The first and most fundamental step in ensuring success in education for students with mental retardation is to ensure that general and special educators approach these students with high expectations for success. Feldman, Saletsky, Sullivan, and Theiss noted that “one of the best supported findings in recent years demonstrates that the expectations that teachers hold about student performance are related to subsequent student outcomes” (1983, p. 27). Moreover, students’ expectations for their own performance are strongly correlated with teachers’ expectations for them (Wigfield & Harold, 1992). That is the reason for a strong emphasis on access to the general curriculum for students with disabilities: to raise performance outcomes by raising expectations of both teachers and students.

What do many educators expect of and from students with mental retardation? That question is not easy to answer from a data-based perspective due to the lack of such research. We do know, however, that teachers form expectations for student learning and progress according to diagnoses, independent of other information about student capacity, and that students who are diagnosed as having mental retardation are associated with the lowest expectations (Rolison & Medway, 1985). This is not news to most educators who work with students with mental retardation. Agran, Alper, and Wehmeyer (in press) surveyed teachers working with students with mental retardation and developmental disabilities about their beliefs and concerns about the IDEA access mandates and found that 68% agreed or agreed strongly when asked whether ensuring students’ access to the general curriculum would help increase educational expectations for students with limited, extensive, or pervasive support needs.

Why is this? Certainly the low expectations associated with the mental retardation diagnosis are due, probably in large part, to the fact that students with mental retardation are among the lowest performing students in the school and are, by definition, performing below grade–age norms. To hold high expectations for students with mental retardation does not mean that one should expect an 18-year-old student with limited or extensive support needs to pass grade-normed tests in trigonometry or calculus. By advocating for high expectations and access to a challenging curriculum, we are not suggesting that educators ignore students’ functional limitations. Students with mental retardation have unique learning needs that, almost by default, require curriculum modifications and alterations, primarily as a function of the students’ age and level of support needs.

Stating that students with mental retardation should be held to high expectations suggests that educators not make assumptions about student capacity based on stereotypes formed by their understanding of the diagnosis. Historically, educational diagnoses have emphasized deficits — labeling students as educable, trainable, or profoundly deficient, which created intense stigmas. When using a deficits model, it is almost inevitable that expectations for student achievement and progress will be lowered, often with good intentions. As a result, some students are provided educational experiences that match their diagnosis and not their personalized needs.

Barriers due to diagnoses and low expectations can only be removed when the focus shifts from the student as the problem to consideration of the interaction between a student’s functional limitations and the environment in which he or she lives, learns, or works. The curriculum and the classroom (whether school- or community-based) are the social contexts in which students with mental retardation learn. The first step in achieving progress in the general curriculum, then, is to examine those contexts.


References

Feldman, R.S., Saletsky, R.D., Sullivan, J., & Theiss, A. (1983). Student locus of control and response to expectations about self and teacher. Journal of Educational Psychology, 75, 27–32.

Rolison, M.A., & Medway, F.J. (1985). Teachers’ expectations and attributions for student achievement: Effects of label, performance pattern, and special education intervention. American Educational Research Journal, 22, 561–573.

Wigfield, A., & Harold, R.D. (1992). Teacher beliefs and children’s achievement self-perceptions: A developmental perspective. In D.H. Schunk & J.L. Meece (Eds.), Student perceptions in the classroom (pp. 95–121). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.