[Download] "Classroom Quality, Concentration of Children with Special Needs, And Child Outcomes in Head Start." by Exceptional Children ~ eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Classroom Quality, Concentration of Children with Special Needs, And Child Outcomes in Head Start.
- Author : Exceptional Children
- Release Date : January 22, 2006
- Genre: Education,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 274 KB
Description
Guralnick (2001) describes inclusion as both the philosophy and practice of encouraging the full participation of children with disabilities and their families in everyday activities alongside their typically developing peers. For young children with disabilities, inclusion often means placement in preschool early childhood settings, such as Head Start programs. In fact, Head Start, a federally funded program that provides comprehensive preschool education and services to predominantly low-income 3- to 5-year-old children and their families, is the largest provider of inclusive services for young children with disabilities in the United States (Schwartz & Brand, 2001). Since 1972, a federal mandate has called for Head Start settings to hold a minimum of 10% of their enrollment spaces for children with disabilities. By 1973, 13.2% of children in Head Start met the criteria for a variety of disability categories, and that percentage has remained fairly constant over time (Schwartz & Brand). The Individuals with Disabilities Education Acts (IDEA 1997; 2004) support this inclusion strategy by emphasizing that children with disabilities should be served along with typically developing peers to the maximum extent that is appropriate. Although research and public policy support the inclusion of young children with special needs into programs with their typically developing peers (Guralnick, 2001; Rafferty & Griffin, 2005), little is known about the specifics of how and in what proportion such inclusion is optimally done. Most of the studies of preschool inclusion have focused on the effects of inclusion for young children with special needs or the perceptions of parents or caregivers regarding inclusion; they have not focused specifically on the effects of inclusive practices on typical children in the classrooms, particularly related to their preacademic progress. Furthermore, no effort to date has examined the interaction between classroom quality and concentration of children with special needs in Head Start.