The determination of the rate of advancement of special needs students within Chapter 766, prototypes 502.1-502.4 in selected vocational and comprehensive school systems

Statement of the problem. The problem addressed in this study is whether special needs students progress in their prototype designation faster in a comprehensive or vocational school system. This issue is critical because within the past ten years an increasing number of special needs students have become a sizeable percentage of the students in vocational school systems. Methodology. The methodology utilized in this study was the survey method. An instrument was mailed to 65 randomly identified comprehensive school systems and 65 vocational school systems. The computer language BASIC was used to generate the list of comprehensive school systems. A vocational school system is identified as one which has five or more vocational course offerings. The approach was to utilize the sample of the whole method. There are 65 identified vocational school systems in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In addition to the utilization of the survey instrument, the researcher conducted on-site interviews in six school systems; three comprehensive and three vocational. These were chosen due to their marked tendencies of significant movement of special needs students from the prototypes of 502.1-502.4. The on-site interviews was also undertaken to supplement the data generated by the survey instrument. Results. The survey generated responses from 13 comprehensive school systems and 19 vocational school systems. Within prototypes 502.1 and 502.2 (least restrictive) there were 8,423 special needs students from the comprehensive sector and 17,805 from the vocational sector. Within prototypes 502.3 and 502.4 (most restrictive) there were 5,488 special needs students from the vocational sector and 4,798 from the comprehensive sector. Conclusions. The conclusions of this study were as follows: (1) Increasing number of special needs students in the least and most restrictive prototypes were found to be in the vocational sector; (2) Increasing number of students from the vocational sector were mainstreamed; (3) More students in the comprehensive sector remained in their prototypes over a four year period of time. In general, the study determined that special needs students achieved placement in the least restrictive prototype settings in the vocational delivery system at a quicker pace than their counterparts in the comprehensive sector