d parents who fought for P.L. 94-142's passage demanded modern programs for the optimal development of all exceptional children.
The challenges related to its implementation and monitoring have required diligence by all interested parties, for, though the ideas and concepts are appropriate, they also must be applied to the day-to-day, hour-to-hour school life of each child. And to the administration, the individual child's program must also be integrated into the total fabric of the education system, the state plan and the local plan.
One of the programs developed to meet the needs of certain handicapped children is mainstreaming. Though the term itself is not in the law, what is written in the regulations is "least restrictive environment," and "the child is educated in the school he or she would attend if not handicapped" and that "each handicapped child participates with nonhandicapped children . . . to the maximum extent appropriate to the needs of that child" (Michaelis, 1980, p. 33).
The concept of nonhandicapped children and handicapped children attending school together may be distasteful to many parents of handicapped children, believing that they won't receive the extra care and attention needed. However, the intent is to avoid stigmatizing the child while exposing "normal" classmates to others.
Mainstreaming is usually accomplished by withdrawing the child from regular class only on a limited basis for remedial work in a "resource" room, rather then placing him in a specific special education class (Lamm, 1982, p. 27). This means that if a child has a problem reading, he may be given the opportunity to go to the resource room, a classroom set up in a regular school where a teacher with special training works with children who have learning problems, for reading remediation during some portion of the day, and continue to take other subjects with his/her peers.
Under the "least restrictive environment" ...