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Editorial Educational Placement and Residential Schools Recently, I have been trying to follow some of the discussion concerning federal funding for special education, especially as it might relate to the general special education trend toward what has been called "total inclusion" or the regular education initiative. I have been especially interested in the implications for continued provision of federal funds to state supported residential schools for the deaf. To gain an understanding of current enrollments, I reviewed data from the April, 1993, Reference Issue of the American Annals of the Deaf. By my count, 14 of 57 state supported residential schools on which we had data enrolled 100 or fewer children, and an additional 23 enrolled from 101 to 200 children. Only 14 schools enrolled more than 300 children . Many of the schools with small enrollments face a double-edged threat; small numbers reduce scheduling flexibility at the same time they increase per pupil costs. It seems to me that the push for total inclusion, the placement of all children in regular classes in their own neighborhoods , flies in the face of educational developments and federal legislation over the past 25 years. Educational placement and services are to be provided on an individual basis, with the understanding that ranges of options must be available. This basic understanding is under attack. In an insightful recent article on the reform of special education , Kauffman (1993) stated that we are faced by three pressures: keeping the issue of place in perspective, choosing idea over image, and avoiding fanaticism. To illustrate the interaction of issues of placement, images, and fanatical certainty , Kauffman quoted the following source. ...the morass created by it [LRE] can be avoided by the design and implementation of reformed systems by focusing all placement decisions on the local school and routinely insisting on the home school as an absolute and universal requirement . In terms of placement, the home-school focus renders LRE irrelevant and the continuum moot. (Laski, 1991, p. 413) Kauffman also quoted the closing commentary from a widely circulated videotape, Regular Lives (Goodwin, Wurzburg, & Biklin, 1987), on including all students with disabilities in their home schools in regular classes. It really doesn't matter whether or not it works. It does work and that's great. But even if it didn't work it would still be the thing to do because it's right. It should be clear that the same pressures are operative on education of the deaf. Simplistic fanatical certainty is not a stranger to our field at the extremes of any number of issues . In terms of placement there may be some profoundly deaf children who do well in a completely integrated environment , but to argue that such a placement is desirable for all deaf children is—from my perspective—ludicrous. Research results suggest that a minimum base of more than 100 deaf children is necessary to maintain an effective public school program for deaf children. Placement decisions must also take into consideration the quality of regular education services available. The United States undeniably has some of the best public schools in the industrial world. Just as undeniably, we have some of the worst. It is one thing to "integrate" a deaf student in a school system that has the latest technology, professional support services, individual tutoring, and sign interpreters available for class and extracurricular activities. It would be an entirely different matter to integrate the same student into a system with aging facilities, few support services, large classes, and the threat of violence. For more than two decades, PL 89-313 has permitted states to provide federal funds to state supported residential schools for the deaf, among others. PL 89-313 is being incorporated into the provisions of IDEA. At the point when this editorial was going to press it was unclear whether funds traditionally allocated through PL 89-313 to residential schools would continue to be used for this purpose or whether, as some have demanded, states will be allowed to allocate the money in any way they choose. If the latter occurs , although the amounts are relatively small, harm could be done to some residential schools for the deaf. Those at greatest...

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