On Special Education

This short story about inclusive education published in The Hindu, a large English-language newspaper in India, certainly strikes a familiar chord:

K. Rajagopal, former Vice-Chancellor of JNTU, who was the chief guest, underscored the dire need for planning of inclusive education for different stages of retardation. “Educators should be able to handle children according to different levels of retardation,” he said.

As I dug into the newspaper's archives, several articles reminded me of many of the issues that we face in the United States. One parent said in this 2007 article that her son was dismissed from five schools in one year for defiant behavior.

In the United States, however, parents seem to have more legal avenues to dispute an inappropriate placement. And special education teachers generally don't have to worry about the kind of pay disparities outlined in this article, published a year ago:

According to the officials of the University, though a lot of progress is taking place in disability education in India, awareness regarding disability education is dismal among the public as well as the policy makers. The special educators are not paid on a par with those in the regular education system. The compensation received by special educators is comparatively less, this creates a dearth of qualified personnel in the field of special educators.