Educating special kids.

• Author: Gordon, Dianna
• Position: Includes related article

Including disabled children in regular classrooms instead of providing them with segregated special education has divided advocates, parents and teachers--but there's a way to make it work.

The issue seems simple--enroll disabled students, no matter the severity of their handicaps, in regular classrooms in neighborhood schools where they can interact with "normal peers" and prepare for life in the "real world."

But in the complex world of special education, the matter of inclusion is far from simple.

At village crossroads and in metropolitan centers, parents, teachers, school administrators, lawyers, judges and advocates for the disabled are taking sides. The debate on when, where and how to include special education students in general education classrooms has sometimes run hot and divisive. Parents of disabled students who were to be moved into regular classrooms led an angry crowd of about 500 people into a Maryland school board meeting. In California, the Sacramento Unified School District has spent more than half a million dollars contesting a family's demands that their 9-year-old daughter, who is mentally retarded, be placed in a regular classroom. And a circuit court of appeals judge in Philadelphia ordered that a child with Down syndrome be put back in the regular classroom despite the school attorney's arguments that the boy was "the most disruptive child you'll ever find."

Inclusion has been a concept promoted by parents, local school boards, state education departments and especially the courts.

But California Senator Dan Mc-Corquodale believes it is important that the states shape legislation to handle the matter. "If we wait for the courts or federal law, we are not serving our constituents," he contends.

And with the call to reform America's education system from the top down and ground up, constituents are demanding that legislators look closely at special education when considering education reform and finance. Teachers, parents and various advocates are asking legislators to stop abuses done in the name of including the disabled.

McCorquodale contends that, though the word "inclusion" may raise hackles, there are ways that a disabled child can join a general education class with few ill effects on the student, teacher or fellow classmates.

Model programs in Ohio, New York, California, New Mexico and other states have shown how to successfully integrate a child with disabilities into the regular classroom. Emphasis on the unique needs and abilities of each child coupled with a willing general education teacher who has received some training in dealing with the disabled, special education personnel assigned to the regular classroom when a disabled student is placed there and sensitivity training for classmates can take the negative connotation from the word.

McCorquodale, a former special education teacher, criticizes the current system of education where the disabled are segregated from other children.

"As far as disabled people being a part of our society, one of the biggest gaps is when they are still in school," he explains. "I've heard some of our disabled youngsters being referred to as the |Outhouse Kids' because they are educated in separate buildings."

Taking Sides

One of the barriers to inclusion is fear--fear of past abuses and neglect of the handicapped, fear that removing a disabled child from the classroom will result in a lawsuit based on civil rights violations, fear on the part of teachers that they will not be able to cope with severely disabled or emotionally disturbed children in their classrooms and parents' fears that their children needing special help will slip through the cracks of the general education system.

On the one side, pushing for full inclusion of the youth with severe cerebral palsy, the quadriplegic, the child who faces extreme disabilities are parents and advocates of children who have never been allowed to go to school with other kids in the neighborhood.

Such a youngster is Paul Price, a 15-year-old paraplegic who needs a ventilator to breathe and receives medication through a tube in his stomach. Taught in his Florida home, the boy is so starved for companionship that he hands out business cards reading: "Call me for good conversation." Paul's mother believes he should be able to attend his neighborhood school and make friends his own age.

Parents point out that their disabled children must learn to survive in "the real world" in spite of handicaps, and that they need the social skills and experiences to be gained by attending school with normal peers.

Supporters also note handicapped students in the class bring "average" children a new perspective and...