Special Ed category renamed?

Question

Apparently, Special Ed means different things to different people, and many take it to mean any education question outside the mainstream.

Do you think renaming the category to "Learning Disabilities" might clarify this for those who really don't understand the American term of "Special Education".

Would you be willing to submit such a suggestion to Yahoo! Answers?

Answer 1

Not necessarily, because "behavior disturbed", which has little to do with actual schoolwork, falls under the umbrella of special ed. So does Gifted & Talented in some areas (especially since giftedness is sometimes associated with learning disability in other areas--the brain "specializes"), as well as physical disabilities like CP that interfere with communication and movement but often don't have anything to do with learning ability.

Special education is just going to have to keep its name. All I can see to do is define it as a program that fulfills "any educational need outside the mainstream curriculum".

Answer 2

It won't make a difference-

most people aren't purposely using this category-

Yahoo is suggesting ity based onkey words in the questions-and people are just to lazy to manually reassign it to the proper category.

What need to be done is for Yahoo to modify their software -especially for certain words/cities from India-and automatically assign them to a different category

It is appropriate for related toics such as 504 plans (for health conditions like epilepsy that need accommodations, but not special ed)

Also, some states include ESL and Gifted and Talented in Special Ed

Answer 3

Special Education also includes people who have conditions such as epilepsy, diabetes...etc. These people also recieve modifications in their education because of these disabilities. So, they also are elgible for and are enrolled in special education services of various kinds.

It's my personal experience that since somebody recieving special education is a person with a disability--that this category should be subcategorized under the person with a disabilities category which currently exists on this same site.

Having the combined categories will clarify what special education is, and especially weed out all of the trolls.

I don't doubt that there are some people sincerely and gennuinely unaware of what this term means. But moving it to 'people with disabilities' will reserve it for members of the global community who want to maintain the accuracy of the area as a resource.

It's not supposed to be a catch-all 'junkyard'.