Students in the United States are guaranteed, by law, access to a free appropriate public education (FAPE) in the least restrictive environment (LRE).
Here’s a handy infographic that describes the definition of FAPE:
School inclusion is the practice of educating students with disabilities alongside their typical peers. They have access to the general curriculum (the stuff that all the kids learn) and it is modified to suit their learning needs and challenges.
Inclusion is not the same as mainstreaming. Mainstreaming involves teaching students with special needs in the same classroom, but with a different curriculum altogether. It is not the same as providing access to the general education curriculum (the stuff that all kids learn). For example, in an inclusive environment, all of the students might write a report about the water cycle. Typical students would write a three-page paper to describe what that is and why it is important. A student with special needs who struggled with paragraph structure might write a 5-paragraph essay of one page over the same topic. Both learn about the water cycle. Both write a paper. In a mainstream environment, the typical class is learning about the water cycle. Typical kids still write the three-page paper, but the student with special needs is tasked with coloring pictures of the water cycle. He is not learning about the water cycle, he is not accessing the general curriculum, he’s working on a totally different assignment while physically present in the classroom.
Not cool.
Research has shown time and time and time and time and time again that school inclusion has tremendous benefits for all students, whether they have special needs or not.
From Wrightslaw.com, a leading website for information on inclusion and the law:
There is a strong research base to support the education of children with disabilities alongside their non-disabled peers. Although separate classes, with lower student to teacher ratios, controlled environments, and specially trained staff would seem to offer benefits to a child with a disability, research fails to demonstrate the effectiveness of such programs (Lipsky, 1997; Sailor, 2003).
There is mounting evidence that, other than a smaller class size, “there is little that is special about the special education system,” and that the negative effects of separating children with disabilities from their peers far outweigh any benefit to smaller classes (Audette & Algozzine, 1997).
Students with disabilities in inclusive classrooms show academic gains in a number of areas, including improved performance on standardized tests, mastery of IEP goals, grades, on-task behavior and motivation to learn (National Center for Education Restructuring and Inclusion, 1995).
Moreover, placement in inclusive classrooms does not interfere with the academic performance of students without disabilities with respect to the amount of allocated time and engaged instructional time, the rate of interruption to planned activities and students’ achievement on test scores and report card grades (York, Vandercook, MacDonald, Heise-Neff, and Caughey, 1992).
The types of instructional strategies found in inclusive classrooms, including peer tutoring, cooperative learning groups, and differentiated instruction, have been shown to be beneficial to all learners. For example, Slavin, Madden, & Leavy (1984) found that math scores for students with and without disabilities increased by nearly half a grade level as a result of working in cooperative learning groups.
– See more at: http://www.wrightslaw.com/info/lre.incls.rsrch.whitbread.htm#sthash.Rl3VXxil.dpuf
Inclusive education, while widely accepted as the best way to educate all students, is not always common practice… especially not in the upper grades.
We’re on a mission to change that in our world.
Yo soy La Lay 
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