Special Education Stigma

What are you thoughts about some of the points raised in “The Overrepresentation of Minority Students in Special Education” article?

The special education programs in the United States have been designed to help children with special needs learn easier and fit in better with the education program. Unfortunately, many minority students get caught up in the mix and don’t get the proper attention they deserve. Furthermore, minority students are seriously over-represented in the educational programs. Many minority students are misdiagnosed and put into special education programs when in fact; they do not have a learning disability. This has become a growing problem in this country because it is seen as the easy way out. Schools all over the U.S. are doing this in order to not have to properly test and evaluate students for learning problems.

Students with special needs should be placed into specialized schools so they are able to receive individualized learning. If they are in a classroom specific to their needs, they are able to receive much needed attention. In order to receive the optimal level of attention that is needed, schools would have to consider reducing class sizes or hiring multiple teachers for one classroom so more help would be readily available for these disabled students. Corwin argues that today’s schools offer a general curriculum and that they should convert to a specialized system. He states that students of various backgrounds, ethnicities, IQ scores, and physical, emotional, and mental disabilities should not all be placed in the same classroom because students learn in diverse ways and at different paces. Further, it is necessary for teachers to become specialized in certain areas in order to effectively teach students with special needs (Corwin).

The July 22, 2010 Examiner article The overrepresentation of African American students in special education, the author suggests “Atlanta public schools and the State of Georgia is not improving when it comes to the overrepresentation of African American students in special education” (Fanion, 2010). The headline “The overrepresentation of African American students in special education” implies that in 2010, African American students still are disproportionately placed in special education. “Data reported by the Georgia Department of Education demonstrates a silent epidemic is plaguing many metro Atlanta school districts. In some districts the disproportionate number of African American students identified as having emotional and

The problem of disproportionate numbers of minority students in special education can be attributed to a report by Lloyd Dunn in 1968 (as cited in Skiba et al., 2008) even though discrimination was evident long before that in America. The phenomenon of disproportionality as it relates to students from minority backgrounds being placed in special education refers to the percentage of students receiving services being a higher rate than is expected or that differs significantly from other races. Skiba et al. (2008) discuss the history of various aspects of the civil rights movement as they pertain to the issue of disproportionality of students from minority backgrounds in special education, the measurement tools used to determine the need for special education, the current status of disproportionality, and what factors have contributed to the discrepancies in numbers. Finally, recommendations are offered by the authors on how the existence of disproportionality of students from a minority background can be rectified.

In their landmark study, Soukup, Wehmeyer, Bashinski and Bovaird (2007) compared access to curriculum between inclusive classrooms and self-contained ones. They reported that in an inclusive general education classroom, students with disabilities were more likely to be working on a grade-level curriculum and were significantly more likely to be provided some sort of adaptations to improve their access to it whereas in a self-contained classroom, students with special needs were mostly working on below-grade-level standards and tasks. Further, there is considerable evidence that a child’s view of himself or herself is greatly influenced by environmental reinforcements and their perceived competence by significant others in the child’s life (Harter, 1999), and that expectations about the child’s abilities can affect his or her performance through self-fulfilling prophecies (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968). When children with special needs are placed in segregated classrooms by virtue of having a disability, they are automatically categorized as less capable and intelligent than the students from the general education classrooms and, as a result, receive a less stimulating learning experience. It has been

I believe that people’s perception does play a role in the success of students with disabilities. It is human nature to stare, fear or ridicule people who appear or act different from what we consider to be normal. For students with physical handicaps or limitations, their self-image is very important to them. They get upset and sometimes depress because they can’t do certain things as other children can because

Evaluation: In early 1970, children with learning disabilities were treated much differently than the peers that were at appropriate grade level. In this student’s case, the school system segregated the special needs students placing them in special classroom and labeled them as “slow learners”. With the teachers and school administration lack of knowledge on helping students with disabilities, students were at a disadvantage in receiving a fair education. Children felt as

For centuries the debate have been about the overrepresentation of minorities inside of special education. Analyst have called on the recount of misrepresentation of displaced students in special education labeling .An equivalent factor of minority is due to poverty, test bias and education process leading to achievement gap. Economic impoverishment and lack of exposure to general education curriculum contributes to life experience to take standardize testing. Poverty is the sole or even the crucial driver of racial ethnicity in a specific educational program. Ethnic students are subject to be isolated in educational settings and not exposing the student to the proper test material leading to test bias.

People with learning disabilities are often thought to have lower intelligence. In first through fourth grade I was thought to be one of the unintelligent kids in my class. I attended Saint Catherine’s of Sienna, a scary cold catholic school with some of the harshest nuns I have ever met. They would scowl at me every time I looked their way. During my time at Saint Catherine’s I was not yet diagnosed with my learning disability, as a result many of my teachers didn’t understand why I was not comprehending the information given to me like my classmates were. They often assumed my poor grades were a result of a

Although in many cases teachers have the students’ best interest at heart and hope to benefit them from a referral for an evaluation, inappropriate labeling can bring serious consequences for pupils. As noted on Truth in labeling: disproportionality in special education (2007), once admitted into the special needs program, students tend to remain in special education classes, they are more likely to encounter less rigorous curriculum and lower expectations, they often face social stigma, and have less contact with academically able peers.

The idea of children with disabilities, whether they be mild or severe has been a very controversial and misunderstood topic. In the past inclusion has brought about huge changes for not only the students, but also the parents and families of these children, and staff at schools. Teachers and education professionals were the first to really feel the wrath and intimidation of this dramatic shift in education. There were several different factors that were coming about that made it very difficult for schools and teachers, the unorganized mandates were strict and didn’t allow much time for change. “President Gerald Ford signed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EAHCA) into law in 1975. Since the original passage of the EAHCA, the law has been amended four times and renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)” (Conroy, Yell, Katsiyannis, & Collins, 2010, para.1).

Special education students have severe behavior or emotional issues that can disturb the classroom learning environment for themselves and the non-disabled peers. Disabled students often act out from not feeling accepted, frustration from the difficult material, and their cognitive obstacles. According to the article Time to leave inclusion out, seventy percent of teachers blamed the inclusion of children with special needs for increasingly bad behavior in the classroom.

According to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, students with disabilities should be placed in a “least restrictive environment.” One of the main ideas of this act was to improve the learning experiences of students with disabilities by giving them learning opportunities outside of a special education classroom. The number of students with disabilities being placed in their general education classrooms is increasing more and more each year. The U.S Department of Education’s 27th annual report to Congress on the implementation of The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (2005) indicates that the number of students with disabilities in general education classrooms has risen to almost 50 percent. This is about a 17 percent increase from the 1997 U.S

I always knew that making fun of students with learning disabilities was wrong. However, I never felt that inclusion of special education students in general education classes was plausible or made sense. I felt that special education