Excerpted from chapter 2 of Teaching Students with Mental Retardation: Providing Access to the General Curriculum, by Michael L. Wehmeyer, Ph.D., with Deanna J. Sands, Ed.D., Earle Knowlton, Ed.D., & Elizabeth B. Kozleski, Ed.D.

Copyright © 2002 by Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

When discussing the design of curriculum and supports within the context of educating students with mental retardation, it is important to retain a vision of what is appropriate or desired for students with mental retardation. Knowlton (1998) proposed that the design of curricula and personalized curricular supports for students should be driven by the three Rs of personalized curricular support plans:

• The support should be rational with respect to its reliance on current performance data and future projections.
  
  
• It is responsible insofar as compliance with statutory policies and ethical principles is concerned.
  
  
• It is responsive to immediate and long-term issues in the lives of students with disabilities and their family members.

These three Rs "predicate meaningful, effective planning of curricular supports" (Knowlton, 1998, p. 96).

Teachers and administrators believe that a responsible curriculum for students with mental retardation embodies principles of individualization and personalized planning. In special education, this process has been a bottom-up affair, with the curriculum being derived from the instructional needs of the student. In addition, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) Amendments of 1997 (PL 105-17) and the principles of best practice in the education of students with mental retardation have fostered participatory planning and consensus building among key stakeholders and have been outcomes-oriented. This outcomes orientation is reflected, for example, in the IDEA 1997 transition mandates, which identify a number of outcomes (e.g., employment, postsecondary education, recreation and leisure outcomes) to be derived from transition services. Knowlton described the process of developing appropriate curricular supports as

[H]inging first on consensus-driven determination, among professionals, family members, and the student with developmental disabilities, of the degree of independence and style of life desired and then, on creative, longitudinal planning through which instructional programs, their goals and objectives, and the settings in which they will be provided are identified and sequenced. (1998, p. 95)

An educational program appropriate for students with mental retardation has been, and should remain, one in which the curriculum is individually designed and implemented with the identification and provision of continuously personalized supports toward the end of maximum independence and the highest quality of life. In addition, however, the starting point for that program needs to be the general curriculum. A discussion of what is meant by the term general curriculum and by the mandate to provide access to the general curriculum, and a discussion of ways in which teachers can ensure such access, is provided in Chapter 3. When considering, however, a vision for an appropriate curriculum for students with mental retardation, it is important to address the legitimate concern that this signals a return to a special education emphasis on remediation. The earliest approaches to educating students with mental retardation involved a remedial education focus — an attempt to increase student skills in reading, language arts, writing, and numeracy that, in essence, became a watered-down version of the general curriculum.

Unlike a watered-down version of the general curriculum, with improper emphasis on developmental prerequisites to academic skills, Knowlton (1998) suggested that effective curricular practices center on adult- and community-oriented modifications that can enhance the individual’s ultimate functioning as an adult. The use of the general curriculum as a benchmark from which personalized modifications are determined is not for the purposes of thinning it, but rather of personalizing it so that the student is taught in a manner that is keyed to "ultimate independence and lifestyle quality on the basis of rational decisions, responsive programs, and responsible compliance" (Knowlton, 1998, pp. 99–100). For a variety of reasons, many of which are discussed in Chapter 3, engaging students with mental retardation with the general curriculum is a critical feature of an appropriate educational program, not to the exclusion of an individualized, person-centered, functional, and outcomes-oriented focus, but as a starting point for consideration in addressing the individually determined needs of the students.