One of the IDEA’s main purposes is to prevent the segregation and exclusion of students with disabilities from public education, a practice that was all too common prior to the law’s enactment. To achieve this purpose, the IDEA mandates:
To the maximum extent appropriate, children with disabilities . . . are educated with children who are not disabled, and special classes, separate schooling, or other removal of children with disabilities from the regular educational environment occurs only when the nature or severity of the disability of a child is such that education in regular classes with the use of supplementary aids and services cannot be achieved satisfactorily.1
This substantive protection is known as the right to be educated in the Least Restrictive Environment (“LRE”). Notwithstanding the robust nature of this protection, courts have held that schools
need not provide every conceivable supplementary aid or service to assist the child. Furthermore, the Act does not require regular education instructors to devote all or most of their time to one [disabled] child or to modify the regular education program beyond recognition
as part of the right to education in the LRE.2 At the same time, a student in special education should not be “removed form education in age-appropriate regular classrooms solely because of needed modifications in the general education curriculum.”3 To determine if a student in special education is being educated in the LRE, one must look to the placement listed on a child’s IEP and determine if the student could be educated in a less restrictive setting with the appropriate supplementary aids and services.