Overview

Law, policy, and practice in the United States has long held that students with disabilities – including those with intellectual disabilities – have the right to a free and appropriate public education, in a non-restrictive environment. Yet very few of these students are fully included in general education classrooms. Educational systems use loopholes to segregate students; universities regularly fail to train teachers to include students; and state regulators fail to provide the necessary leadership and funding to implement policies of inclusion. Whatever Happened to Inclusion? reports on the inclusion of students with intellectual disabilities from national and state perspectives, outlining the abject failure of schools to provide basic educational rights to students with significant disabilities in America. The book then describes the changes that must be made in teacher preparation programs, policy, funding, and local schools to make the inclusion of students with intellectual disabilities a reality.

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9781433104350

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Reviews

A state of the union on inclusion, this book issues a report card for the nation's schools. Phil Smith weaves a compelling story told in numbers about the lack of progress made in including all students, particularly those with intellectual disabilities, in the general education classroom. Contributing authors contextualize this larger story by focusing on the state of inclusion in particular contexts... Smith and his contributors convincingly document small moments of possibility and progress, as well as the incessant backwards pull toward the status quo of segregated special education. Smith shows how the general education classroom remains a sacrosanct space - exclusionary, normative, and unyielding - and the disparate impact such exclusionary policies and practices have on students of color and students with disabilities... Smith concludes this groundbreaking work with a set of guiding practices great and small that we can (and must) do as communities, as teacher educators, as policy makers, and as teachers to finally realize the promise of inclusion. (Beth Ferri, Associate Professor in the School of Education, Syracuse University)

A state of the union on inclusion, this book issues a report card for the nation's schools. Phil Smith weaves a compelling story told in numbers about the lack of progress made in including all students, particularly those with intellectual disabilities, in the general education classroom. Contributing authors contextualize this larger story by focusing on the state of inclusion in particular contexts... Smith and his contributors convincingly document small moments of possibility and progress, as well as the incessant backwards pull toward the status quo of segregated special education. Smith shows how the general education classroom remains a sacrosanct space - exclusionary, normative, and unyielding - and the disparate impact such exclusionary policies and practices have on students of color and students with disabilities... Smith concludes this groundbreaking work with a set of guiding practices great and small that we can (and must) do as communities, as teacher educators, as policy makers, and as teachers to finally realize the promise of inclusion. (Beth Ferri, Associate Professor in the School of Education, Syracuse University)

Author Information

The Editor: Phil Smith teaches special education at Eastern Michigan University, with an emphasis on inclusive education, families with members with disabilities, disability studies, and overrepresentation. His research interests include the representation of research; ways in which people with disabilities experience choice, control, and power in their lives; normal theory; disability and education policy; and cultural understandings of disability. Smith has been published widely in a variety of journals and books, presented locally and around the country, and does training and presentations on person-centered planning, circles of support, disability rights, and a host of other areas. He has worked as an inclusion specialist in schools, a service coordinator, and an independent support broker.

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