New York City’s pilot for special education inclusion has moved
the district to apply the program to a majority of the schools in the
city.
The two-year pilot program experimenting with changes to the way
special needs students are educated in New York City is set to conclude —
and soon, nearly all the schools in the New York City public school
system will begin adopting inclusion changes into their own academic program.
The aim of the changes is to allow special needs students to integrate
more fully into the regular student body. District officials are
attempting to move away from the more traditional method of special ed
instruction with segregated classes, and the city’s chief academic
officer,Shael Polakow-Suransky, sums up the old programs that focus on
“self-containment” as an academic death sentence.
