Mainstreaming

Origins

The idea of mainstreaming in the United States grew out of the American experience with civil rights and the 1954 Supreme Court decision that separate schooling based on racial designation was inherently discriminatory; racial segregation led to students of color feeling less capable and less worthy than others and denied them access to full educational opportunity. The key principle borrowed from civil rights was the notion that children with disabilities are entitled to an education and that this should be with their nondisabled peers. The difference between mainstreaming policies that emerged and the classic Brown v. Board of Education decision is that the extent to which mainstreaming/inclusion would occur was left up to professionals to determine, possibly in negotiation with parents of children with disabilities.

In 1971, several families of children classified as mentally retarded filed a lawsuit in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, PARC v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, to establish the right of their children to receive an education. Actually, the case set forth a number of principles, included among them are the following five:

• 1.
  That the plaintiffs, all students classified as mentally retarded, had at great personal cost been denied access to public education
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• 2.
  That all students could learn
• 3.
  That all students should be entitled to access public education
• 4.
  That education should be provided in the “least restrictive” setting possible; these parents asserted that students with disabilities were entitled to be included in classrooms with nondisabled students unless it could be shown to be impossible, even with specialized support services
• 5.
  That the education should be individually designed to enable students to succeed

Findings in the PARC Consent Decree set the stage for national policy fostering mainstreaming and, subsequently, inclusive schooling. In 1975, Congress passed Public Law (P.L.) 94–142, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act. This law was later amended and renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, P.L. 105–17. While P.L. 94–142 did not make reference to mainstreaming or inclusion, it did articulate a presumption that students with disabilities should be included with their nondisabled peers. Specifically, the law refers to the “least restrictive environment

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