It is amazing that students with disabilities appear to be either blamed or ignored. They are blamed for their incapacities and ignored for their capacities. I liked this post from Jay P. Greene (http://jaypgreene.com/2010/07/12/blaming-special-ed-again/) who spoke about a Wall Street Journal author who did not do her research. She commented about ‘Private Schools Tuition Burdening DOE’ when really the amount of money the DOE spends for a special education child is negligible compared to the other costs spent from its entire budget. As Jay Greene stated, maybe the author should have started with the costs for special education children compared to general education children to guarantee a sound education. I would also add that it would not have taken too much effort to investigate further into why NYC public schools were no longer options for students with disabilities.  Possibly the resulting article would have achieved some balance in providing better perspectives and more accurate numbers of education costs for that matter…

Please feel free to share your thoughts on this blog. As my colleague Laura Ann stated, this blog serves to provide a community to share information, experiences, and ideas that can allow for students from diverse backgrounds to have a truly inclusive education.

In our class this semester with Dr. Yong Zhao, he informed us about the concept of positive deviance. Positive Deviance is based on the idea that in every community that experiences hardship of any form or kind, there is a group of persons in the community that are overcoming those hardships successfully. As a result, a strengths-based, problem-solving approach is taken to deal with the problems. The group of persons can share their work with other persons in the community so ultimately, everyone is able to thrive. The goal is to find the positive deviance in any community and that is the mission of the Positive Deviance Initiative, which was started by one of its pioneers, Jerry Sternin. You can read more about the initiative here.

So where is the positive deviance in a community that you know that is not doing very well (economically, socially)? What are its strengths? What are the solutions being taken and how can they be applied to the rest of the community?

Hello & Welcome to IncludeU.org… Our purpose is to provide an online connection for anyone interested in promoting inclusive education for all.

Our mission is to provide a community to share information, experiences, and ideas that can allow for students from diverse backgrounds to have a truly inclusive education.

We seek the knowledge and opinions of educators, families, policy makers, students, administrators, and all others affected by the many issues of diversity and inclusion in education.

As a united network of people with varying social roles and perspectives, we have a unique opportunity to truly influence the way in which diversity and inclusion for every student regardless of race, ability, socioeconomic status, gender, and any other discriminatory  factors.

Thank You.