I've been quietly avoiding this thread because I risk offense with what I'm about to say, but I feel it's worth saying.
Studies that address inclusion of special education students with cognitive impairments in general education settings, and which boast of the benefits to them of inclusion, do not properly consider the harm to academic outcomes for the rest of the class as a result of their participation.
It is admirable to be compassionate and provide severely impaired students with opportunities for socialization and a sense of community membership, but it should not be undertaken at the scholastic expense of other students. There are some indications for which separate or streamed education is required, but that seems to be a heterodox position in Canada these days.
I do not support initiatives which pit the learning experiences of one category of learner against another in a zero-sum way, or which are blind to the social and educational ROI of incremental spending under different delivery models. My child is not somehow less entitled to his per-capita share of the public education budget--or his right to make a year of academic progress each year-- because he is advanced, nor should he be required to take on a quasi-teaching role in a class of students who are not his academic peers. That is totally inappropriate.
I fear this is the climate in Canada--one which lacks the specificity of design and intentionality of indication-specific educational interventions. Interventions for a deaf child differ dramatically from those for a Down's Syndrome child, a PG child, an English/French language learner, or a child who is violent to peers. (And that doesn't even get into 2+E students.) Yet, with few exceptions, these wildly disparate needs are being expected to be met in a general education setting by untrained teachers.
It comes down to ideology. Canadian educators seem to genuinely believe that we can, through herculean efforts, engineer equal outcomes across markedly different student populations. We can't, nor should we, even if such actions were feasible. Some students will never be self-sufficient, and it is ridiculous to throw good money after bad into program spending that yields no measurable value under the false belief that reality can be over-written by good intentions.
I have a dear family friend who has been heavily involved in local spec-ed advocacy for 20+ years on behalf of the Down's community. She believes that her severely mentally handicapped son has the capacity to be a self-sufficient adult, despite ample evidence to the contrary, and has successfully advocated for his inclusion within the general ed population (albeit many years behind age) throughout his educational career, often with a full time aide and other specialized professionals. It is ludicrous to think that more than $75K/year has been directed to staff the shared delusion of a misguided parent and a cowed administration for over 12 years, when compassionate and appropriate care could have been provided for less than half the cost!
When I conducted a scan of the offerings at K-8 schools in our largest public school board, ALL mentioned inclusion and diversity as their primary objectives. Only three of about 40 even mentioned academic excellence among their operational imperatives.
aeh--to your question about the provisioning of special education services, resources are generally provided by a designated resource teacher who may or may not have any meaningful training in the special education population(s) in which a child is a member. In my DS' previous school, the resource teacher provided mis-information about steps required for IEP access, and she lacked any apparent knowledge of gifted needs or appetite for acceleration of any kind. To her credit, she was at least forthright in her ignorance, which made leaving an easy decision.
We play very well to the middle.
I respectfully disagree, given provincial PISA score trends in Canada. We play to the second quartile and aspire to the median.
