Disproportionate Representation - Blog Post #4 - Ray Marks

Disproportionate Representation in Special Education. What Are Some Promising Solutions?

In an earlier module, I reviewed an article in Education Week, in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled against an African American student's claim for redress under IDEA. The student had claimed, and the court had found, that she had been placed erroneously in the special education system. I mention this, not to dispute the Court's findings, but to highlight the fact that minorities are still over-represented in special education classes, despite our best efforts.

Our country has what I would call a strange dichotomy regarding race: on one hand, our cultural diversity is regarded as a strength, we accept immigrants from all nations and backgrounds, incorporating facets of their culture into our own. On the other, racial tensions are still palpable - on a given day, I will be exposed to implicit and explicit racism from many different sources, including, and I hate to say it, my own family.

According to Rueda, Klingner, Sager, and Velasco(p. 132), race is at the heart of the conversation regarding over-representation in special education. They quote "For over fifty years, Americans have fought for equal rights within both general and special education." (Bullivant, 1993). This is not hyperbole. Since before Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, people of color have done what they could to provide their children with the best opportunities they could, including in education. When the Supreme Court declared 'separate but equal' to be not so, education opportunities were expanded, at least on paper. As with any new law or ruling that upsets the status quo, there was resistance, sometimes violent. Because African American students did not have all the opportunities afforded white students, many students of color were not performing to the levels of ehite students and were relegated to special classrooms, which was a way to continue segregation, yet keep up appearances.

We can still see this kind of institutional racism in play to this day. Students of color, especially those in urban environments, tend to come from the lower socioeconomic strata. At Mooney, many of our African American students, for example, live right around the school, which is in a declining neighborhood, in a city hard hit by the current recession. Twenty percent of our students receive free or reduced lunch. In many cases, these students don't always get the support they need at home, either academically or behaviorally, and this comes out in school as academic issues or behavior problems, which can be "fixed" by placing that student in the special program, keeping them from disrupting the classroom.  But this seriously curtails any prospects the student of color might have to enroll in higher level elective courses, all because that student was pigeonholed as a "special needs" student, often with little empirical evidence.

So, how can this issue be truly fixed? We cannot merely mandate that racism be over - it doesn't work like that. We need to be aware of how a students social or cultural upbringing influences the choices they make in the classroom, and apply best practices to the challenges these students face and work with them to help them succeed. We also need to find ways to ensure that parents (and/or guardians) are involved and informed as to teacher's concerns about the student, and to build trust between the student, their family, and the school district. Teachers must also be provided the opportunity for Professional Development in order to be better prepared for the challenges presented in the classroom as we continually strive to best serve our students.