Mainstreaming and Inclusion

Jill Sperandino

The term mainstreaming has come to be associated with the principle of educating children with and without disabilities in the same classroom and providing special education based on learning needs rather than categories of handicaps. In the decades before 1970, the most common treatment of children with mild to severe disabilities was to provide education in selfcontained classrooms. The situation changed in the United States as a result of the civil rights and educational reform movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s and as an outcome of two court cases in 1972, the Pennsylvanian Association for Retarded Children v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania , and Mills v. Board of Education of the District of Columbia . The rulings in these cases directed at state education systems established the expectation of the placement of students with disabilities in general education settings because of fair and equal treatment as guaranteed by the ...

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