The emergence of the standards-based reform movement has raised a number of issues related to the design of educational programs for students with severe disabilities, and a debate has arisen that presents an ''either/or'' choice between the general education curriculum and an ecological curricular framework that has traditionally guided curriculum development. In this paper, the authors propose that, to adequately meet the needs of students with moderate to severe disabilities, an ecological approach focusing on quality of life outcomes must be reconciled with the development and implementation of standards-based academic curricula. To accomplish this reconciliation, the authors recommend that individualized education plan teams engage in a process that allows them to work within an ecological curricular framework to develop standardsbased goals that reflect meaningful knowledge and skills that are tailored to students' individual needs and applicable to their everyday lives. They propose that quality of life goals expand beyond home, friendships, community participation, and work to include academic goals that are life enriching and promote lifelong learning that can be linked to a broader range of subject area domains in the core curriculum. In addition, they suggest instructional approaches that promote effective instruction and generalized outcomes for both academic and functional skills. Finally, they outline a number of issues that require additional reflection, discussion, and research.DESCRIPTORS: ecological curricular framework, standard-based academic goals, quality of life, instructional strategies, generalizationThe ecological framework for curriculum development for students with severe disabilities emerged in the late 1970s in response to the concerns of advocates and researchers that traditional developmental and academic curricular approaches for this group of students had not lead to significant improvements in their quality of life (Brown et al., 1979). In contrast to developmental and academic curricular models that focused on teaching students a predetermined sequence of skills, the ecological framework was structured to identify and teach the routines, activities, and skills that students needed to learn to support their full participation in home, school, work, and community settings. The educational planning process was dynamic and took into account a number of factors including the students' and their family's preferences, needs, and resources; the opportunities and supports that were available to the students in their community; and the students' long-term goals and aspirations. Educational goals were not driven by a specific curricular sequence but rather were based on a student's individual needs. The effectiveness of an educational program was evaluated in terms of its impact on promoting a student's use of community resources, ability to live where and with whom he or she chooses, opportunity to have paid employment in typical businesses and industries, and his or her independence a...
