What is Special Education?

Special education is the education of students with special needs in a way that addresses the students' individual differences and needs. Ideally, this process involves the individually planned and systematically monitored arrangement of teaching procedures, adapted equipment and materials, accessible settings, and other interventions designed to help learners with special needs achieve a higher level of personal self-sufficiency and success in school and community than would be available if the student were only given access to a typical classroom education.

Common special needs include learning differences, communication challenges, emotional and behavioral disorders, physical disabilities, and developmental disabilities.Students with these kinds of disabilities are likely to benefit from additional educational services or different approaches to teaching.

Intellectual giftedness is a difference in learning and can also benefit from specialized teaching techniques or different educational programs, but the term "special education" is generally used to specifically indicate instruction of students whose special needs reduce their ability to learn independently or in a classroom, and gifted education is handled separately.

Setting

In the main, special education has been provided in one, or a combination, of the following settings:

PS 721, a Special Education school in Brooklyn, New York

• Inclusion: Regular education classes combined with special education services is a model often referred to as inclusion. In this model, students with special needs are educated with their typically developing peers for at least half of the day. In a full inclusion model, specialized services are provided within a regular classroom by sending the service provider in to work with one or more students in their regular classroom setting. In a partial inclusion model, specialized services are provided outside a regular classroom. In this case, the student occasionally leaves the regular classroom to attend smaller, more intensive instructional sessions, or to receive other related service such as speech and language therapy, occupational and/or physical therapy, and social work. Inclusion of students with mild to moderate special needs is accepted as a best practice. For example, in Denmark, 99% of students with learning disabilities are educated in an inclusive setting.In the United States, three out of five students with learning disabilities spend the overwhelming majority of their time in the regular classroom. Full inclusion of students with significant disabilities is controversial and uncommon.
• Mainstreaming: Regular education classes combined with special education classes is a model often referred to as mainstreaming. In this model, students with special needs are educated with their typically developing peers during specific time periods.
• Segregation in a self-contained classroom or special school: Full-time placement in a special education classroom may be referred to as segregation. In this model, students with special needs spend no time with typically developing students. Segregated students may attend the same school as their neighbors, but spend their time exclusively in a special-needs classroom. Alternatively, these students may attend a special school.
• Exclusion: A student who does not receive instruction in any school is said to be excluded. Such exclusion may occur where there is no legal mandate for special education services. It may also occur when a student is in hospital, homebound, or detained by the criminal justice system. These students may receive one-on-one instruction or group instruction. Students who have been suspended or expelled are not considered excluded in this sense.

Courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_education