More Black Students for Special Ed? Nah, bro!

The Hechinger Report recently published a column reporting on two recent studies that suggest Black students are under identified as having disabilities and therefore are not receiving the special education services they need.

Leading the charge in this fight to identify more Black students as having a disability and therefore needing special education services is Dr. Paul Morgan, Professor of Education at Penn State and his team of researchers. The Hechinger Report refers to his research presentation in May of this year to the Society for Prevention Research and his latest study to be published in an upcoming issue of Exceptional Children.

If his previous work is any indication, we may have some insight into what the article will read. In 2015, Dr. Morgan and his research team published their analyses of longitudinal data that suggests there is no “evidence that minority representation [in special education] is occurring.” Wow.

In the “Contributions and Implications” section, he and his co-authors suggest that “minority children are underidentified as having disabilities and are less likely to be receiving special education services than otherwise similar White, English-speaking children in the United States.”

First, the construction of race created the social differences and subsequent myriad inequalities experienced by Black folks today, children included. Exhibits A through etc, include, inequitable laws, policies, education funding, economic opportunities, lending practices, etc. These structural inequalities should not nor ever suggest less than, othering, or Black children being de facto disabled.

He elaborates, “Our results indicate that racial- and ethnic-minority children who are otherwise similar to White children are consistently less likely to be identified as disabled whether the specific condition being investigated is learning disabilities, speech or language impairments, intellectual disabilities, health impairments, or emotional disturbances.” In other words, students of color aren’t being identified enough as being disabled, whether it’s a physical or nonphysical disability and therefore aren’t accessing special education services. I could opine ad nauseam about nonphysical disabilities and Black children but I’ll save that for another day/time.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), during the 15-16 school year, Black students, ages 3-21, were 16% of those who were served under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). At the beginning of that school year Black students were 15% of the public school population. Now, there are a lot of people who are way smarter that I am, but the raw numbers alone not only seem to debunk the idea of underrepresentation, but in fact a saturation of Black students in special education.

Let’s continue…

In his writings, he suggests a bemoaning on the part of researchers that the system for identification of students for special education is racially bias. Umm, it is (Patton, 1998; Mills, 2003; Blanchett, 2006; Cartledge & Dukes, 2008; Wright et al., 2016).

He writes, “Our findings support policies and practices that result in increased use by practitioners of culturally and linguistically sensitive special education evaluation methods.” Sounds okay, right? The very next sentence, immediately after that period reads, “Use of these methods may be necessary to ensure that special education eligibility procedures do not result in unwarranted overrepresentation of White, English-speaking children.” Yup, you read that correctly!

According to NCES, during the 15-16 school year, White students were 49% of the nation’s public school population and 14% of all students, ages 3-21, served under IDEA.

Overrepresentation? Whatever makes him sleep at night.

Oh it gets much worse, but I can’t. He’s teaching would-be teachers over at Penn State.

Dr. Wanda Blanchett, Dean and Distinguished Professor at Rutgers University’s Graduate School of Education writes disproportionality exists when “students’ representation…exceeds their proportional enrollment in the school’s general population.” No reasoned, non-bigoted person could possibly conclude that White students are overrepresented in special education, based on this definition and the aforementioned data. Dr. Blanchett also pushed back against Morgan and his team’s analyses in a 2016 article she published titled, 'We Won't Be Silenced': Senior Scholars in Special Education Respond to Deficit Derived Claims That ' Minorities [Students of Color] Are Disproportionately Underrepresented in Special Education'.

Dr. Blanchett responded, in part, “…these researchers reported the findings of their study that employed a deficit theoretical and conceptual framework that seek to erase nearly five decades of strong empirical research that illustrates that African American and other students of color are indeed disproportionately overrepresented in special education. Despite their claims, the existing research and empirical literature also demonstrates how issues of race, class culture, language, and perceived disability play out in both general and special education to create conditions that have given birth to and continue to maintain disproportionality (Blanchett, 2013).”

I'll continue and end with Dr. Blanchett’s words back in 2016.

“As senior scholars in the field of special education committed to disrupting educational inequalities…we will not be silenced by one study using hypothetical children to suggest that African American and other students of color are underrepresented in special education when the evidence is clear that this claim is simply false and unfounded when examining real federal reporting data.”