ABSTRACT
Jimmy Peters, age 6, is described vaguely as "communicatively handicapped." He speaks only in disconnected words. According to teachers, when he's frustrated, he lashes out. In his kindergarten class in Huntington Beach, California, teachers say he threw chairs, toppled desks, repeatedly bit and kicked other children and teachers, and disrupted class by throwing temper tantrums. The Jimmy problem is a byproduct of humane reform: the mainstreaming of hundreds of thousands of disabled youngsters into ordinary public school classrooms. The Toledo AFT points out that some severely disturbed children are already in regular public schools, though still segregated in special classes. Among them are students in diapers, others fed through tubes, suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorders, or extremely violent and destructive. His movement has rolled along without enough input from the public. If it goes much further, it may turn out to be yet another advertisement for school choice programs.
