The US Department of Education’s penchant for racial bean counting — usually in the realm of student discipline — has reached into the area of special education.
And the results could be quite detrimental.
Education professors Paul L. Morgan and George Farkas point out that black children face a “double jeopardy when it comes to succeeding in school.” Unfortunately, these youngsters are much more likely to deal with “gestational, environmental and economic risk factors that often result in disabilities.”
But the DOE is considering “adopting a single standard for all states of what is an allowable amount of overrepresentation of minority children” in special ed classes.
If well-intentioned but misguided advocates succeed in arbitrarily limiting placement in special education based on racial demographics, even more black children with disabilities will miss out on beneficial services.
About 65 percent of black children, compared with about 30 percent of white children, live in families with incomes below 200 percent of the poverty line. From 1985 to 2000 about 80 percent of black children grew up in highly disadvantaged neighborhoods characterized by widespread unemployment, racial segregation, poverty, single-parent households and welfare.
Thirty-six percent of inner-city black children have elevated levels of lead in their blood. The figure for suburban white children is only 4 percent. Black children are about twice as likely to be born prematurely and three times more likely to suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome.
In a study published today, we report that the under-diagnosis of black children occurs across five disability conditions for which special services are commonly provided — learning disabilities, speech or language impairments, intellectual disabilities, health impairments and emotional disturbances. From the beginning of kindergarten to the end of eighth grade, black children are less, not more, likely than white children with similar levels of academic performance and behaviors to be identified as having each of these disabilities.
The professors conclude by saying the “last thing” we need to do is to make educators wary of referring minority students for special ed services “out of fear of being labeled racially biased.”
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