No abstract

Following a review of all publications on alternative education listed in The Education Index from 1974 through July, 1981, a selection of articles for analysis was made. Those articles were selected for their focus on applications to behavior disordered and delinquent youth. After a discussion of the origins of and recent developments in alternative education, the articles were reviewed according to the trend toward definition and assertion of civil rights of these particular children and the trend toward the right to a free and appropriate education of exceptional children in the least restrictive environment. The article also considers the problems likely to attend a clash of these rights when an element of punishment, such as in-school suspension, is involved.

No abstract

The purpose of this article is to show the following: (a) Over a third of incarcerated delinquents are handicapped, needing special education treatment; (b) parallel trends to deinstitutionalize delinquents and to develop alternatives to public school for behaviorally disordered youths are putting some individuals from each category in the same alternative settings; (c) several other stress inducing societal trends are likely to increase the number of these youths; (d) the state of research in the field is poor (particularly lacking in long term evaluations); and (e) the belief that new prosocial behaviors inculcated (especially) by short term treatments will persist without subsequent changed social psychological support for clients is likely to be chimerical.

A modified 36-item version of the Disturbing Behavior Checklist was used to examine the dimension of frequency in teachers' judgments about willingness to tolerate inappropriate behaviors in regular classrooms. Two samples of clinical teachers were asked to respond to the scale developed to explore this dimension: teachers in regular classes judging for themselves and special education teachers predicting how the generality of regular teachers might respond. The two groups differed on only 4 of the 36 behaviors. Three additional questions about tolerance of the addition of seriously emotionally disturbed children to mainstream classes were posed and no significant differences between groups were found. It was concluded that teacher opinions on these questions are worthy of respect and that the dimension of frequency of behavioral disorders should be examined in subsequent research.