Abstract
Access to education provides many benefits and opportunities for an individual and the community in which they reside. Making access to education to all humans, regardless of race, sex, disability, or socioeconomic status, in everyone's best interest in a community. Before 1975, many states in the United States of America prohibited children that were blind, deaf, emotionally disturbed, or mentally retarded from attending public school, in fact only one in five children with an identified disability was able to attend public school in this time (Aaron & Loprest, 2012). In 1975, federal law was created to ensure access for students with disabilities over the years this law was amended and renamed into what we know today as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) ensuring that children with disabilities in the United States are guaranteed free appropriate public education (FAPE) in the least restrictive environment (LRE) (IDEA, 2004). This law established the framework for a system for children with disabilities to access education via Special Education and Related Services. Laudan Aron and Pamela Loprest author the article "Disability and the Education System,” in 2012 assessing how well the nations education system is serving students with disabilities. Their work unveils the financial issues that create the imbalance of what school districts can afford to provide and what a child may need to access FAPE in and LRE leading to these students being behind and often held to lower expectations than their non-disabled peers (Aron, & Loprest 2012). Access to public education is a civil right in the United States of America together those responsible for serving students within the education system must identify and craft solutions to improve our public education system. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to assess if the perceived leisure and recreation deficits of students within Special Education make a case for these students to receive Recreational Therapy services as a related service on an Individualized Education Program (IEP) to help them access FAPE in and LRE. The perceptions of deficits are captured through the lens of the Special Education Teacher via a survey tool. Data for this study was collected by the researcher using a virtual quantitative survey designed within Qualtrics and distributed through email to school districts within California, Twin Rivers Unified School District, Sacramento County office of Education, Sacramento City Unified School District, El Dorado Union High School District, and Elk Grove Unified School District. The survey tool used is a sixteen-question instrument designed to measure Special Education Teachers perceptions of leisure deficits about their students. In analyzing the data, the findings identified that the Special Education Teachers perceived that Recreational Therapy would benefit students receiving special education services. One hundred percent of the respondents identified that students would benefit from assistance with developing various leisure skills that a Recreational Therapist is qualified to address in their practice.