Mr. Edward, most people have no idea what "mainstreaming" means. Please correct me where necessary, but I think it needs more explaining.
Before the 1990s, children with disabilities attended public school in special education centers that were staffed with teachers and aids trained to deal with unique physical, behavioral and psychological disabilities – or special needs. The challenges these children face are complex and often require individualized assistance with such things as toileting, speech, eating, hand-eye coordination and motor control (of hands and fingers so they could feed themselves, tie shoes, write etc.), and behaviour and emotional control etc. from kindergarten through high school. Sometimes two or three students was all one teacher, plus an aide could handle. Some special education classrooms required several aides. Students who acted out physically and verbally, required specially trained aides to help them regain self-control (and protect other students).
In the 1990s parents succeeded in having their special education children placed in regular public-school classrooms. Special education classrooms were expensive to staff and moving these “expensive” children into regular classrooms saved school districts so much money that few administrators complained.
Known as mainstreaming, special education students were moved to classrooms with teachers who had no specialized training – and no trained aides. Public school classrooms changed dramatically.
Unfortunately, special education students can require so much personal attention from teachers, there is less time for other students. Special needs children who act out physically or verbally, disrupt learning for all students and all children began falling behind. Students do not understand why its okay for one child to scream, or bite, or lie, or throw things and not them. As classroom management declined, student behaviour declined. To regain control of classrooms, school boards adopted zero tolerance policies, leading to increased suspensions and expulsions – at younger and younger ages.
Eventually, more and more children were diagnosed with spectrum disorders. Unfortunately, after years of mainstreaming, there was a dire shortage of special education teachers for the increasing number of special education students entering the system.
I am explaining mainstreaming. I am not blaming special education students for public school failures. That said, I remember special education centers too well to pretend that a teacher with 30 students, can provide the kind of education special needs students the help they need to succeed in life.
In my view, parents with children on the spectrum are struggling because mainstreaming has deprived their children of the daily help that was once provided at special education centers, by highly trained special education teachers and aides and administrators.
If I have the timeline correct here, the author entered education after mainstreaming. If so, she probably never saw a special education center, or classroom set up with special equipment, desks, chairs, etc. these students need.
