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In this article, Dorothy Kerzner Lipsky and Alan Gartner discuss recent developments in special education and measure them against their inclusionary model. This article expands and updates their 1987 HER article, "Beyond Special Education: Toward a Quality System for All Students, " a review of the implementation of PL 94-142, which, though the basis for placement in the least restrictive environment, in fact provided legal support for the development of separate educational systems for students with special needs. Here, Lipsky and Gartner continue their argument that the special education model must not separate those with special needs. They argue that inclusion provides all students with a quality education that is both individual and integrated, citing recent court cases that support their contention that all students can and should be educated in the same classroom. Lipsky and Gartner conclude by showing how their inclusionary model adds to the school restructuring debate, which until now has excluded any mention of students with disabilities. They believe that special education should be viewed as a matter of social justice and equity, and see inclusion as a way of both restructuring education and remaking American society.
Inclusion and participation are essential to human dignity and to the enjoyment and exercise of human rights. Within the field of education, this is reflected in the development of strategies that seek to bring about a genuine equalization of opportunity. ("Salamanca Statement," 1994, p. 11)
A decade ago, in this journal, we reviewed the education of students with disabilities. We concluded:
It is our belief that the attitudes and assumptions about the disabled and disability require change, as do inadequacies in general and special education practice. The need for such changes is both consequence and cause of a unitary system, thereby encouraging the production of an education model for all students -- supple, variegated, and individualized - in an integrated setting. (Gartner & Lipsky, 1987, p. 368)
In this present article, we review developments in special education over the past ten years. In so doing, we examine data from longitudinal studies, review a series of court decisions that have challenged the current organization of special education programs, identify the increasing involvement of the disability rights movement in special education issues, discuss the views...