Placing Children in Special Education A Strategy for Equity (1982) / Chapter Skim
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From page 3... ...
Is the quality of education in special classes adequate? Can special education students ever return to the regular classroom?
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From page 4... ...
The Panel on Selection and Placement of Students in Programs for the Mentally Retarded was established to aid OCR in identifying factors that account for this disproportion and in developing procedures for remedying the imbalance. The panel analyzed the data gathered by OCR through its Elementary and Secondary School Survey to document the nature and extent of disproportion in special education classes.
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From page 5... ...
If needed and effective educational services are provided in the least restrictive environment to students validly targeted, then any resulting inequality in minority representation in those programs would not constitute an inequity. Emphasizing the validity of referral and assessment procedures and the quality of special education programs and outcomes is consistent with legal tenets since all four major laws stipulating entitlements to special education services focus on consequences, either in terms of harm to be avoided or in the types and quality of services to be provided.
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From page 6... ...
for students in special education programs for educable mentally retarded, trainable mentally retarded, seriously emotionally disturbed, specific learning-disabled, and Details of the sampling design for 1978 are given in U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (1978a,b)
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From page 7... ...
Trainable mentally retarded (or handicapped) -a condition of mental retardation which includes pupils who are capable of only very limited meaningful achievement in the traditional basic academic skills but who are capable of profiting from programs of training in self-care and simple job or vocational skills.
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From page 8... ...
Moreover, districts with no students in a particular special education program are eliminated from the respective analyses and thus do not distort summary statistics. The 1978 OCR sample included 4,917 districts with both minority and white students enrolled in EMR programs; these districts provide the data base for statistical analyses of EMR disproportion.
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From page 9... ...
Again, the South exhibits the highest minimum and maximum average EMR placement rates for minority students of any geographic region up to an average of 9.09 percent of minorities enrolled in EMR classes in Alabama. The northeastern and midwestern states show a lower range for minority placement than does the South.
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From page 11... ...
Nationwide placement percentages are presented in Table 4 for five specific racial or ethnic groups in each of the five types of special education programs. As is to be expected, since blacks represent approximately two TABLE 3 Minimum and Maximum Average EMR Percentages, by Region Number Minority White Region of StatesU Minimum Maximum Minimum Maximum Northeast 4 1.83 3.35 0.71 1.60 Border 4 2.54 5.20 0.70 2.41 South 11 3.60 9.09 0.84 2.23 Midwest 5 1.57 5.42 1.07 2.46 West 7 0.85 2.51 0.59 1.17 a For 31 states with more than 10 percent minority enrollment each.
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From page 13... ...
For example, students of Asian or Pacific Island origin are typically assigned to special education programs at rates that are considerably below those for whites. In small districts in several western states, however, positive disproportions are found that might reflect a relatively high incidence of recent immigrations.
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From page 14... ...
For example, funding schemes that directly tie the number of dollars made available to a special education program to the number of children in that program may encourage overcounting, and minority children may be more likely to be eligible and therefore placed in expanded special education programs. The legal and regulatory structure for the identification, assessment, and
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From page 15... ...
. To the extent that a greater proportion of minority children score below accepted norms on achievement measures used in particular schools, they will be overrepresented in the pool of "potential" special education children.
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From page 16... ...
. Critics charge that such tests underestimate the skills of minority children- that the items do not tap the same underlying construct for minority groups as for white middle-class children, that particular items are insensitive to minority cultures, that differences exist in the predictive validity of the test for different groups.
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From page 17... ...
Approaches such as these may be misdirected. Each is likely to result in increased disproportion elsewhere in the educational system in placement in other special education programs, in over-age grade placements, in disciplinary actions and dropout rates, or perhaps in the number of high school students who cannot read or perform simple numerical tasks proficiently or meet minimum competency standards at graduation.
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From page 18... ...
Disproportion is a problem if children are invalidly placed in programs for mentally retarded students. If children are systematically assigned to EMR classes when other settings or programs would be more beneficial, then the assessment system for special education is of questionable validity, either for students in general or for particular subgroups that are overidentified.
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From page 19... ...
Local discretion at many points in the placement process thus allows a wide range of factors, some of which may be extraneous, to affect placement decisions. Disproportion is a problem if children are unduly exposed to the likeli
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From page 20... ...
Would fewer minority students be classified as mentally retarded if they were exposed to the highest quality instructional practices? Disproportion is a problem if the quality and academic relevance of instruction in special classes block students educationalprogress including decreasing the likelihood of their return to the regular classroom.
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From page 21... ...
. Research on the efficacy of EMR classes has generally focused on the effects of particular settings regular classes versus separate special education classes rather than on the characteristics of effective instruction.
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From page 22... ...
Refocusing attention on the questions of validity and quality- i.e., the valid assessment of students' functional needs and the provision of highquality, effective instruction has consequences affecting research and practice for students in special education and regular programs alike. If this new focus leads to the formulation of effective instructional programs for individuals in the least restrictive environment, then the statistical issue of disproportion by race or ethnicity or by sex ceases to be a problem.
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