There is often a terrible stigma associated with special education- few people WANT their child in special education!  The reality is that special education exists because there are so many different abilities of children of the same age.  The American school system is set up so that all children of a certain age are placed together in the same classroom and are often expected to learn the same things at the same time at the same rate.  It is the assembly model/ agricultural model of education- in nine months time, a certain amount of information is provided to students, they are to learn it and at the end of the year, they take a break to help their families harvest the crops, and then progress to the next station, um, classroom, and new information is provided for the next nine months.  Public education was established in this country during the Industrial Revolution when we were learning to make cars more efficiently and many students were still working on farms.  That history is long past, but its cultural implications are deep in the very fabric of our schools.  Education is still often perceived as a process similar to making cars and traditional school systems follow this historical pattern.