The disproportionate representation of children of color in special education is a long-standing problem that continues to concern educators. I see this every day in the Youngstown City Schools just with providing LLI services to third grade students.
The newly reauthorized Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, IDEA (P.L.108-446), once again addresses the concern and requires states to take more aggressive steps to monitor and respond.
Of course the extent of disproportionality varies considerably across states and school districts.
While information or results in this type of monitoring has focused on unusually high rates of identification of minority children in some disability categories, I think that changing practices in order to reduce those numbers will not necessarily improve educational services and outcomes.
Appropriate responses depend on a comprehensive understanding of disproportionality. This is something new teachers are still being trained on. A starting point for a better understanding of disproportionate representation and its significance is to accurately define and report rates of representation.
Chapter 5 did a great job at discussing the issue and ways to be aware of it and work towards changing it.
I am just amazed at the amount of students at the idea of disproportionality! I have always been around minority students so I never got a clear look at the problem until this class and reading chapter 5. There is so much that minority children have to deal with that could be put into play before labeling them as disabled. Poverty, family life, language, and cultural differences could all effect their learning and those issues should be sorted and dealt with before evaluation for a disability should be considered.
ReplyDeleteI think you are right in saying that we need to change the way of thinking for new teachers. Change in this misrepresentation needs to start somewhere, and training new teachers is a great place to start. If new teachers can learn more accurate ways of identifying students, then hopefully we can slowly start to help these overproportions.
ReplyDeleteI think you are right in saying that we need to change the way of thinking for new teachers. Change in this misrepresentation needs to start somewhere, and training new teachers is a great place to start. If new teachers can learn more accurate ways of identifying students, then hopefully we can slowly start to help these overproportions.
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