Disproportionality in special education refers to the phenomenon that certain racial and socioeconomic groups of students are disproportionately identified as needing special education (Bal et al., 2014). These children tend to come from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. The consequences of the misguided placement of certain groups of students in special education programs include the false identification of some children as disabled, and the prevention of others who do need special education from getting the services they require (Bal et al., 2014).
Bal et al. claim that past research on disproportionality in special education has often been done on a national level, assessing certain socioeconomic or racial groups and how they are over or underrepresented in special education throughout the US (2014). Bal et al. argue, however, that under and overrepresentation is often specific to sociohistorical contexts of the school district, and that broad national studies cannot possibly address the many malleable factors that affect disproportionality in special education in schools. Therefore, in the current study, the researchers conducted a case analysis for just one school district.
Their study was conducted in the Flen School District in Wisconsin, and researchers worked closely with the school administrators and special education teachers to investigate disproportionality in the district, which has been a problem historically despite more recent efforts by the school to address it.
The results of this study showed that African American students were more than twice as likely as their White peers to be identified as having a disorder, and that American Indian students were two to three times as likely to be identified as having disabilities as White students. Furthermore, males were much more likely than females to receive special education. One in five male students received special education each year, while only one in ten female students did. They also found that race seemed to be a more central factor for disproportionality than socioeconomic status in this specific school district. They conclude that efforts targeting race, rather than class, are necessary to combat disproportionality in the Flem School District, and that further research is necessary to investigate how these students are being evaluated and placed into special education. From this research, school administrators acknowledged that their current methods of combating disproportionality are simplistic, not based in data and are showing no progress. They concluded that more nuanced methods of reform are necessary to make special education a more equitable system (Bal et al., 2014).
Another study by Linton assesses why and how African American children specifically are placed in special education at higher rates than their peers, by examining methods and criteria of teachers’ evaluations of their students (2014). The current study assesses teachers’ evaluations of their students by comparing teacher ratings to the ratings of students’ mothers. Mothers rated their children every year from age 1 to age 12, and teachers evaluated children from age 9 to 12. Children also reported on their own behavior when they were old enough. Measures included anxiety, oppositional behavior and hyperactivity. The results showed that both teachers and mothers rated males higher on hyperactivity and oppositional behaviors. Linton also found, however, that teachers rated African American children significantly higher than their mothers did on the hyperactivity measures (2014). Linton concludes that teachers should receive training on the criteria for diagnosis for different disorders, and that they should also be screened for cultural bias, since teachers often come from different racial and socioeconomic backgrounds than their students, which may lead to their misidentifying Black students as disabled.
The combined results from Bal et al. (2014) and Linton (2014) show that each school district should rely on its own data rather than national data when assessing the problem of disproportionality in special education, and that teachers should be educated about the measures by which they are assessing their students’ mental health, and also about any sociocultural factors that could influence these assessments.
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