ABSTRACT
Special education is often criticized as follows: It is a failure because it does not produce good outcomes, costs too much, serves too many students, is unreliable and unfairly discriminatory in identifying students, creates social stigma and ruins students' identities, keeps students too long and decertifies too few of them, and needs reconceptualization. Critics of special education are prone to comparing outcomes for students with disabilities with those of students without disabilities— to presume that if special education really works, then there will be no significant difference between outcomes for students with disabilities and those without disabilities. The people who invented special education recognized that special education sometimes requires a special place, simply because no teacher is capable of offering all kinds of instruction in the same place and at the same time. The federal special education law (IDEA) was passed in response to the failure of localities and states to meet the needs of students with disabilities.
