When Sarah Engelman talks about the education of her blonde-haired, blue-eyed daughter, her speech is peppered with the vernacular of the civil rights struggles of decades ago. She wants her daughter taught in an "integrated" setting, she says, instead of the segregated classrooms she was offered by the Los Angeles Unified School District.
But Engelman is not concerned about race. For her and millions of other parents of handicapped youngsters across the country, "integration" means putting their children on regular campuses alongside children without disabilities.
"A segregated classroom leads to a segregated life. And I want Alexis to be part of the real world," said Engelman, whose 6-year-old daughter has a chromosomal anomaly that limits her mental and physical development.
Once called mainstreaming, the idea of putting disabled children in regular classes is not new.
But the push for integration has been taken up with a new fervor in some school systems by teachers, parents and advocates for the disabled, who cite scores of studies showing that even profoundly handicapped children fare better on regular campuses.
They make friends and learn social skills from other children, the research shows. And many of their parents have decided that is more important than the practical skills they might learn in the cloistered atmosphere of special education schools.
"I would love it if Alexis could learn to read and write and handle money so she could have a job," said Engelman, "but realistically what I want for her is to get along with people, to learn to speak up for herself, to be able to enjoy herself at her sister's birthday party."
While some California school districts such as San Diego and San Francisco have embraced the notion of full inclusion of handicapped students, others like those in Los Angeles and Orange County are moving more slowly, responding to specific parent requests, but doing little to push alternatives to their special education schools.
Nationwide, as the integration movement picks up steam, some states, such as Vermont, Colorado, Oregon and Iowa, are closing their separate special education schools and placing handicapped students at regular schools--some in small, separate classes made up only of children with similar disabilities, and others sprinkled among nonhandicapped children in regular classes.
