When a student is mainstreamed into a regular course, rather than a resource classroom, an Individualized Education Plan, otherwise known as an IEP, is sent to the teacher. These plans specify which goals the special education student is expected to meet in the classroom. Since a mere schedule change can necessitate a meeting of an administrator, special education teacher and regular education to prepare the IEP, these goals are often developed hastily. When the regular education teacher looks at the student's goals, she may or may not be able to easily integrate them into the regular curriculum for her course.
While a teacher who receives one IEP for a mainstreamed student can almost certainly adapt her coursework for that individual, it can be a different situation altogether when the teacher has 15 or 20 students with special needs mainstreamed into her classes over the period of a day. Keeping up with each student's goals can be a considerable challenge. Teaching each course to meet the needs of several special-education students, each of whom often have very different goals, can be impossible, especially as the teacher must also meet curriculum goals for the other students in her class.
Some schools provide inclusion teachers to help regular-education teachers keep up with the demands of meeting the needs of special-education students. They can help by altering the coursework to meet the needs of the student, by providing individual instruction and in many other ways. Unfortunately, such teachers add considerably to the cost of running a school. Schools often save money by hiring the minimum number of inclusion teachers possible. Therefore, you can have a situation where there is one inclusion teacher for 90 special-education students across one grade level, many of whom are in different classes at the same time. This is a situation in which special-education students receive very little assistance in regular-education classes.
Inclusion teachers aren't the only cost of mainstreaming special-education students. Students who have severe learning disabilities, such as those with autism and traumatic brain injuries, may have an IEP that specifies that the student requires the presence of a paraprofessional at all times during the school day. In these cases, the school must hire a teacher's aide to meet the needs of that one student. For these reasons, special education can account for as much as a third of a school district's academic budget. From a financial perspective, schools can more efficiently meet the needs of some special-education students by placing them in a classroom governed by a qualified special education teacher with students who have similar needs.