[WS:] My wife tells me that it is not always a good idea. Sped status offers certain legal protections that regular ed status lacks, so having the sped status can be beneficial to certain students. Self-contained programs for sped students are being closed down, at least in the DC area, to save money and their students are being moved to gen ed classes, which causes all kinds of problems for these students and their IEP's are their only legal protection.
J: Yes, this is generally true (and an obvious point). I only advocated for students who should not have been there in the first place - which was one of the points of my post - kids who were very bright and simply warehoused. The couple of kids I helped thought they were gaming the system. They weren't thinking far enough ahead to realize the system was gaming them. One of them is doing well in community college at the moment. If he stayed in Sped, he would have probably been a fifth year senior, dealing drugs and stealing mopeds - which was his plan when I met him. To emphasize the point again: There are some kids who should not be in Sped and it is evidence of systemic failure when even one out of twenty kids is denied even a sliver of a chance for a future. Maybe this only happens in Hawaii - but I doubt it. If you listen to the stories of poor students all over the country, it is obvious the system is failing them. My example was from
personal experience and was used to point out it happens in Sped as well...
[WS:] As to the rest of your posting, this is pretty much the same what I hear daily from my wife, especially the fear of lawsuits and failing to meet the NCLB standards. Since sped is usually the reason why a schools fails these standards - keep it in mind that sped kids have to take the same standardized tests as gen ed students - the sped department is often treated as burden to be avoided by school administration.
J: Yes, I had it in mind, that's why I stated it in my post. But thanks for the comments.