As published by the Saturday Evening Post, in the last hundred years, teachers and parents have worked to change how children with special needs are educated. Children with disabilities were at one time prevented from attending mainstream schools, but thanks to decades of advocacy by vocal disability advocates, students with disabilities gained new opportunities to develop their abilities and capacities in their own way.Â
“The New York City public schools’ ungraded classes were one of the few early efforts to provide inclusive special education. Across the nation, children with special educational needs were largely excluded from public school entirely. In the 1930s and 1940s, parents began forming groups in their communities. The Cuyahoga County Board of Developmental Disabilities was formed in Ohio in 1933, specifically to support families whose children were not allowed in public schools because of their disabilities. The Arc of Washington State was established in 1936 to meet family needs in that state, and in New York, the AHRC New York City was created in 1948 when Ann Greenberg placed an ad in the New York Post looking for other parents of disabled children who wanted to create a nursery together. Similar efforts spread across the nation through the 1950s, with parents working together to address the challenges they faced in finding support for their children.“