The Continuing Struggle for Equality in Special Education: Historical Overview

During the second half of the twentieth century, many countries, including Israel, saw dramatic developments in the special education field. One was the large increase in the population of students diagnosed as having special needs — both in absolute numbers and in their share of the total student population.1 The other was a rising awareness of the educational and social importance of students with special needs being integrated into the regular education system, and the need to move them there from the separate systems where, in the past, they had commonly been isolated. This paper describes the long and convoluted chain of governmental and administrative decisions, some of them made in the wake of public committee reports or court rulings, that have affected the way in which Israeli society chooses to educate students with special needs.