Chalkbeat

The Philadelphia school district plans to wind down a special education program that separates some students with additional learning needs into their own classrooms. The program, called Intensive Learning Support (ILS), is meant to help students who are significantly behind their peers academically. Classes are generally small, with fewer than 20 students, and include special education interventions along with general curriculum instruction. The district declined to share how many students were in the program this school year. But the district plans to end the program at the end of this school year to educate more special education students alongside their peers, said Nathalie Nérée, the district’s chief of special education and diverse learners. Many ILS students will be placed into general education classrooms, which can have more than 30 students, and will get additional services throughout the school day, she said. “We look at student data, we look at their growth. For the growth of students in intensive learning support, it was minimal to none,” said Nérée. The move, Nérée said, is part of her effort to end Philly’s practice of educating a large share of special education students separately from their peers.