ABSTRACT
Often outside the awareness of its practitioners, special education contains elements that make it subversive to universal public education systems. Special education's focus and priorities challenge schools to produce a radical form of social justice: equality of educational opportunity for students who are sometimes characterized by extreme individual differences. Attempting to accommodate these differences raises questions as well about the meaning of equality, the meaning of opportunity, and indeed the relationship between schooling and education. Much of the American understanding and equality of educational opportunity begins with assumptions of normal — i.e. typical or modal — ability and learning potential. School policies and structures have evolved following more or less implicit expectations that children develop and learn ‘normally’ (i.e. in a tolerably similar manner).
