Italy has a long history of including students with disabilities in general education classes. Their efforts offer unique perspectives and practices from which other countries may benefit. The article highlights four notable attributes about the Italian approach and discusses implications for American schools.

A model of functional levels in diagnosis and intervention designed to return handicapped children to the mainstream. (Author)

Describes lively and attractive learning environment in halls, classrooms, playground, and even rest rooms of an Ohio elementary school on kindergarten assessment day. School's equally lively principal, a former classroom teacher, is seldom in her office, preferring to mix with teachers and students. Books are everywhere, and children with…

During the 2002-03 school year, Michael B., Rebecca D., and Aldo V. were eighth-graders at the Regional Gifted Center program at the Beaubien School in the Chicago school system. In February, the Beaubien School held an annual contest for eighth-graders to determine the design for the class T-shirt. Michael was disappointed that his design did not…

As a field, special education presents an excellent case study of the paradox of differentiation and integration, wherein we seek solutions through increased specialization but, in so doing, we redefine a problem in terms of discrete parts at the expense of the whole. As Thomas Skrtic pointed out more than a decade ago, a large and ever-widening…