Special Education Disproportionality

During the early years of implementation of IDEA, schools and agencies made mistakes when determining who to serve through special education. “Sometimes schools placed students in special education based on a single test, administered and placed students using tests that were not reliable or valid, or used tests that were discriminatory” (Yell, 2016, p. 58). A procedure for a clear, accurate, and nondiscriminatory helps to ensure that schools do not repeat these early mistakes.

Special education is a relatively new concept in education. The question is why? Although, the Federal Government required all children to attend school since 1918, this did not apply to students with disabilities. Many state laws gave school districts the ability to deny access to individuals they deem “uneducable.” The term “uneducable” varied from state to state, school to school, and even individual to individual. If students were accepted into the school, they were placed in regular classrooms with their peers with no support or in classrooms that were not appropriate to meet their needs. This started to change with the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s. The lawsuit Brown vs the Board of Education sued to end segregation of public schools laid the ground work for Individuals with Disabilities Act. The next major impact in education was the enactment of Elementary and Secondary Act signed into effect by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965. The purpose of this law was to provide fair and equal access to education for all, established higher standards, and mandated funds for professional development, resources for support education programs, and parent involvement. Under this law, programs like Head Start were created and celebrated their 50th anniversary this year. Despite additional federal funds and mandatory laws, children with disabilities were unserved or underserved by public school due to loop holes with in the law. Many more lawsuit followed Brown vs

Harry, B., & Klingner, J. K. (2006). Why are so many minority students in special education?: Understanding Race & Disability in Schools. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Disproportionality, in special education, is the overrepresentation or under-representation of a particular population or demographic group relative to their presence in the overall student population (Ralabate, & Klotz, 2007). There are many factors thought to contribute to disproportionality: cultural differences, lack of appropriate assessment strategies, socioeconomic status, race, and gender (Kanaitsa, 2010).

For centuries the debate have been about the overrepresentation of minorities inside of special education. Analyst have called on the recount of misrepresentation of displaced students in special education labeling .An equivalent factor of minority is due to poverty, test bias and education process leading to achievement gap. Economic impoverishment and lack of exposure to general education curriculum contributes to life experience to take standardize testing. Poverty is the sole or even the crucial driver of racial ethnicity in a specific educational program. Ethnic students are subject to be isolated in educational settings and not exposing the student to the proper test material leading to test bias.

It is abundantly clear, after reading this article, that minorities students are overrepresented in special education classrooms. One point that really stuck out for me from this article was how students are placed in special programs and provided with special services because of their results on early elementary testing. “Diverse learners are more likely to be referred for additional testing and placement in special education programs because achievement tests typically do not assess literacy skills that they may have acquired outside school, and these skills often differ from the ones these children are expected to have when they enter school” (pg. 2). As educators

The Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA) of 2004 has several different procedure and document that are to be followed when assessing individuals for a special education program. In Guiberson's (2009) research he suggests that some educators may be unprepared to work with diverse student populations. In a 200 participant survey of speech pathologist a study found that a third of the participants did not have sufficient training in multicultural issues (Guiberson, 2009). Studies have shown that students that learn in educational environment that reflect their cultural background tend to achieve more academically, which make multicultural instruction important in school with diverse populations (Ornstein & Levine, 2007). Guiberson's

I am writing you, the representatives of Mississippi Department of Education, to discuss the overrepresentation and disproportion of the African-American students, particularly African-American boys, placed in special education services. Numerous professional literatures as well as the United States Department of Education have recognized the disproportion of African-American students placed in special education as a nationwide problem.

Disproportionate identification of minority students in special education is a major concern in schools today. This paper describes the issues in the assessment process with minority students and how we have arrived at a situation where minorities are being misdiagnosed into special education programs. Additionally, several legal cases are mentioned which show numerous actions and rulings that have tried to correct the disproportionate identification in special education. Some of the legal cases discussed include Larry P. v Riles, Diana v. State Board of Education, and Guadalupe v. Tempe Elementary School, which all significantly impacted special education today. Additionally, the Individual with Disabilities Education Act has enforced

Students from one racial class are often discriminated in different fields of practice, especially in education. Notably, black students have been seen to suffer most based on the statistics from a survey such as that highlighted in Beratan (2008). The issue becomes critical when the group being discriminated has a special need, and the effect is that stigmatization occurs where the learners feel uncomfortable and end up not gaining from the education they are given. According to Hornby (2015), one of the key factors leading to the disproportional placement of black students in special education is the case of overrepresentation in gift and talent schools. This digest presents recommendations that can be used to eliminate disproportional placement and representation in special education.

In the United States of America, disproportionality is a growing problem in the field of education. Disproportionality is the over- or under-representation of a group of people. This over- or under-representation can be ethnically, socioeconomically, racially, based upon gender, and many more. These factors can lead to the misidentification of a student. This misidentification can lead to the inappropriate placement of the student into a special education program. Being misidentified and inappropriately placed can have a devastating impact on the student (Web). Students who experience this first-hand are restricted in the core education that they receive and are removed from their peers and placed in a more isolated setting. This has extraordinary

Because of the stigma surrounding the intelligence of students in special education, many children are embarrassed when others find out about their curriculum. Oftentimes students receiving altered instruction have lower self-esteem and lower expectations for themselves because of how they are perceived. Even when they are fully mentally capable, people will treat them differently because of the circumstances in which they are educated. To most people with disabilities such as blindness, deafness, extreme dyslexia, and autism, it is offensive to be talked to like they aren’t capable of understanding- something that wouldn’t happen as much if we changed our view of what special education is and who exactly receives it.

The purpose of this research is to examine the achievement gap between whites and minorities in special education on standardized testing.

When I started reading the article, it made me feel very sad. It is hard for me to know that racism is still everywhere and is something that is affecting everyone. Education should be for everyone who needs it. Also, students with special needs should have the same right to a good education as a “normal person”, but sadly, is not the case. The first part of the article stated that there was a research made where teachers were having bias when referring students for special needs. It is hard for me to understand that people who swore to help students, are doing the opposite.

For most of our nation's history, children with special needs or disabilities were shunted aside. In spite of mandated education laws that had been in place since 1918, many students were denied education and