ABSTRACT
Since the passage of Public Law 94-142 guaranteeing children and youth with disabilities a free and appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment, considerable progress has been made in both defining the nature of such services for students with handicaps and putting theory into practice in achieving the various components of those appropriate programs (Meyer, Peck, & Brown, 1991 ). In particular, the goal of educating all students-even those with the most significant disabilities-in their "home" school has emerged as a nationally prominent agenda item for both researchers and practitioners (Gerry & McWhorter, 1991; Laski, 1991). Defining a student's home school as the school he or she would attend if the student did not have a disability, Brown et al. (1989) argued that unless students with severe disabilities attend the same schools attended by their brothers, sisters, neighbors, and friends throughout the school years, they would be deprived of the essential longitudinal informal supports taken for granted by other children and their families. School is the place where lifelong friendships are made, and interactions with one's peer group (including friendships) are the context for practicing and developing critical social, communicative, and other skills that "come to life" outside the structured learning environment of schools and classrooms. In addition to assuming a primary responsibility for teaching students the content skills they need to become productive citizens, the school also supports an implicit curriculum:
CURRENT SERVICES FOR STUDENTS WITH CHALLENGING BEHAVIORS
Over one million students with disabilities continue to attend handicapped-only, segregated schools isolated from their peers and neighborhoods (U. S. Department of Education, 1989). Further, while the vast majority of students with mild handicapping conditions do attend regular schools, students with severe disabilities continue to attend segregated schools in disproportionate numbers-in many regions, a label such as severe mental retardation, autism, deaf-blindness, multihandicapped, and seriously emotionally disturbed virtually insures placement in a private school or segregated center (Laski, 1991; Meyer & Putnam, 1988; Viadero, 1989). In particular, children and youth who exhibit challenging behaviors continue to be the students most likely to be referred to segregated school careers regardless of their specific handicapping condition-even in school districts that are otherwise committed to a zero-reject model (Janney & Meyer, 1990; Meyer & Evans, 1986). In the largest school district in New York (over 20,000 students) that serves virtually every student with severe intellectual disabilities and multiple handicaps in regular schools, the one segregated school that does exist is designed to serve a large percentage of students labelled Seriously Emotionally Disturbed who are regarded as having highly disruptive and dangerous behaviors (Jerome Rene Wilett, December 27, 1990).
