Relationship between teachers' effectiveness and their tolerance for handicapped students

by Russell Gersten , Hill Wlaker , Craig Darch

In the past decade, a host of studies have explored the relationship between teachers' expectations and student achievement. In a recent review of this literature, Good asserted, "Every research effort that has examined the relationship between student achievement and teacher expectations has yielded positive relationships" (1981, p. 419). Though Good cautioned that the studies conducted to date have been correlational (thereby preventing causal inferences), he concluded that the research base strongly suggests that higher performance expectations by teachers do stimulate more effort on the part of both teachers and students, and hence lead to increased student achievement (Good & Weinstein, 1986).

In the classic explorations of successful inner-city schools, both Edmonds (1979) and Brookover (1981) found that teachers (and administrators) in these schools demonstrated consistently high expectations for students in academic, social, and behavioral domains. Recently, there has been a concurrent move in inservice education programs to stress high expectations (e.g., Clark & McCarthy, 1983) and to urge teachers to increase their standards and expectations in the hope of raising student achievement.

A curious irony associated with this issue, however, has never been brought into the forefront. This issue may partially account for the negative experiences of many handicapped children who have been integrated into regular classrooms as part of Public Law 94-142 (Gresham, 1982). Is it possible that the most successful teachers, those with the highest expectations and standards for their students, tend to resist placement of a child with obvious behavioral or learning problems, social skill deficits, or other atypical characteristics? Such children are typically perceived as difficult to teach, as demanding of teacher time and resources, and as having low potential achievement levels (Gerber & Semmel, 1984).