Lesson 4 & 5 : Intervention Efforts for Children With Developmental Challenges
Special day schools
A special day school usually serves only one type of exceptional children. These schools are most often found in large cities, since they would be uneconomical to operate for only a few children. There are a few special schools, usually in small cities, which cater to the needs of a number of types of handicapped children.
Recently most of the special day schools have been specifically for children with moderate and severe general learning disabilities, who have been traditionally labeled as trainable and severely mentally retarded. There are more special schools for such pupils than for all other types of exceptionalities combined.
Special day schools have the advantages of providing a physical plant especially designed for the type of handicapped children being served, a range of trained special educators and a comprehensive array of ancillary, medical, psychological and social services. Two major problems associated with this type of school are isolation of the handicapped children from average children while at school and the long period of time which many pupils must spend on the bus each morning and afternoon. Therefore this scheme contributes little to “normalizing” education for the children enrolled in these special schools.
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