For decades now, mainstreaming special-needs students – that is, educating them as much as possible in general education classrooms rather than in separate special education settings – has been a mainstay of American education policy, and, for the most part, that policy has been an outstanding success.
Integrating special-needs students in settings with typically developing peers has enabled hundreds of thousands of students to not only attain a decent education but to function in the outside world.
Now, however, as an epidemic of autism sweeps the nation and indeed the world, the philosophical foundations of mainstreaming, or inclusion, are being tested. The fact is, children with ASD learn differently than other children do, and they learn differently than other special-needs populations do, and, many parents and researchers say, that presents unique challenges to learning that general education classrooms are not overcoming.
