Special educational ideology and political-economic conservatism.

Abstract

In the United States, the educational and human service systems, in addition to the attitudes and behaviors of the professionals associated with these systems, are being shaped to a lesser or greater extent by the Scandinavian ideology termed normalization. This paper examines such a belief system through a special education ideology scale developed by the author and administered to school committee members and superintendents in 16 communities in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The scale discriminates between varying ideological patterns of educational decision-makers as they pertain to the educational needs of handicapped children. Further, the scale is correlated with another tested belief system measuring political-economic conservatism. Analysis of the data revealed that special educational ideology varied significantly with political-economic orientations. According to community type--urban, small city, suburban, rural--the decision-makers varied significantly on their political-economic orientations. There were also noticeable differences in the extent to which special education policy was implemented. The greatest difficulty in placing children in the least restrictive environments was evident in the urban communities. While the findings are inconclusive, the data does suggest that a more progressive ideology, coupled with the strong relationship between education and politics, could contribute toward enhancing the effective implementation of special education and similar human service policies. The author recommends several possible options available to educational decision-makers at the community level which might improve upon the nature and extent of special education services and programs.