Date of Award

7-1-1975

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Educational Administration and Supervision

Abstract

In an effort to meet the changing trends in providing Special Education Services to students, the Omaha Public Schools formally implemented two Developmental Resource Centers at the Junior High School level in the fall of 1974. This implementation was part of a plan developed as a result of. L.B. 403 to provide comprehensive Special Education Services to those students perceived as having academic and/or behavioral difficulties. Many school districts have provided services to the handicapped in segregated settings regardless of the severity of the disability. The rising costs of education, the high costs involved in establishing special classrooms, the low number of students served by special classes and the stigma imposed on students placed in special ·classes have all traditionally been areas of concern to special educators and administrators. These reasons, plus the recognition that varying degrees of severity of children's handicaps call for programs varying in degrees of support,_ led educators in recent years to seek alternative means of providing programs for mildly handicapped students. These educators sought a setting which would meet student needs while providing services to as many students as possible at a cost lower than that of the traditional Special Education class. The result of this search was the resource model and the establishment of the Develop­ mental Resource Centers as a method of returning as many students to the mainstream of education as soon as possible while still providing the services these students required. The resource model, while described in a variety of terms by the supporters, is seen as a viable alternative to the traditional self­ contained special classroom for a substantial number of handicapped children The approach appears to be flexible enough to meet the criticisms aimed at the current practices of the self-contained special class­ room. In the programming of mildly handicapped individuals, it allows individual academic instruction without totally segregating these students-from their regular classes and without making necessary the some­ times painful transition from regular class to special class and back again.. Instead. it provides a transition from a segregated· to an integrated situation if progress is satisfactory. By implementing these resource centers, the Omaha Public Schools has adopted a model which seems to be gaining acceptance by educators, administrators and teachers. However, very little evidence has been documented which would show how the students who received services from the resource centers feel about the services they received and how their feelings about the center compare with their attitudes about school. Thus, the purpose of this study is to analyze these attitudes and feelings about the resource center and about school in general by surveying the attitudes of the students served by the Developmental Re­ source Center at McMillan Junior High School.

Comments

A Thesis Presented to the Department of Special Education and the Faculty of the Graduate College University of Nebraska In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts. Copyright 1975 Nancy Auten

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