|
Educating Vulnerable Pupils
VUE Number 12, Summer 2006
An interview with Pia Durkin,  Audio Clip
Superintendent of schools of Attleboro, Massachussetts
Why should special education and general education be integrated into a unified system?
Click on the  on the bar below to start the audio.
TEXT VERSION:
One of the things that we've learned is how the best and necessary intentions of serving a once-underserved population–basically, kids with disabilities–have led to some very complex consequences where systems have become bifurcated, making it less obvious the reasons why we needed to serve students with disabilities in the first place. And, essentially, what a unified system, both symbolically and pragmatically develops, is access and opportunity to succeed for students with disabilities as well, if not better, as their peers who do not have disabilities.
We've done a very good job getting kids in the schoolhouse door over the last thirty years, given where IDEA has been and where it's growing. But we are still struggling with what achievement outcomes we have achieved, and we need definitely more explicit ways of reaching them and making that the forefront of how special education works as a part of general education, and not apart from the general school system.
|
|