What are effective methods for accommodating students with disabilities in inclusive settings?
“When IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) was implemented in the 1977-1978 school year and until sometime in the mid-1980’s, the term that described the education of students with disabilities with those who did not have disabilities was mainstreaming, defined as the educational arrangement of placing handicapped students in regular classes with their nonhandicapped peers to the maximum extent appropriate’. Typically, mainstreaming was implemented by having students with disabilities participate in the nonacademic portions of the general education program, such as art, music, and physical education. Most of those students were, however, still enrolled in self-contained special education classes; they “visited” general education classes for a relatively small portion of time. For many educators and parents, mainstreaming provided far too little and came much too late for the students. Sometime in the mid-1980’s, their impatience became evident in a movement known as the “
