I couldn't agree with you more

This is the at the root of the problem I'm currently having with my daughter's school. When we first moved here, they wanted to ship her off to a special ed warehouse, er, school. I said I wanted her mainstreamed with an aid as needed (speech therapy, too, of course). Now the school is maintaining that special ed services and mainstreaming are mutually exclusive. You may remember from the thread below that they don't even want her to have an IEP anymore!

As I see it, if this trend continues as is, most special needs children will be mainstreamed without the proper support (remember most parents don't know/are not able to advocate). Many of those children will be then be retained (maybe more than once) OR they'll be advanced even though they haven't mastered that year's curriculum. Then what kind of mess will we be in?