that's a good question virgil. this was one of my grievances with the public system when i worked in it. Admin touches on a huge problem that i encountered first hand, the inflated cost of funding special education programs that are full of students who clearly can't handle it. armed with their whacky classification schemes, students are deemed "classified" or "504" and placed in mainstream classes under a doctrine of "inclusion" where they are assigned a permanent "teacher." this teacher is paid the same salary as a specialized subject teacher which they don't deserve because, as admin pointed out, all they do is baby sit, shadowing students from class to class. they are also required to assist and organize the student's homework, and in many cases i observed special ed teachers doing the homework for them while the student goofed off during his/her special ed period. additionally these wanna-be teachers have the luxury of NO lesson planning and little to no grading of tests/papers/homework.
many of the special ed teachers i worked with would have been special ed students themselves had the special ed program existed when they were going in school.
students classified as "504" basically meant that as a subject teacher i could NOT grade them under the same standard as a mainstream student. i also had to give them "extra time" and never once did i experience where the extra time amounted to an improvement in the student's grade or work product. a 'C' grade for a special ed student was the equivalent of an F grade for a mainstream kid. the sad fact is i never once met a special ed student with the skills to be in a regular class. when i approached the special ed team about it -- usually headed by a school psychiatrist -- to inform them that their student couldn't hack the work, they referred me to the classification file.
enough's enough, if parents want their children who are classified to go to a regular school, then they should have to earn being there or face attending an alternative school. they lower the quality of learning for students who meet the standard. the system needs to stop dumbing down.
a teacher needs to step up with the nerve and write a book that puts the special ed program on notice. Special ed students are not the same.