Join Dr. Mitch Yell as he discusses least restrictive environments for students. The IDEA has been the primary law driving the field of special education for 50 years. A contentious area of disagreement has been the relationship between two primary mandates of the law: the obligation of schools to provide a free appropriate public education (FAPE) to eligible students with disabilities and the obligation to place these students in the least restrictive environments (LRE) appropriate to each student’s individual needs. The purpose of this presentation is to examine the LRE mandate of the IDEA and to assist teachers and administrators to avoid errors in implementing the LRE mandate.