A Review of BEH Funded Personnel Preparation Programs in Emotional Disturbance

Abstract

The study reviews the Bureau of Education for the Handicapped's fiscal year 1976–1977 funded personnel preparation grants in the area of emotional disturbance. Grants for the 223 funded emotional disturbance programs were analyzed according to level of training, degree of severity of the child to be taught, age of the child to be taught, and whether the training component was cross categorically oriented or focused solely on emotional disturbance. Both special and regular education grants were reviewed. The review revealed that the predominant thrust of programs is toward preparing personnel at the master of arts level for work with the moderately disturbed child. Few funded programs focus on the preparation of personnel for work with the most severely disturbed child or the early childhood and secondary level disturbed child. Moreover, regular educators are receiving little government funded college and university training for work with disturbed children likely to be mainstreamed. The ramifications of the findings were discussed in light of personnel needs created by the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, Public Law 94–142.