Administrative Support for Mainstreaming Learning Disabled Students.
In our June/July Feature, “The Kids-in-Between: Some Solutions,'' section editor Harry Chandler introduced three articles concerned with education of the marginally handicapped children. One article on mainstreaming, by Gayle and Don Smith, described a curriculum model designed to serve those in the “gray'' area. Termed the Parallel Alternate Curriculum, this program is in the administative control (and protection) of Dr. Harold McGrady, the Mesa Arizona district's Director of Special Education. His article, providing an administrator's perspective on such programs, was inadvertently deleted from the three-piece set. Those who missed reading the June/July issue may wish to consult pages 368-372 in conjunction with reading Dr. McGrady's comments which follow.—GMS
Critics of public school education claim that research based innovations fail, that schools should not change but remain the way they were forty years or more ago. New ideas in teaching do fail, not because the ideas are necessarily bad but because educators and, especially, administrators, expect quick results. Dr. McGrady has been able to avoid the major dangers to educational innovation: lack of proper teacher training and support, lack of sustained administrative support, lack of money, and lack of time. The PAC program is effective, but it would not have survived without the administrative involvement described here—H.N.C.