The third assumption is that special education is an instructionally rational system. Participants of the REI debate reject this assumption and contend that special education is really just a “politically rational system” that provides services to specific students, although these services are not always effective and may be stigmatizing (p. 228-229). Skrtic suggests that from an organizational perspective, the institutional practice of special education is actually “an organizational artifact”; schools use special education as a symbol to the public to suggest that change has occurred (p. 229). From a structural perspective, Skrtic argues that special education “functions as a legitimizing device” (p. 229). And, from a cultural perspective, Skrtic argues that special education serves to “distort the anomaly of school failure” in an effort to preserve the prevailing paradigm (p. 229). Skrtic believes that this distortion “ultimately reaffirms the functionalist presuppositions of organizational rationality and human pathology in the profession of education and in society” (p. 229).
