N.Y. Plan Calls for Mainstreaming Preschool Children

By Karen Diegmueller

New York state education officials unveiled a plan last week that calls for mainstreaming preschool children with disabilities and shifting the cost of educating them to school districts.

The plan also would strip private agencies of the right to evaluate children and decide where they should be placed, and transfer the responsibility to the districts.

Carl T. Hayden, the chancellor of the state board of regents, said the proposal "helps taxpayers by reducing costs and also helps the children by integrating more preschool children with disabilities into natural settings instead of keeping them in segregated settings." In the 1993-94 school year, about 75 percent of the approximately 43,000 3- and 4-year-olds in special-education programs in New York state were in segregated settings, according to...