Divestiture in Special Education--A Personal Point of View: The 1982 Statespersons' Roundtable.

The view that regular education should be returned the responsibility for many services currently provided by special education is argued by M. Stephen Lilly, as part of the 1982 Statespersons' Roundtable of the Council for Exceptional Children. In addition, criticism of this view is expressed by John W. Kidd, along with comments from the 13 statespersons at the roundtable. Mr. Lilly suggests that special education may have overstepped its appropriate bounds and become too separate from regular education. He claims that some special services (e.g., learning disabilities services) have supplanted rather than supplemented existing regular education support services (e.g., remedial reading). He questions whether it is appropriate to serve general societal needs through development and provision of special education services (e.g., the educable mentally retarded population has been predominantly poor, minority children). He also addresses other issues, including: the confusion between special education "resource" programs and "pull-out" programs for minority and disadvantaged students; and the practice of labeling a child as having a handicapping condition. In the response to this address, Mr. Kidd states that exceptional children's education is finally breaking through resistances but is still far from achieving equity for all children with special needs. Additional perspectives and issues are voiced by participants, including the training of special educators and mainstreaming. (SEW)