general education

A column can dispense general education but can’t offer individualized advice tailored to the realities of where you live.

"Most students with disabilities spend most of their school day in general education classrooms, but many teachers indicate they receive insufficient training and preparedness to educate these students," said Scott Imberman, study author and professor in the Department of Economics in the College of Social Science and the College of Education.

"We thought that through the use of statistical measures of teacher quality, we could identify which teachers are more effective teachers with these students and how much general education teachers' ability to instruct these students varies."

The bigger inequity, according to Imberman, is that although "some general education teachers do have specialized skills that make them more effective for students with disabilities, our case study in Los Angeles suggested disabled students are typically not matched to these teachers."

She is a former teacher, with experience in special and general education, from kindergarten through high school.