Are Special Ed Programs Diluted?

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This sounds somewhat like my school. Their special ed program is marketed as being for students "who may have social emotional challenges that impact their ability to access the general education curriculum." It pretty much serves as a catch-all for students that are deemed "too disabled" to get by with an IEP or 504. They have everyone from non-verbal, severely autistic students to people like my boyfriend, who has mild Asperger's and has some issues with social skills, but is very strong academically. (His parents had to argue with the school a bunch to let him take any AP courses... the school said that the material would be too difficult for him. He skipped a grade and now he's in pre-med at one of the nation's most competitive med schools... so ha!)
However, I'm unsure of how they decide who should be put in the program. I suspect it has something to do with money (and likely politics, as well). It really makes very little sense to me.
Anyway, despite sharing a building, the program is almost completely segregated from the rest of the school, and it's extremely corrupt and just generally awful. Many of the teachers are either oblivious or indifferent to student's needs, and are often disrespectful or downright nasty to students. One teacher told a one friend of mine who's in the program, "I'm the teacher, you're the student. You're opinions don't matter." As the friend said to me later, "They expect us to respect them as authority figures, but they don't respect us as people." Oh yeah, and they also lock "out of control" students in a room by themselves... or sometimes with other "out of control" students.
Sorry if that dissolved into a bit of a rant. It just makes me so mad... and sad... and uhggg, it's just awful!

When I was little, they shuffled all kids with disabilities in one room. I was placed in a self contained room because of my language delay and all it did was it taught me inappropriate behaviors so I mimicked them at school thinking it was how I was supposed to act there and because it was allowed. Also they didn't give me school work at my grade level because they treated me like I was slow so they were giving me school work I already knew how to do rather than teaching me new things and making my work harder. I didn't belong in that room. I did go to regular ed for music, library, and PE but it wasn't enough. That was what they did for inclusion but it wasn't good for me because I needed it all the time. I got behind academically and then I had to catch up. But it did make me skip memorizing subtraction and addition problems.

When I was in middle school and high school, there were lot of normal kids that went to the resource room for help or to do their school work. I am not sure what disabilities they had so I would assume they had a learning disability. I have never assumed they were just lazy or didn't need to be there. That thought had never occurred to me. It did help me accept myself better and to accept extra help in school so I wasn't getting behind and getting F's. Because it was a small town, there were very few handicapped kids in school. When I was in high school, it was three the most.

That does sound awful. I dislike my school's special ed program, but I suppose we have it good in comparison.