Disproportionality of Racial and Ethnic Minorities in Special Education

Keenan Solutions. (2013, January). Disproportionality of Racial and Ethnic Minorities in Special Education. Retrieved from youtube.com

This presentation is given by a partner at Fergan, Friedman, and Fulfrost LLP, Jennifer Rowe-Gonzalez She was also a former educator. Her presentation is very detailed and informative providing pertinent information for school districts to handle issues around disproportionate representation in special education programs. She works out of California and although she references their laws and school districts throughout part one of her presentation it is still applicable to other states. She begins by clearly defining disproportionality as the overrepresentation or underrepresentation of a minority group in special education programs in comparison to their enrollment rates. She then provides a detailed explanation of why this matters and the harm it does to the students misrepresented. Some of her key findings were lack of sufficient resources, stigmatization that comes with special education programs, lowered expectations from teachers, exclusion, poor educational outcomes, and increased dropout rates. She then expands on the causes, which include lack of effective pre referral intervention, bias in the assessment as well as incomplete assessments, teacher experience with behavior, and underlying racism. Rowe-Gonzalez also provides detailed solutions on how to tackle these causes to prevent disproportionality. Additionally, some general solutions she has are to implement preventative measures, keep an open dialogue, work with the department of education if there is a finding of disproportionality. She also provides an in depth explanation around IDEA’s 2004 amendments in efforts to reduce disproportionality.