students with disabilities
During the early years of education, children with disabilities have not always been welcome in public schools, let alone in general classrooms. Until 1975, when congress passed the Education of All Handicapped Children Act, only a few states thought it was necessary that any educational services at all be provided to the students with disabilities. In many school districts students with some type of disability had to meet the minimum standards; students who did not meet this standard were simply turned away. Parents of children with disabilities like, severe mental retardation, mental illness, or physical disabilities did not have many choices. ... For many years, the American society did not have to deal with its sense of right and wrong with respect to its citizens with severe disabilities. ... As society became more industrialized and educational reforms required school attendance, the academic problems of students with disabilities became increasingly more noticeable. ... These students were placed in special education classrooms where they were isolated, and self-contained from the general students. ... Many of these students also included children from minority groups whose first language was not English, and children of poverty, all of whom were labeled EMR (educable mentally retarded) and removed from the regular educational classrooms. ... In the late 1960¡¦s, special education classrooms were created to meet the needs of children with disabilities, however while the majority of the students were carefully tested and placed, many educators raised concerns that some of these children may have been misplaced in special education classrooms. The misplacement of students in special education may be a problem in that it can deny the student the high quality in learning to which he/she is entitled to. ... A high percentage of the students taught by these teachers were children from low-status backgrounds that included: African-Americans, Mexicans, American Indians, whose first language was not English, and other non-middle class environments. Between the teacher and the minority students, there was often a lack of understanding between them with respect to cultural values, acceptable behaviors in the school, and educational expectations. This may have resulted in negative judgments made by the teacher to place these students in special education classrooms. Some of the problems that contributed to the placement of these students were rooted in social economic structure of the country. By placing these minority groups in special education classrooms the classrooms were getting overcrowded and unmanageable for the students to learn. ... Although many of the students were carefully tested and placed in the appropriate special education classrooms, the sometimes inappropriate placement of students of the minority group in the judgmental categories of mental retardation and severe learning disabilities has to be addressed.