Research Paper on:
Special Education Legislation And Impact

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
not mention either mainstreaming or inclusion. PL. 94-142, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 1975 mandated "least restrictive environment" (Walker and Ovington, 1998). In the 1997 amendments to  IDEA, the law mandated disabled children receive their education "to the maximum extent appropriate" in the least restrictive environment" (Stout, 2007). The practices first of mainstreaming and then of inclusion  emerged from court cases such as Daniel R.R. v. State Board of Education, 1989, Greer v. Rome City School, 1991. Oberti v. Board of Education of the Borough of Clementon  School District, 1993, Sacramento City Unified School District vs. Holland, 1994 and others (Walker and Ovington, 1998). Inclusion emerged as a human rights issue with little or no conclusive  evidence on its effects. Studies show both positive and negative impact of inclusion on students with disabilities and on students without disabilities in the same classroom. Forest and Pearpoint (n.d.)  make a good point when they argue for full inclusion of all students and their families and that including a child with disabilities in the classroom is only a very  small piece of the puzzle in todays society. These authors suggest that having a child with disability in the school or classroom "signals major change, and for many, change is  something to fear" (Forest and Pearpoint, n.d.). What we do know is that it costs about twice as much to educate a child with disabilities as it does for a  child without disabilities. Of course, the cost depends a great deal on the childs specific learning disability. The range can be as much or greater than $10,558 for a student  who has a specific learning disability to $20,095 for a student with multiple disabilities (Chambers, Shkolnik, Perez, 2003). In terms of ratio to the costs associated with educating a student