Reports on the inclusion of students with intellectual disabilities from national and state perspectives, outlining the abject failure of schools to provide basic educational rights to students with significant disabilities in America. This book describes the changes that made in teacher preparation programs, policy, funding, and local schools.

Contents: Phil Smith: Whatever Happened to Inclusion? The Place of Students with Intellectual Disabilities in General Education Classrooms – Phil Smith: Trends for Including Students with Intellectual Disabilities in General Education Classrooms – Phil Smith: Defining Inclusion: What Is It? Who Does It Benefit? – Phil Smith: Barriers to Inclusion: Does Special Education Work? – Valerie Owen/Susan Gabel: Lack of Vision? Lack of Respect? Exclusion in Illinois – Barbara LeRoy/Krim Lacey: The Inclusion of Students with Intellectual Disabilities in Michigan – Emily A. Nusbaum: Fighting Professional Opinions: Stories of Segregation by Three California Families – Kagendo Mutua/Jim Siders: «What Is This Inclusion Thing? Who Dumped These Kids on Me? How Am I Supposed to Do This? Tracing the Contours of Inclusion in Alabama – David Connor: Adding Urban Complexities into the Mix: Continued Resistance to the Inclusion of Students with Cognitive Impairments (or New York, New York: So Bad They Segregated It Twice) – Phil Smith: The Story(s) of the States: What Does It All Mean? – Phil Smith: Preparing Educators for Inclusion: What We’re Doing Right, What We’re Doing Wrong – Phil Smith: Future Directions: Policy, Practice, and Research.

«A state of the union on inclusion, this book issues a report card for the nation’s schools. Phil Smith weaves a compelling story told in numbers about the lack of progress made in including all students, particularly those with intellectual disabilities, in the general education classroom. Contributing authors contextualize this larger story by focusing on the state of inclusion in particular contexts…. Smith and his contributors convincingly document small moments of possibility and progress, as well as the incessant backwards pull toward the status quo of segregated special education. Smith shows how the general education classroom remains a sacrosanct space – exclusionary, normative, and unyielding – and the disparate impact such exclusionary policies and practices have on students of color and students with disabilities.… Smith concludes this groundbreaking work with a set of guiding practices great and small that we can (and must) do as communities, as teacher educators, as policy makers, and as teachers to finally realize the promise of inclusion.» (Beth Ferri, Associate Professor in the School of Education, Syracuse University)