This is very upsetting. Children with disabilities and children from diverse backgrounds continue to fall behind all other groups and there can only be one explanation discrimination.
I agree with the person that stated schools always want to make a child that doesnt fit into the norm a deficit instead of thinking about how they can change things to make more children successful.

> It is the lack of knowledge and understanding of how an individual child thinks, and in schools we see this in the form of forcing a child to adapt to the curriculum and environment, rather than the school adapting to the child. <
AMEN!!!

What is even worse, that what is underlying the abuse is a lack of knowledge and understanding on the part of adults, when it comes to kids with disabilities. One of the stories I read, provided by the link, is the autism boy and his dog. Where now he is singing Jingle Bells as commands to his dog, and this is a boy who was not orally communicating. It is a pity, that the U.S. education department is taking the parents to court to ban the dog from the school. Yet, without the dog, the autism boy's behaviour would regress and he would probably stop singing Jingle Bells. It is a prime example of the lack of knowledge and understanding, even at this high level of the education system. Animals have been known to help people with language difficulties. One of the best known technique, for children who have reading difficulties, is to read to their dog or cat. At least, an animal will not be making comments on how well or poorly one is reading. The parents of this boy, must have been over the moon to hear their boy speaking, even though it was the form of singing. I was too, when my child who was nearly three years old, spoke for the first time using more than two or three words, via through singing out what was than the popular country tunes at that time. I knew than, my child was capable of having full language, and the tools to help were the radio and having the TV channel on the country music station. As the music intensify, her oral language developed at a much quicker pace, where shortly after her 4th birthday, she no longer needed intensive speech therapy. My child's key to oral language, was country music. The autism boy's key, is the dog using singing as the vehicle.
I mention my own case, because even at that time the adults surrounding me would not or could not understand what was happening, and still insisted she should be doing things normally as other children do. It is the lack of knowledge and understanding of how an individual child thinks, and in schools we see this in the form of forcing a child to adapt to the curriculum and environment, rather than the school adapting to the child.