What is disproportionate representation of minorities in special education?

Minority groups most often referred to in this context are African Americans, Latinos, American Natives and Asians. Disproportionate representation means that the percentage of these groups in special education differs significantly from their percentage in the general school population.

What is disproportionate representation in special education?

Disproportionality is the overrepresentation of a specific race or ethnicity identified in one or more of four areas: identification of a disability in general; identification of a specific race or ethnicity in a specific disability category; discipline; and placement.

What is disproportionate identification of minorities in some special education categories?

Disproportionality in special education placement and school discipline are issues that need to be addressed by educators and policymakers, as students of color—especially students of color with disabilities—are disproportionately subjected to exclusionary discipline and may more often be placed in segregated settings ...

Why students from minority groups experience disproportionate representation in some special education programs?

Overrepresentation of minorities in special education is a growing problem in schools today. Research indicates that factors such as test bias, poverty, poor general education instruction, and insufficient professional development for working with diverse students can cause this overrepresentation.

What is an example of disproportionality in special education?

The Impact of Disproportionality in Special Education

For example, students of color identified for special education programs often get placed in separate classrooms or receive more discipline than their classmates, as reported by The Century Foundation (TCF).

Minority Overrepresentation in Special Education

What is disproportionate representation?

Being disproportionately represented refers to the unequal or unfair amount of people who are grouped in a category. In special education, there is a disproportionate representation of students of color and those who come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

Why is disproportionality an issue in special education?

Research suggests that a child's race and ethnicity significantly influence the probability that he or she will be misidentified as needing special education. This mis-identification can have immediate and long term negative effects.

What is the disproportionate placement of ethnic minorities in special education?

Possible causes of disproportionate special education representation are psychometric test bias, socio- demographic factors, unequal opportunity in general education (the most consistent findings in education research is that students achieve in direct proportion to their opportunity to learn), teacher ethnicity (as ...

Why are minorities disproportionately diagnosed with learning disabilities?

Many researchers are concerned that disproportionate identification of racial/ethnic minorities with learning disabilities is part of the long history of racism and stratification within education (Patton 1998; Skiba et al. 2008). Some attribute disproportionality to blatant educator racism (Anderson 1997; Skiba et al.

Why is cultural diversity a concern for special educators?

What are the Challenges of Diversity? One of the first issues of special education is identification of deficits. Children with different racial, ethnic or language backgrounds may have difficulty understanding classroom instruction and may not actually have special needs.

Should people with disabilities be considered a minority group?

Not all people with below average abilities are disabled. Therefore, the percentage of people with disabilities will nearly always be less than half the population: a minority.

Are children from minority groups underrepresented when it comes to students being identified as having special needs?

Summary: A new federally funded study finds that racial, ethnic, and language minority elementary- and middle-school students are less likely than otherwise similar white, English-speaking children to be identified as having disabilities and, as a result, are disproportionately underrepresented in special education.

What disabilities are underrepresented groups?

E.g. persons with psychosocial disabilities, intellectual disabilities, deafblind persons, autistic persons as well as indigenous persons with disabilities, persons with disabilities from minority communities, refugees or internally displaced persons with disabilities etc.

What are three factors influencing disproportionality in special education?

“Significant disproportionality” refers to three separate but related trends that impact a student's educational experience: (1) identification for special education (also called eligibility); (2) educational placement (once identified as eligible for special education); and (3) discipline.

How do you fix disproportionality in special education?

Which groups of students are overrepresented in special education?

Minority groups are overrepresented in special education. However, in gifted programs, Asian and Pacific Islanders are overrepresented while other minority groups, such as African American, Native American, and Hispanic/Latinos are underrepresented(page 89).

What problems do minorities face in education?

Research shows that compared with white students, black students are more likely to be suspended or expelled, less likely to be placed in gifted programs and subject to lower expectations from their teachers.

What race has the highest disability rate?

In most places, as at the national level, blacks have higher disability rates than whites, up to 2.5 times greater.

Are minority children disproportionately represented in early intervention and early childhood special education?

Racial and economic disparities occur in access to early intervention and early childhood special education screening, identification, and referral. Evidence shows racial disparities in developmental screening and early intervention referral and identification with these disparities getting larger over time.

What is racial and ethnic disproportionality in education?

Disciplinary disproportionality encompasses the disproportionately high rates at which students from certain racial/ethnic groups are subjected to office discipline referrals, suspensions, school arrests, and expulsion.

Which of the following groups is currently underrepresented in special education?

Women, persons with disabilities, and three racial and ethnic groups—blacks, Hispanics, and American Indians or Alaska Natives—are underrepresented in S&E.

Which two racial subgroup classifications are over represented in special education group of answer choices?

Latinos and American Indian students are over-represented in some disability categories in selected school districts and states.

Are black children disproportionately overrepresented in special education?

The debate over over representation in special education

The most credible studies allow researchers to control for a rich set of student-level characteristics, rather than using data aggregated to the district level, and firmly establish that blacks are disproportionately under-represented.

How do you determine disproportionality?

Are students of color overrepresented in special education?

The current process of identifying districts for significant disproportionality in special education was built over two decades of evidence that students of color were overrepresented in special education populations.