School Beat: Is Inclusive Education a Privilege or a Right?

“Our school does not have an inclusion program,” is the polite way the school administrators put it. But, to parents seeking an inclusive education for their children who have disabilities, it is the same as being told, “We don’t enroll their kind here.”

The Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA), the Federal law which guides special education, mandates that all children have the right to a free, appropriate public education, regardless of disabilities. It also requires that children with disabilities be educated in the “least restrictive environment,” or the setting in which children can participate with their non-disabled peers to the maximum extent possible.

As always, the devil is in the details. Sometimes parents reject the “least restrictive” placement, and have many good reasons for choosing to place their children in self-contained Special Day Classes. Sometimes districts discourage families from enrolling a child with disabilities in a general education classroom because they fear the child’s special needs will overwhelm the teacher and require more staff support to help that child achieve. Sometimes parents of non-disabled children protest when a child with disabilities is placed in their child’s classroom, believing that child will take away attention and resources from the rest of the class.

Another problem that affects the decision to place a child in a particular setting is ingrained attitudes and preconceived notions teachers and administrators in both general and special education have toward each other. Special education is seen as highly specialized, requiring separate training and teaching methods. Budgets are separate, making it difficult for the two groups to work together and cross-pollinate with each other’s ideas and methods.

What has resulted from these attitudes and organizational barriers is an educational system that offers “separate but equal” programs for students with disabilities—not out of any conscious desire to segregate, but out of a belief that students with disabilities are better served by educational programs designed expressly for them and delivered in a
special-education friendly environment.

Read More
http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=2947#more