Oh Q! In our district, common sense is not allowed. Your comments about short changing special needs students by dumping them into a classroom full of "normal" kids would instantly classify you as a reprobate of the worst degree (which is something I suspect your not), at least in the eyes of our local school board.

Our county school boards, in their infinite wisdom, dismantled a long standing county wide program for special needs students, pronouncing instead, that these children's needs (and the needs of "normal" children as well) would be better served by mainstreaming as many as possible back into conventional classrooms. The reasoning? Both groups of students would better learn to socialize with each other, the affixing of damaging, artificial labels would be avoided, and oh yeah, it would save money. Alot of money. Any arguement to the contrary usually devolved to "separate but equal" (i.e. if that wasn't OK in the 50's with people of differing color, why is it OK now with people of differing intellect?). The fact that that analogy is specious notwithstanding, our classrooms of up to 30 students now often have 3, 4, or more highly disruptive individuals who consume a disproportionate amount of time.

Anyone who finds this change of benefit to either group of students has spent precious little time in the classroom.
It does save a boatload of money at first glance. Still, if you're paying less but receiving less, have you really saved anything?