Abstract
Access to the general education curriculum for students with extensive support needs is an educational right under IDEA. It also has been researched extensively and proven to provide positive outcomes for students with extensive support needs when compared to less inclusive or educationally fit models. Despite its importance, students with extensive support needs do not always access the general education curriculum for a variety of factors. Barriers exist such as lack of collaboration time between special education teachers and general education teachers, as well as educator understandings of what accessing the general education curriculum means. In addition, a wide variety of supports and instructional strategies exist to support students with extensive support needs, but educators are not always aware or confident in implementing these strategies. This study investigated the extent to which participants in high schools in a single district in the greater Sacramento area agreed or disagreed with findings in the existing literature surrounding issues of access to the general education curriculum for students with extensive support needs. Invited participants were general education teachers, special education teachers, paraeducators, and administrators. Participants agreed that access to the general education curriculum for students with extensive support needs is important, but needed more collaboration time among educators to properly support these students. Knowledge of instructional tools to support specific content areas was also identified as an area of improvement for the study participants in order to better support these students. Limitations of the study and possible areas of future research are also discussed.