Beyond Special Education: Toward a Quality System for All Students

Abstract

A review of a decade's experience with the implementation of PL 94-142 provides an opportunity to assess the process of providing education to students with handicapping conditions and to study the larger general education system. In addition, such a review offers an opportunity to examine changes in the place of persons with disabilities in American society. Alan Gartner and Dorothy Kerzner Lipsky find both the practice and conceptualization of a separate special education system wanting, and they propose a single system, special for all students.

Ethics and Special Education

“…The empirical case has been debated pro and con (Danforth, 1997;Fuchs & Fuchs, 1995;Carnine, 1991;Gartner & Lipsky, 1987;Stainback & Stainback, 1992;Kauffman, 1999). Although the empirical response is necessarily part of an answer, it is far from sufficient.…”

“…Some have viewed it as a valued set of programs with an empirically validated knowledge base for practice (Carnine, 1991), meeting the unmet needs of children in school who otherwise would be unserved in the general education system (Kauffman & Hallahan, 1995;Lieberman, 1992). Others have viewed special education as having served a purpose in the history of education but now as defeating the social egalitarian goals of education by keeping some students away from their age peers and the general education curriculum (Gartner & Lipsky, 1987;Pugach & Warger, 1996). Still others have been more harsh, damning it as a racist bureaucracy, stigmatizing and segregating African American boys, and violating the rights of children (Granger & Granger, 1986;Grossman 1998;Johnson 1969)-and ineffective at best (Van Doninck, 1983).…”

Knowledge and Perceptions of Students with Disabilities in Regard to a Resource Room in a Private School

“…Board of Education to argue that students with disabilities had the same rights, yet were being treated differently and were not given an education equal to that of students without disabilities (Yell et al, 1998 (Gartner & Lipsky, 1987). The idea of equal opportunity in education was not applied to students with disabilities until sixteen years after the Brown decision (Yell et al, 1998).…”

Finding a Student Voice in School Reform: student disaffection, pathologies of disruption and educational control

“…The dubious form and administration of psychometric testing (Gould, 1981;Gartner & Lipsky, 1987;de Swaan, 1990) has become a respectable normalising 'dividing practice' to objectify knowledge about the subject and to legitimate failure as a pathological condition. Failure is thereby depoliticised and attached to individuals who exhibit special educational needs (SEN) (Barton, 1987).…”

“…The professional interest in the expanding area of behaviour disorder is implied (Tomlinson, 1992;Slee & Cook, 1993). Gartner & Lipsky (1987) delineate the production of disability by those needing the dependency of students to nourish their own power. Students are disempowered, their learning restricted by limiting programmes designed for the 'afflicted'.…”