The Regular Education Initiative (REI)

The REI, as articulated by Will, was vague with regard to how much regular education should assume responsibility for the education of students with disabilities. In fact, that vagueness has contributed to the current debate in the 1990s over the roles of special versus regular education in educational programming for students with disabilities. Today, views on the inclusion of students with disabilities range from full inclusion--the belief that all students with disabilities should be educated solely in the regular classroom--to the belief in the maintenance of a full range of service delivery options (the continuum of services option), including residential institutions, special schools, special classes, resource rooms, and regular classes.

The differences between mainstreaming

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om a special education teacher in that general, or regular, classroom. Fuchs and Fuchs (1994) note that the above approach to placing the special student with general students for the entirety of the school day (with some attendance by a special education teacher) is still not good enough for inclusionists. As the authors indicate, "Whereas the signature phrase of REI [Regular Education Initiative] was 'cooperation between special and general education,' the full-inclusionist mantra is "eliminate special education'" (p. 307). Fuchs and Fuchs (1994) reiterate that the inclusionist leadership would like to see an end to the continuum of services primarily because it precludes desirable socialization experiences for students with severe intellectual disabilities (p. 307). In the inclusionists' view, if the special education apparatus is to be effectively salvaged, it must be dismantled and merged with general education. As Altman and Kanagawa (1994) assert, "this position frequently entails the literal restructuring of schools through the merger of special and general education" (p. 184). Inclusionists believe that the isolating and dehumanizing aspects brought about by the segregation of special education are unconscionable; t
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2925
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)

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