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Much has been made of the abuse of the learning-disability law by middle-class parents desperate to get help for their underachieving children, but the real problems are more subtle. The rising numbers of learning-disabled (or "special needs") students have altered classroom dynamics in ways that harm average kids' ability to learn. The old practice of sticking special-ed kids in separate classes for the duration of the school day has given way to the policy of "mainstreaming," or "inclusion": nearly half of all special-needs students--and many more than that in suburban districts--spend most of the day in regular classes with nondisabled students. Though schools often assign a teacher's aide to oversee learning-disabled pupils, teachers in regular classrooms now have to handle those students--many of whom have serious behavior problems as well--while keeping everyone else on track.
Average students pay the price. At Halls Middle School in Knoxville, half the students in Gay Clapp's sixth-grade science class last year were classified as having "special needs." One day last spring, after giving her class a plant diagram to color, Clapp watched as a group of boys got up to hang out at the pencil sharpener, and other students wandered the room for supplies; for a few moments, all order broke down. "It's overwhelming," says Clapp, who has taught for 39 years. "Dealing with this many kids and this many different needs wears you out. And by a long shot, the average student loses out." In Buffalo, N.Y., seventh-grade teacher Rebecca Heim confronts similar frustrations. Eight of her 24 students last year had special needs. "They end up holding back the class because of the constant disruption to the classroom," Heim says. "That's a disservice to the regular-ed students."
Those students receive a double blow from learning-disabilities laws: not only is their learning in mixed classrooms often compromised, but they are also barred from reaping the benefits--small-group instruction, protection from discipline, extra time on standardized tests--afforded the learning-disabled students. That frustrates principals like Mary Gordon of Windsor Elementary School in Des Moines. There, learning-disabled first-graders who have trouble with reading get pulled out for periods of the day to attend a small-group session with a tutor; meanwhile, the sizes of the two regular classes swell as high as 28 or 29. "Why not make it legal to use the special-education funds to help pay for a third class," she sensibly asks, "and have three classes of 17?"