In the Shadow of Brown

Article Title: In the Shadow of Brown: Special Education and the Overrepresentation of Students of Color 

Focus of the article is to discuss the disproportionate placement of students of color in special education programs. This concept is commonly refereed to as over representation.

Background Information: This article was written after the 50th anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education and the 30th anniversary of Individuals with Disability Education Act (IDEA).

The IDEA asserted a need for increased educational opportunities for excluded groups of students.

The authors of the article states that instead of celebrating Brown and IDEA, it would be ore honest to commemorate because schools are still just as segregated.

Introduction: 2 main questions posed by the authors that this article tries to answer: 

1. How has special education ignored the intersection of race and disability and by doing, contributed to failure of Brown?
2. How did Brown fail to consider disability and special education more specifically the mechanism of re segregating students of color within otherwise desegregated schools?

The Problem of Overrepresentation

• Since 1970-over representation of minority children in certain disability categories.
• Use of evaluation instruments falsely reinforced presumed intellectual hierarchies among racial and ethnic groups.
•  The concern begins with teacher referral.  There is a large imbalance that exist between the teacher and the diverse population of students in public schools.
• "90% of public school teachers in the US are White. 40% of US students in public schools belong to racial or ethnic minorities (p.2)."
• Another staggering statistic is that black students constitute 14.8% of school age population but represent 20.2% of students in special education.  Additionally, black students are 3x more likely to be labeled as having mental retardation (MR) while white students are 2x labeled as having emotional disturbance (ED).
• The category of Learning Disabled (LD) has been implicated in the problem of overrepresentation. In the 1st 10 years after the category was created, the vast majority identified were white middle class boys.
• The other problem with overrepresentation come from the idea that students in segregated special education classrooms are denied access to general education curriculum. They are also more likely to drop out and lower teacher expectations as a result of being labeled.
• Takeaway-  Need more urgent and refined research methodologies to fully understand relationship of race, disability and special education.

Strategies of Resegregation 

• A long standing way to maintain segregation was done by resegregating students within schools.
• Ability tracking was used to do this. Sorting students " are grounded in ideologies that maintain race and class privilege ( Oaks, Wells + Datnow, 1997, p. 484)."
• Tracking was seen as a strategy to stop the phenomenon that became known as white flight. This was when white families would leave the public school system and enroll their child in private or suburban schools.
• Many resisted desegregation and they did this by over referring students of color to segregated special education classes. For example, in 1955 schools in DC had double enrollment in special education. 77% that were ordered to desegregate were black.
• Basically, segregating that was once achieved by creating separate schools, could now be achieve by creating separate classrooms.

Takeaways from Article:

• We need to learn from history of the Brown case and outcomes. It is vital to consider how many of our "current educational practices serve as tools of either social control and exclusion and not as we prefer to think as democratic of social transformation (p.7)."
• There is a need for us to focus on the technologies of exclusion rather than examine strategies that support or justify inclusion.
• Lastly, rethink the origin story of special education.

What does this article mean to me:

I had never learned about the events and follow up of Brown vs. Board of Education or the IDEA. It was interesting to read the facts and implications that arose after the Brown ruling. I was unaware of the overrepresentaiton that occurred shortly after. This was an obvious strategy in trying to keep segregation in schools since it could no longer legally be done by creating separate institutions. This made me examine and rethink special education at my own school. We do not have an over representation of minority students, however I have seen an issue with teachers trying to over refer students who are non white , specifically Spanish. I think the issue arises from the general education teachers' lack of knowledge regarding emergent bilinguals. I find that emergent bilinguals are sometimes over referred for special education because the general educator can not differentiate between a language need and a special education need. My school also does a great job when it comes to the concept of inclusion. I work with my special educator to plan lessons and we co teach. Her and I both try to have the students in the classroom 100%. They only leave my class if they need a quiet area to work or more time on an assessment something that is written in their IEP.

Work Cited

Ferri, B. A. (2005, March 31). In the Shadow of "Brown": Special Education and Overrepresentation of Students of Color. Retrieved March 13, 2018, from https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ695648