Underrepresentation In Special Education Essay

Disproportionality in Special Education has been a longstanding and frustrating problem across the county since its creation in 1975 with the signing of Public Law 94-142 by President Gerald Ford. Of the groups and degree studied, the most attention has been given to the overrepresentation of African-Americans, particularly in the categories of Emotional Disturbance and Mental Retardation. However, a group and degree studied much less frequently is the underrepresentation of Asian-Americans in Special Education. While underrepresentation is typically not viewed to be as troublesome, the need to study it is crucial since some of these unidentified students may not be receiving the services that they need. According to Zhang and Katsiyannis
He instead proposed that they be educated into the general education classroom with Special Education support, similar to our current day model of inclusion (Dunn, 1968). Even prior to this time, there were documented instances of students from minority backgrounds being treated differently and being called “feeble-minded” by society (Terman, 1916). For African Americans, up until the late 1950’s, the unjust, but accepted belief was that their education system wasn’t supposed to prepare them to be equal citizens, but rather, it was supposed to prepare them for the lower positions that they would occupy (Rury,
The degree of disproportionality in Special Education varies greatly based upon the measurement used and the population studied, however some consistent trends have emerged over the last few decades. African-Americans, the most studied population, have consistently been overrepresented in the disability categories of Emotional Disturbance (ED) and Mild Mental Retardation (MMR) (Sullivan, 2011). Similarly, Native Americans have frequently been overrepresented in the Learning Disabilities category (Skiba et al., 2008). However, the most consistent underrepresentation in Special Education, on a national scale, are students identified as Latino and Asian (Sullivan, 2011). Another group that has received little specific attention is English Language Learners (ELL). However, even with more attention given in recent studies, state data on ELL representation varies drastically from 0% to 17.3% and the data has just recently begun to be collected on a national scale (Sullivan, 2011). Interestingly, disproportionality has been shown to be greater in “soft” or judgmental disability categories, such as ED, MMR, or LD versus non-judgmental or “hard” disability categories like hearing, orthopedic, and visual impairments (Donovan & Cross, 2002). Despite these patterns, the degree of Latino disproportionality have varied from slight overrepresentation to underrepresentation based upon the states and/or districts where the research was conducted (Skiba et al.,