My autistic family ain’t your autistic family
This one is subtitled, why “least restrictive environment” should not be used as a weapon. First, some background. There are lots of rumors swirling around my district lately. Many of them around moving students out of SDC or small self-contained special ed classes, and “mainstreaming” students into regular education classes, with a bit of time each day in a pull-out special ed class. I was discussing this with a colleague who had one of the first “mainstreamed” developmentally disabled students in her high school class in her second year of teaching. Since she was new, didn’t know much, and didn’t get any guidance or support, she wasn’t sure if the students had gotten much academically from the experience, but she said that what struck her later was that she had intuited that this mainstreaming provided socialization with “normal” peers for the student, but, what struck her was how this had affected those “normal” kids. They had gone along all four years of high school and included the student in things like Prom. By not shutting this student away in a “special” class, this helped 
