Law, policy, and practice in the United States has long held that students with disabilities - including those with intellectual disabilities - have the right to a free and appropriate public education, in a non-restrictive environment. Yet very few of these students are fully included in general education classrooms. Educational systems use loopholes to segregate students; universities regularly fail to train teachers to include students; and state regulators fail to provide the necessary leadership and funding to implement policies of inclusion. Whatever Happened to Inclusion? reports on the inclusion of students with intellectual disabilities from national and state perspectives, outlining the abject failure of schools to provide basic educational rights to students with significant disabilities in America. The book then describes the changes that must be made in teacher preparation programs, policy, funding, and local schools to make the inclusion of students with intellectual disabilities a reality.

Theorizing the role of disabled subjects in global consumer culture and the emergence of alternative crip/queer subjectivities in film, fiction, media, and art

Unifying Educational Systems encourages leaders to move beyond the traditional forms and rituals of leadership for special education that are caught within traditional definitions of a continuum of services. Grounded in public policy debates, research on teaching and learning, and an emerging consensus throughout the leadership community that calls into question our current practices, chapters in this volume provide a discussion of the purpose, principles, and paradoxes extant in the implementation of current special education policy. Chapter authors discuss how students are currently served, the feasibility of re-conceptualizing special education leadership in the current policy context, and the challenges for the future. Ultimately, Unifying Educational Systems calls for a new policy framework to integrate special education within the larger instructional support system in schools, in order to support a social justice and inclusive practices agenda.

Undoing Ableism is a sourcebook for teaching about disability and anti-ableism in K–12 classrooms. Conceptually grounded in disability studies, critical pedagogy, and social justice education, this book provides both a rationale as well as strategies for broad-based inquiries that allow students to examine social and cultural foundations of oppression, learn to disrupt ableism, and position themselves as agents of social change. Using an interactive style, the book provides tools teachers can use to facilitate authentic dialogues with students about constructed meanings of disability, the nature of belongingness, and the creation of inclusive communities.

Rachel Adams's life had always gone according to plan. She had an adoring husband, a beautiful two-year-old son, a sunny Manhattan apartment, and a position as a tenured professor at Columbia University. Everything changed with the birth of her second child, Henry. Just minutes after he was born, doctors told her that Henry had Down syndrome, and she knew that her life would never be the same. In this honest, self-critical, and surprisingly funny book, Adams chronicles the first three years of Henry's life and her own transformative experience of unexpectedly becoming the mother of a disabled child. A highly personal story of one family's encounter with disability, "Raising Henry" is also an insightful exploration of today's knotty terrain of social prejudice, disability policy, genetics, prenatal testing, medical training, and inclusive education. Adams untangles the contradictions of living in a society that is more enlightened and supportive of people with disabilities than ever before, yet is racing to perfect prenatal tests to prevent children like Henry from being born. Her book is gripping, beautifully written, and nearly impossible to put down. Once read, her family's story is impossible to forget.

While activists, politicians and policy-makers grapple with the big picture, teachers and learners are making inclusion happen in their day-to-day lives. This unique text shows the importance and reality of curriculum and pedagogy in developing inclusive practice in a range of settings. Bringing together an exemplary collection of key articles, this Reader provides ways of thinking about inclusive curricula and pedagogy as starting points for possible action, as wel as: * illustrating how teachers can get education right or wrong for diverse learners depending on the pedagogical decisions they make; * discussing the role of the ordinary, special and inclusive pedagogy; * showing examples of teaching that elicits genuine participation and active learning; * providing case studies, and lessons from learners about what makes good teaching for them. Curriculum and Pedagogy in Inclusive Education will be inspirational reading for anyone with an interest in making inclusion happen.

The Irish Yearbook of International Law (IYIL) supports research into Ireland's practice in international affairs and foreign policy, filling a gap in existing legal scholarship and assisting in the dissemination of Irish thinking and practice on matters of international law. On an annual basis, the Yearbook presents peer-reviewed academic articles and book reviews on general issues of international law. Designated correspondents provide reports on international law developments in Ireland, Irish practice in international bodies, Ireland and the Law of the Sea and the law of the European Union as relevant to developments in Ireland. In addition, the Yearbook reproduces key documents that reflect Irish practice on contemporary issues of international law. Publication of The Irish Yearbook of International Law makes Irish practice and opinio juris more readily available to governments, academics and international bodies when determining the content of international law. In providing a forum for the documentation and analysis of North-South relations the Yearbook also makes an important contribution to post-conflict and transitional justice studies internationally. As a matter of editorial policy, the Yearbook seeks to promote a multilateral approach to international affairs, reflecting and reinforcing Ireland's long-standing commitment to multilateralism as a core element of foreign policy. The ninth volume of The Irish Yearbook of International Law engages with contemporary issues in international law, raising questions both as to the conceptual underpinnings of international law in relation to the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, and state practice in fields such as Law of the Sea and belligerent occupation, prosecution of war crimes in domestic courts, and the evolving field of international disability law.

As a social justice endeavor, one of the goals of inclusive education is to bolster the education of all students by promoting equal opportunities for all, and investing sufficient support, curriculum and pedagogy that cultivates high self-concepts, emphasizes students’ strengths rather than weaknesses, and assists students to reach their optimal potential to make a contribution to society. Dedicated to the identification of international strategies to achieve this goal, Inclusive Education for Students with Intellectual Disabilities presents examples of theory, research, policy, and practice that will advance our understanding of how best to educate and more generally structure educational environments to promote social justice and equity. Importantly, this discussion transcends research methodology, context, and geographical locations and may lead to far-reaching applications. As such, the focus is placed on research-derived educational and psycho-educative practices that seed success for students with intellectual disabilities in inclusive educational settings and the volume showcases new directions in theory, research, and practice that may inform the education and psychosocial development of students with intellectual disabilities globally. The chapter contributors in this volume consist of 31 scholars from ten different countries, and they come from a great variety of research areas (i.e., teacher education, educational psychology, special education and disability policy, special needs and inclusive education, health sciences). This volume, with a series of subsections, offers insights and useful strategies to promote meaningful advances for students with intellectual disabilities globally.

This book originated in a policy analysis class at Michigan State University taught during 2010. Using Professor Tatto’s unique approach to teaching policy analysis, the professor and students agreed to construct a class that represented a reflective and grounded experience in the policy analysis of a current and relevant issue with global ramifications; we began exploring policies that were developed at the global level and that were implemented locally. We investigated the surge of globally developed standards and regulations in an effort to improve education. Our goal was to learn cross-nationally about policies that seek to reform curriculum and instruction under efficiency and global competitiveness arguments, such as Education for All (EFA) and its USA cousin No Child Left Behind (NCLB). We knew our work would be bounded by the time available in a one-semester class, and by resource constraints. We did exploratory inquiry supported by literature reviews, reports on rigorous research studies, and in one case an exploratory case study. The policies we chose to explore, such as EFA and NCLB, offered us the opportunity to examine current reform tendencies that are intended to provide access to quality education for all children, the preparation of teachers to support diverse populations, the organization of schools to accommodate these children in response to vague policy mandates, and power issues affecting the different constituencies and stakeholders. The effects of these and other policies were difficult to track because research is scant and decisions are frequently made based on ideology or political persuasion. Our purpose was to explore the critical issues that originated such policies, and to search for documented evidence regarding policy implementation and effectiveness. We investigated the factors that seemed to interfere with successful implementation, from conceptual, theoretical, and methodological perspectives. In this class we learned that there are not ready-set frameworks for policy analysis, but rather that these have to be constructed according to the issues that emerge as policies are conceptualized and implemented to fit local contexts and needs. The book pays particular attention to the contexts of policy, including the evolving conceptualization of global and local systems of governance, knowledge regimes, and policy spaces. The book is designed for faculty and doctoral students in education who are interested in understanding diverse frameworks for policy analysis, and for those in the general public who are interested in the policies we analyze here.

This revised edition of the Handbook of Education Politics and Policy presents the latest research and theory on the most important topics within the field of the politics of education. Well-known scholars in the fields of school leadership, politics, policy, law, finance, and educational reform examine the institutional backdrop to our educational system, the political behaviors and cultural influences operating within schools, and the ideological and philosophical positions that frame discussions of educational equity and reform. In its second edition, this comprehensive handbook has been updated to capture recent developments in the politics of education, including Race to the Top and the Common Core State Standards, and to address the changing role politics play in shaping and influencing school policy and reform. Detailed discussions of key topics touch upon important themes in educational politics, helping leaders understand issues of innovation, teacher evaluation, tensions between state and federal lawmakers over new reforms and testing, and how to increase student achievement. Chapter authors also provide suggestions for improving the political behaviors of key educational groups and individuals with the hope that an understanding of political goals, governance processes, and policy outcomes may contribute to ongoing school reform.