From Education Week (registration required):

The U.S. Civil Rights Commission this week heard testimony that minority students are placed in special education classes at rates far above the national average. Experts viewed this disproportionality as a problem, and said better teacher preparation, more federal monitoring and more parental involvement are needed to address it.

[Stephanie Monroe, assistant secretary for civil rights at the Department of Education,] told the commission that a 1992 survey found that although black students made up about 16 percent of the total U.S. student population, about 32 percent of students classified as mildly mentally retarded and about 22 percent of students diagnosed with serious emotional and behavioral disturbances were black.

“Sadly, those disparities have not changed significantly” since 1992, she said.

… Matthew Ladner, the vice president of research for the Goldwater Institute, a think tank in Phoenix, has studied minority overrepresentation in special education for the state of Arizona. His research has shown that minority students in predominantly white school districts were significantly more at risk of being placed in special education than those in predominantly minority districts.

“There’s a massive amount of error in these judgmental categories,” Mr. Ladner said.

The commission is expected to issue recommendations on the subject.

See earlier post here.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 7th, 2007 at 8:28 am and is filed under race, special education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  Email This Post