Federal law in the United States requires that students with disabilities receive their education alongside their peers without disabilities to the maximum extent appropriate given their individual circumstances. As a result, students with less support needs have enjoyed increasing amounts of time in the regular education classroom, while their peers with developmental disabilities are still largely served in separate educational settings. When these students are not included in the regular education classroom, they are not able to access the academic, social, and communication benefits of inclusion. The inclusion of students with developmental disabilities has long been a point of contention and disagreement among special education teachers, administrators, and scholars. It is the goal of this paper to carefully consider the perspectives and practical considerations that affect the placement of students with developmental disabilities and understand why these students spend less time in the regular education classroom than their peers with other disabilities. In addition, we weigh the relative advantages of inclusive and separate placements. After reviewing these issues, we believe that it is possible to simultaneously value a spectrum of placement options and advocate for increased inclusion in the regular education classroom. We discuss evidence-based practices to support inclusive placements and areas of future research to support inclusion of students with developmental disabilities in the regular education classroom.

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Systematic prompting is a versatile evidence-based practice that can improve a range of outcomes for students with disabilities, but many teachers and paraeducators are not familiar with systematic prompting or may struggle with implementation. In this systematic review, the authors identified 28 articles that evaluated training practices for school practitioners implementing systematic prompting procedures in school settings. Fifteen studies focused on paraeducators and 13 on teachers, with an increased focus on paraeducators in more recently published studies. The authors found that a variety of training approaches were effective, and that all studies included two core strategies: didactic instruction and performance feedback. These two strategies represent only a subset of recommended practices from the broader staff training literature but may be sufficient for training basic practices like systematic prompting. Future research is needed to directly compare training approaches and identify the most efficient means for enabling educators to implement systematic prompting with fidelity.