What are the Pros and Cons of Special education and services for the developmental disabled?

Question

What are the Pros and Cons of Special education and services for the developmental disabled?

Answer 1

By giving people with developmental disabilities an education -they become more independent and more productive membes of society.  It is a financial investment.  It costs more now-but in the future tehy will need less assistance including less financial resources...

Answer 2

There are mostly pros because intervention by the public schools can come as early as three years old, which is invaluable for a DD child. To get the same services privately would cost you an arm and a leg. They will provide speech and language services, occupational therapy, social skills instruction and pre-academics.

The cons come when a parent does not agree with the IEP team on the child's needs. Schools tend to try to get away with as few services as possible or the team may want to place a child in a very restricted environment, which keeps the child from interacting with non-disabled peers.

Developmental delay is only a temporary designation until the child can be tested at age 5. Then the child is given a designation that identifies his or her disability by age six.  Of course there are always the labeling issues and sometimes kids get teased for being in the "dumb class," but if a child is quite disabled, one cannot let this deter them from getting the help their child needs.

Generally speaking children are placed in the least restrictive environment that can suit their needs. Some kids are mildly disabled and are included in regular classes, so these kids don't get the teasing that other kids get.

However, some parents try to force their child into a regular ed class, even though the child has serious needs and should be in a special class. This proves to be very disruptive to the classroom and teachers become disturbed because of the impact on the other children's education.

We have a child with a traumatic brain injury who's mother refuses to allow him to be in a supported behavior class. Since he has serious frontal lobe damage, he cannot attend to the feelings of others and is highly disruptive and manipulative. Even though he is a fifth grader, he throws himself on the floor several times a day if he doesn't get what he wants. This disrupts the whole class.

So all in all special education is a good thing, when done right.

Answer 3

your child gets the education that properly suits that child's capability.

not sure what is bad about it.