She's right, Pinky. I'm hearing, but was born with a birth defect and have been wheelchair bound my entire life.
Because of this, I experienced special ed and mainstreaming and saw all sides of it. I also experienced some of it first hand. I was in a self contained class from the time I started school until 3rd grade. From then on, I was fully mainstreamed. As I went along, I had my own experiences in the mainstream that were akin to the deafies here. I was ridiculed, teased, isolated and so forth. I was pulled out of class for physical therapy. As a result, I missed out on alot of class time.
Things didn't improve for me until HS. It was there that I met other deafies who were mainstreamed like myself, and the majority of them struggled. I did have terps in some of my classes for those students who were profoundly deaf. However, if an HoH student happened to be in my class, they were NOT given terps. They were given preferential sitting, and that was about it. I never saw deaf students assigned note takers. We never did circle seating, except for when the teacher preferred it over lined desks.
As a lot of people have been saying, the mainstream isn't what it's cracked up to be. I did OK. I survived, but did I thrive? No, not really. And, this a hearie saying this! I have a lot of empathy for those deafies who had similiar or worse experiences than I did.
As for Sped, it's a joke, too. It's geared more to the learning disabled population. Those students who have ADD or dyslexia. Services for other special needs individuals like myself and others, leaves a HELL of a lot to be desired.