AWARENESS UPDATE: GOOD NEWS DEPT

A couple of items are worth noting.  First:  inclusion of those with differences appears to be on the rise in our schools:

A growing number of students with disabilities are spending most of the day in regular education classrooms alongside their typically-developing peers, according to new federal statistics.
As of 2013, more than 6 in 10 school-age students served under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act spent at least 80 percent of their day in regular classrooms. By contrast, roughly half of students with disabilities met that threshold in 2004.
The figures come from a report to Congress issued late last year by the U.S. Department of Education outlining the progress of the nation’s special education students.
In sum, the annual report indicated that more than 5.8 million students ages 6 to 21 were served under IDEA in 2013. Meanwhile, 745,000 children ages 3 to 5 and 339,000 infants and toddlers received services through the program.
While the overall number of school-age children with disabilities declined between 2004 and 2013, the percentage of those identified as having autism soared by as much as 258 percent across age groups over the 10-year period, the report found.
Some 95 percent of special education students spent at least some of their day in general education classrooms in 2013, according to the federal data. However, students identified as having intellectual disabilities or multiple disabilities were least likely to spend the majority of their time in inclusive environments.

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Item #2:  Lego is about to roll out a new mini-figure...in a wheelchair.  

Lego said it will include a boy in a wheelchair in a forthcoming set of its iconic minifigures.
The toymaker confirmed the plan this week after a handful of websites that report on Lego revealed pictures and video of the new product taken at an industry event recently in Germany.
The wheelchair will be part of a LEGO City set called “Fun in the Park” that will be available in June, said Michael McNally, senior director of brand relations for LEGO Systems, Inc.
This isn’t the first time that Lego has included a wheelchair in its product line but McNally said it does mark the “first wheelchair molded at LEGO minifigure scale.”
Previously, McNally indicated that the company offered buildable wheelchairs and a LEGO DUPLO wheelchair.
Lego and other toymakers have been encouraged to offer products representative of people with disabilities by the U.K.-based campaign Toy Like Me.
“This move by Lego is massive in terms of ending cultural marginalization, it will speak volumes to children, disabled or otherwise, the world over,” the group’s founder, Rebecca Atkinson, said in a statement.

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