Special education children range from those with a learning disability to those with severe and profound disorders. Many, many of them can learn (and do learn) and will be contributing members of society.
I teach children with learning disabilities in a middle school and every year I have a half dozen or so enter a mainstream class--and experience success.
Yes, some of these children will need life-long care, but many will not. As far as the gifted/talented children being shortchanged--I don't see that in my district, if anyone gets shortchanged it's those considered to be "slow learners" Not smart enough to be learning disabled and too smart to be considered mentally retarded. That is the group with little to no services
It just annoys me to no end when people perpetuate the "cold-hearted conservative" stereotype on FR
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And no I am not a member of a union.
The average per pupil cost of education is about $5,000 or so. The average cost of special education is $15,000 or so. So for the price of educating three people who will probably succeed, you're educating one person who most likely won't.
I often hear rhethoric such as "Education is an investment in our kids". That makes us less unhappy when we send our tax checks out around now; we're getting something for our money in terms of future generations. But if we're making large "investments" in people who will most likely fail, what we're really doing is selling out kids who have greater ability. As you said, the people who are worse off are those who don't qualify for special education, but aren't smart enough to do well.
The whole idea of spending this much money to help people who, in the aggregate, cannot be helped strikes me as an enormous waste of our "investments". What we really need from our "investment" is people who can read, write and do a sum or two. Nothing fancy, but from what I'm seeing, we're not getting it.
I certainly think we should try to get it before we put our "investments" in the people least likely to benefit from them.
D