Inclusive Classrooms
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INCLUSIVE CLASSROOMS
Inclusive classrooms can be traced back to their beginning in the 1970s' with the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act and Public Law 94-142, which says that children will be educated in the least restrictive environment. Early attempts to follow these newly passed laws included what is called mainstreaming, to do this schools moved children with exceptionalities into regular classrooms, but usually did not give them enough support to succeed. Next came the least restrictive environment model this model tried to place kids in as normal an environment and still meet their special needs. Then finally today we have inclusion. This model places children in regular classrooms with other students their age and provides special education support for them (Kauchak, 2002, p. 98)
The issue of inclusion is still so important for numerous reasons. The first reason being that many school districts do not know how to effectively move toward an inclusive model so they continue following a mainstream model, calling it inclusion, which frustrates students and teachers. This frustration stems from not enough support for both parties. The child is not getting the support they need to succeed and the teacher does not get the help they need to understand special needs children and to help teach the children (McLeskey 2002). Inclusion is still an important issue because many people are now looking at teachers and teacher education programs as reasons why inclusion is often hard and fails...