New Agendas for Special Education Policy: What the National Reports Haven't Said

The calls for educational reform that have dominated the professional and lay literature for the past few years have been decidedly silent in discussing the role of special education either as a contributor or a solution to the problems being raised. As an introduction to this “Special Focus” on the relationship between general educational reform and special education, this article summarizes some of the more prominent reports with regard to their treatment (and nontreatment) of special education. The impact of proposed reforms for the conceptualization and operation of special education is the subject of the five articles that follow.