught in Montgomery County for 35 years, and I had to do it once," she said. "That would be a last-step policy in what we would call a 'crisis plan.' "

She cited medical conditions such as seizures and other potential safety risks to any student as reasons for the practice, but she said the decision is made case by case by a team of administrators, special education liaisons and teachers.

Regardless, she said she welcomes any look into her department's practices. The board has suggested a climate survey, and Gilley said there are checklists of "best practices" available as well.

"If there are issues and things we can do to grow, then we're all for it," Gilley said. "I think it's best actually for individual school sites to figure out where they are with individual services to children and make them better quality. That is going to best school-to-school or even classroom-to-classroom."

The board's request also comes a few months after state graduation results that show 69 percent of the 120 students with disabilities who entered the ninth grade four years ago actually graduated on time. Math Standards of Learning tests for students disabilities is 3 percent lower the state's target of 65 percent.

The direction comes a few months after the state released on-time graduation rates and tests scores that show the county's special education students are, in some cases, scoring lower than state averages, as well.

Gilley said those figures are something the county always works on.

Any assessment, which would be the first full-scale look into the program since 1996, isn't likely to change the practice.

"It's the law," Gilley said.

The federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act requires that students with disabilities be given "the least restrictive" environment possible and says that schools must first decide if a general education classroom works for them.

Although not all the region or the nation's schools do fully include students with disabilities in general classrooms, all are required to find the best way to reach special education students.

Gilley said placing them in general education class as much as possible, with aides, works.

In Montgomery County, 89 percent of special education students ages 6 to 21 are placed in general education classrooms for at least 80 percent of the day, according to state data. An additional 1.43 percent are in the general education classroom at least 40 percent or less during the day, according to data supplied by the school system.

The state benchmark says that 60 percent of students with disabilities should be in general classrooms for most of the day and that as few as 12 percent for 40 percent of the day.

While board members said they recognize the importance of the philosophy, some said they worry that the only measures of its effectiveness are too old.

The last comprehensive survey of the practice was done five years after inclusion began. Gilley said her department receives regular assessments, including those from the state and surveys of parent with special education students.