Province looks to do away with special education schools

The idiots who came up with this idea should be in a special ed class.

Special needs students require special attention and a teacher to pay more attention to them. This is a foolish idea; it will take the teacher's focus off those students who do not have learning disabilities in order to focus on the student with disabilities. Foolish idea.

This is a really difficult one. Alberta and BC have actually had integrated schools for years. I went to elementary, jr. high and high school with special needs kids. It was fine. In elementary is where it can be really dicey.

Politics become huge - which students qualify for aides? How disabled do you have to be to even apply for an aide? How long/often will testing be done to establish need? How will future budget cuts (in BC they were HUGE a few years ago) affect how much time students will be allotted aides? It can definitely be a disaster, but I've also seen border line students thrive and exceed the expectations previously set for them.

If a student is physically disabled, they can be integrated into a regular classroom. However, those who are behavioral and or mentally impaired need to be kept out of regular classrooms. It's just too disruptive even with the aides.

It certainly can be. There are also the issues of not having the aides appointed until testing is completed and authorization is received (which can take forever), sick days for the aides, and of course, with behavioral issues, disruptions are going to be a given.

Usually what ends up happening, is the students are taken out of the class and taught academics independently anyway, so it's quite pointless to implement this new system, except that it makes the planners look like the wonderful, feel good, Samaritans that are bringing these little souls ever so joyously together.

The planners, who generally, never spend any time whatsoever in a classroom. Speaking from experience, most consultants are as useless as tits on a bull.

I completely agree with you on both counts.

I found it was okay up until high school, than when the "real" learning began it became a problem.

Just having a quick look at the article, it says that children with disibilities in general are going to be put into the same class, instead of being broken down by ailment, such as those with intense forms of autism being placed with other students with different disibilities and not with the student body in general.

Unless I am mistaken in reading the article, that more or less appears to be the goal to integrating them with the classes for those without disibilities.