Successful Inclusion for Educational Leaders

Nearly 25 years ago, the Congress and president of the United States declared the public policy of this nation to be one of access to public education forallchildren. Only when the educational needs of a child with disabilities cannot be appropriately met with peers in a public school educational setting may the child be educated in alternative settings. Even segregated settings must provide for meaningful interaction with typical peers. This enunciation of public policy has resulted in a degree of tension between some educators who would exclude those students who present challenges to their traditional teaching methods and those educators, who in the absence of a justifiable educational reason, disavow the exclusion of children from an educational setting with their peers. This tension is most easily identified in the outworn and legally questionable concept of "mainstreaming." Although the laws of the nation and most states require that students with disabilities be educated in regular education settings "to the maximum extent appropriate," a contrary practice was established. It recognized a "two box" model of regular education and special education, in which both seldom occurred in the same place at the same time. Instead, under the mainstreaming concept, it was expected that children with disabilities would be educated with peers without disabilities only when they could exhibit the proper conduct and could acquire an academic level commensurate with their peers. In the minds of many educators, students with disabilities were expected to "earn" their way into a regular class setting. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, after 15 years under the national legislation, court interpretations suddenly collided with educators' complacent thinking. The courts ruled that no matter what the concept was called, the process had to be revised. Instead of a child with disabilities having to earn the right to be in a classroom with peers, all considerations of child placement were to begin with the child being placed in the regular class or activity setting. Only when the regular school setting was deemed not appropriate, for an educationally justifiable reason, could an education for the child even be considered in a special setting. No court interpretation or administrative agency interpretation of special education law has ever found that "full inclusion" (all children with disabilities educated in the regular education classroom they would attend if not disabled) is required. Although the authors of this book salute those who attempt full inclusion, they do not endorse it in its strictest sense as an educationally viable concept. There are some students with disabilities whose needs are such that their presence in a regular class or activity setting is not educationally justifiable or appropriate. The current approach of presuming regular education placement as the first choice has caught many educators, in both special and regular education, unprepared. This was not the paradigm in which most educators had been trained. This was not the system in which many had spent their professional life. That was not what many were ready to implement. Thus, a large part of new interpretations and understandings of education for children with disabilities has been either rejected or ignored by many practitioners, in both regular and special education. We sincerely believe that much of the reluctance of educators to embrace and practice what has been legally mandated--but largely ignored for 25 years--is not based in laziness, uncaring attitude, or evil intent. Rather it is based in inexperience and the inertia of organizational structures. The purpose ofSuccessful Inclusion for Educational Leadersis to provide background information on legal mandates, with the current status of law stated as clearly as possible, and to point toward successful solutions based in research and best pracBartlett, Larry Dean is the author of 'Successful Inclusion for Educational Leaders', published 2001 under ISBN 9780130404886 and ISBN 0130404888.