In terms of serving the needs of special education students, the American system has come an incredibly long way since the days of total separation, when students identified as having special needs had their own schedule, their own teachers, far away from the “normal” students. The system has come even farther since the days when these sorts of students were shuttled off to special schools – or just left to stay home. The right to a free public education for each student is an entitlement within the grasp of every child in the United States between the ages of five and eighteen (and even older, in the case of many special education students). Throughout the United States, the quality and variety of services available across the spectrum of special education is a testament to the American belief in equality. In many parts of the world, the testing that takes place in the early secondary years puts all students – general and special education alike – into dedicated vocational tracks beginning after the eighth grade, or at the approximate age of 14. In the United States, though, access to special education services continues past the age of 18. One caveat with these praises to the American educational system, though, includes the availability of services to all who need it – making sure that the services of special education are comparable in districts that are flush with money, as well as districts with lower property values. Maintaining an equitable distribution of special education resources is an obligation that American educators take seriously – and improvement needs to continue. Also, another area of equity involving special education involves the placement of minority students in special education services beyond the proportional representation of those minorities in the general population. Placing students in special education to solve issues of a behavioral nature is not an appropriate use of those resources, and placement in those sorts of programs, while ostensibly an infusion of attention for that students, actually constitutes a form of discrimination, by assuming that the student’s particular needs call for placement in special education services. Addressing these areas of equity in special education is a common theme in the research in the past four years.
Mark Guiberson conducted a study of the literature about Hispanic representation in special education, attempting to determine the extent of inaccurate placement of Hispanic students in special education services, in proportion to the percentage of that ethnic group in the general education population. He found that while there are many school districts that show overrepresentation of Hispanic students in special education problem, this issue is not a nationwide one. Instead, it appears to be regional one – one example would be the situation in New Mexico, where between 1993 and 2003, Hispanic children were tagged as impaired in speech and language more frequently than children of European American descent (168); with regard to mental retardation or emotional disabilities, though, Hispanics were referred less frequently. This may have less to do with overt discrimination than with a simple issue of language: administrators and diagnosticians who are not able to distinguish linguistic expression difficulties from other types may be inaccurately classifying these Hispanic students as being in need of speech services, when in fact their speech mechanisms are fine – they just were raised in a home where English is not the first language.
One national trend involving excess application of special education services to Hispanic services comes in the area of referral – for every 100 European American student referred for special education services between 1993 and 2003, 109 Hispanic students were. The screening process tends to pull out many – only 89 Hispanic students for every 100 European American students make it into special education programs. Guiberson cites a study indicating that many speech language pathologists say that they do not have the needed training to handle multilingual populations, and in many districts, teachers have not received the training they need to deal with that population either. As a result of his literature review, Guiberson concludes that there may be too many Hispanic students that have been classified speech language impaired or learning disabled, and too few that have been classified mentally retarded or emotionally disturbed (176). This inaccuracy wastes special education funding and does not give the students the services they actually need – and deserve.
A team led by Russell Skiba published an overview, in 2008, of the story of bringing special education students to a point of equity with their peers as far as opportunities to learn, and then moves to discuss the current status and ongoing challenges for all educational professionals when dealing with special needs students. In particular, Skiba’s team focused on the overrepresentation of students from all minority backgrounds in special education services, focusing on such causes as bias in test composition, inequity in general education opportunities, behavior management, and cultural misperceptions. Finding it ironic that, given the fact that special education services were a by-product of the American civil rights movement, minority students are warehoused in special education services in an attempt to get around the challenges of providing students with the appropriate instructional services that they need.
Skiba’s team points out that African American students make up one out of every three students who have been classified mentally retarded (266). Given the fact that, in the classroom, only one out of every six students is African American, that is a highly skewed representation. African American students are more than twice as likely as European American students to get the mentally retarded label as well (267). A similar level of overrepresentation has taken place in the ranks of the emotionally disturbed (268); as African American students are also overrepresented, in comparison with their proportion in the general population, as well. Skiba’s team then pointed out research indicating that this is a trend that takes place in almost all 50 states (269). The causes of this range from psychometric testing that is biased toward European American students, according to many researchers, although Skiba points out that the field is divided on this question; the fact that there are so many issues involved, such as socioeconomic status, that can also skew ability to answer a particular set of test questions, that is difficult to lead with testing bias. However, a lack of preparation for school in terms behavioral difficulties can be misinterpreted – and often is misinterpreted – as a need for emotional disturbance services instead of help with discipline in the general education settings: children from poor homes need significantly more scaffolding before they can enter a classroom and be prepared to live by the norms there (272). Skiba’s team concludes that the problem is indeed complex in terms of causes, ranging from home environment to teacher perceptions of students from different cultures to administrative practices that do not take student backgrounds into consideration. Any effective solutions, Skiba and his team argue, will have to be culturally responsive in nature, focusing on the needs of the particular community in jeopardy.
Works Cited
Guiberson, M. (2009). Hispanic representation in special education: Patterns and
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Skiba, R., et. al. (2008) Achieving equity in special education: History, status and
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