Four studies were undertaken in 12 urban high schools to explore the accommodative power of mainstream secondary schools and the extent to which teacher attitudes and student behaviors contributed to failure of learning disabled students in regular high school classes. Findings suggest that mainstream teachers recognize the low achievement of LD students but do very little that is different instructionaily when these students are assigned to regular-content classes. The one adjustment that is commonly made is to lower grading standards so that LD students have a good chance of passing the course. In fact, most LD students received passing grades in most of their mainstream courses and most failing grades were in courses in which attendance records were extremely poor.

Without effective cooperative planning between the learning disabilities teacher and the regular classroom teacher, the probability of successfully mainstreaming an LD adolescent into the regular classroom is greatly reduced. Cooperative planning is an educational programming and monitoring arrangement between special and regular educators on behalf of LD students. This article presents the thesis that a major part of the learning disabilities teacher's role is to assist the mainstream teacher in developing and implementing instructional alternatives. The authors delineate prerequisites for bringing about educational change in the mainstream and specify a sequence of steps for systematically creating change in the regular class on behalf of LD adolescents.

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