The Four A’s of Managing the Placement and Service of Students with Disabilities in the CTE Classroom

Newly hired secondary career and technical education (CTE) instructors are often surprised by the rate at which students with disabilities enroll in their classes. While many educators see CTE as a logical placement for stu-dents who are otherwise aca-demically unsuccessful, the CTE teacher is too often unprepared for serving this population. Alter-native routes of CTE teacher li-censure often leave these teach-ers feeling unsure and ineffec-tive. This article discusses con-cerns about this issue and in-cludes an easy, four-step model CTE teachers serving students with disabilities can use to be more effective overall: 1) Orient staff who refer students to CTE programs and assist them in placement decisions; 2) Obtain assistance in imple-menting Individual Education Plan (IEP) accommodations; 3) Assess the appropriateness of the accommodations, record and make recommendations to the IEP team; and 4) Act as an advocate for the stu-dent in counseling and IEP de-velopment procedures. Enrollment Disparities In examining the enrollment trends of students with disabili-ties in career and technical edu-cation (CTE), Levesque (2003) reported that in 1998, students with disabilities represented 2.8 % of all high school gradu-ates and 4.2 % of those complet-ing occupational programs. Fur-thermore, Levesque reported that 37.5 % of students with dis-abilities were entered into CTE programs, compared to 24.6 % of non-disabled students; the stu-dents with disabilities earned an average of 5.9 CTE credits, sub-stantially higher than the 3.9 CTE credits earned by their non-disabled peers. In a study of attitudes of principals and special education teachers related to inclusion activities, Cook, Semmel, and Gerber (1999) reported that spe-cial education teachers often perceived the administrators’ motivation to implement inclu-sion activities as cost-cutting, while regular education teach-ers saw it as the “dumping ” of students into classes. Althoug