ABSTRACT
This chapter is intended to convey a deeper understanding of the idea of inclusion and the legal promise to provide students with disabilities an appropriate public education with nondisabled peers. The content addresses the historical development of educational inclusion and associated ideas of integration and mainstreaming and examines the foundations of the Least Restrictive Environment principle and its application in special education law. Trends in student placement are reviewed in tracing inclusion’s roots in the evolution of special education and in examining the standards of review applied by courts in determining placement in the LRE. Concluding thoughts address future trends and the likelihood that placement decisions based on the facts of a child’s personal circumstances make for educational policy that is wiser and more just than decisions mandated by an abstract and theoretical ideal of inclusion.
