Mainstreaming

Mainstreaming is the practice of selectively placing students with disabilities in general education classrooms for the purpose of improving their academic and social outcomes. This entry presents an overview of historical and contemporary perspectives on this special education approach.

From the early to mid-20th century, public school services for students with disabilities, when they existed at all, usually were isolated. Students with vision or hearing loss and those with significant intellectual or physical disabilities were educated in separate schools. Students with milder disabilities sometimes were educated in separate classes in regular schools, but they seldom had opportunities to interact with their peers without disabilities. However, after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas Supreme Court decision, which established that de jure racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, parents of children with disabilities and the professionals who worked with these children began questioning the acceptability of segregation for students with disabilities. Parents expressed concern that their children missed opportunities to learn with and from their nondisabled peers. Professionals proposed that if teachers used carefully designed instructional strategies and educational technology, these students could experience success. Based on court cases supporting families' preferences for their children's integrated education and accumulating research demonstrating that students in general education settings achieved more than those in segregated settings, by the late 1960s the term mainstreaming had been introduced to describe this new way of thinking about the education of students with disabilities.

Although the term mainstreaming has never been used in federal special education law, it is related to the legislatively described concept of least restrictive environment (LRE), the right of students with disabilities to be educated in the setting most like that of their typical peers in which they can be successful when appropriate supports and services are provided. Early implementation of mainstreaming generally meant allowing students with disabilities to participate in art, music, physical education, drama, lunch, recess, and assemblies. The thinking was that opportunities for social interaction would benefit both students with disabilities and their nondisabled peers. Gradually, participation in English, reading, math, science, and social studies also was considered, but only when students with disabilities could keep up with the instruction with few supports. Mainstreaming, in essence, made students with disabilities occasional visitors to general education classrooms.

Today, mainstreaming sometimes is considered an outdated term. However, in some locales, it is [Page 1429]still practiced; that is, students with disabilities are educated largely in separate settings unless they can learn similarly to their nondisabled peers or unless the activity is nonacademic. In other situations, mainstreaming may be inappropriately used interchangeably with inclusion. These words are not synonymous: Inclusion assumes that students have a right to be educated in general education settings, regardless of the severity of their needs or the learning rates and styles of peers. In contrast, mainstreaming is conditional, premised on students' educational similarity to other students.