My wife, a former school nurse, has said the real losers are the average kids. The talented and gifted students will succeed on their own, but with massive amounts of school resources being spent on the learning disabled it is the average kids who are being shortchanged.
As a school nurse, my wife had to provide nursing care to special needs students at almost a hospital level. She spent part of each day traveling by cab to the student's home helped load the student into the cab and monitored them in transit by cab to the school. This was repeated after school completed for the day. She monitored several students who were functioning at little more than a vegetative state. Yet these students were "mainstreamed" into regular classrooms with their "work" being done by teacher's aides. She often said that the school district was simply providing free babysitting services to these students until they were 21.
that's exactly what is being done.
There is no other reason to put these kids in school.