Mainstreaming children with handicaps: implications for pediatricians

The judicial precedents and legislative mandates passed during the past two decades to ensure full appropriate public education for all children have resulted in a movement toward mainstreaming children with a wide range of physical and developmental disabilities into regular education classroom settings. Although some child development and pediatric literature has addressed the effects of these initiatives on the children with handicaps, less attention has been paid to the effect that mainstreaming has on their nondisabled peers in the classroom. As knowledgeable community advocates, pediatricians should be informed about the specifics of the mainstreaming movement. This paper outlines the movement's historical underpinnings, discusses current definitions of "mainstreaming", and briefly reviews the literature on the effects of this policy on classrooms, teachers, and students with and without disabilities. The impact of mainstreaming children with handicaps in regular classroom settings is equivocal, with many studies lacking methodological sophistication to yield reliable and valid data. Results of the few well-designed studies do show, however, that academic and social outcomes for both the handicapped child and for his/her nondisabled peers are consistently better in mainstreamed classrooms where adequate resources have been made available to the child and teacher than in more segregated settings. Furthermore, the literature consistently points out the key role both regular and special education teachers play in successful mainstreamed classrooms. Pediatricians can help families with children with disabilities negotiate the educational system in order to achieve the appropriate classroom placement.