What is the Issue with Overrepresentation?

Pulling from the vast array of causes and issues when looking at representation of students of color in special education programs, two main issues, and three main causes can be identified. According to Harper and Fergus, many children of color are currently receiving not enough assistance, or too much assistance. For students not receiving the services they need, it could be because schools are trying to avoid going over a recommended percentage of children of color in their SPED programs, teachers don’t observe student needs or recognize that there is a problem larger than the common excuse, “the student doesn’t want to learn”. For children receiving too much support, there could be cultural differences that have led teachers and other education professionals to believe that a child has a disability, when in fact they are just behind their peers or speak using a different dialect. Both issues are detrimental because all these students miss out on resources that would give them the greatest opportunity to succeed, some from not being given the supports they need to learn and succeed, and others from being placed in a classroom or given curriculum that is overly restrictive and falls below their full ability, so that they aren’t pushed and stretched toward growing. Students who are wrongly identified as needing SPED services, can be socially outcast from being separated from peers, taken out of the general education classroom and put in a more restrictive environment than is necessary, and be held to lower expectations that communicate to the student that they can’t succeed. There are lots of factors contributing to these issues, many of them that probably haven’t yet been discovered or proven. Looking at those issues, three have profound effects on perpetuating over and underrepresentation, which include ineffective identification procedures for SPED programs, historic and societal racism, and placing blame children for their learning differences or challenges. 

Determining what supports a child needs to succeed to the best of their ability is a very challenging task, and educators and scientists have been coming up with, testing, and altering different evaluation procedures for decades. There isn’t, and possibly will never be, a perfect system for this process, and it has negative effects on students getting the resources they need. Various tests are used throughout the typical SPED identification process, many of which are based on Standard English, and don’t account for differences in dialect across racial groups in the U.S., or for students who are English Language Learners. This causes students belonging to either of these groups, particularly students who speak English as a second language, or black students who speak using Ebonics, to be overidentified for special education because of this language barrier. This process can also rely on intelligence tests, such as the Stanford-Binet IQ test, which has long been argued against and proven to be an ineffective measurement of an individual’s overall intelligence. 

Kelly Kreskow lists “poor general education instruction”, as one of the largest factors contributing to overrepresentation of racial minority students in special education. All teachers will bring racial bias into the classroom, and the unchecked power that bias is given, can cause teachers to have lower expectations for students of color, communicate to students that they can’t succeed, and cause teachers to be more likely to send students of color out of the classroom or assign harsher punishments. Harper and Fergus share that, “children of color with disabilities are disproportionately suspended and placed in segregated education settings”, meaning engrained bias and racism in teachers is causing them to have less patience with students of color. When these students spend more time outside the classroom, they fall even further behind their white classmates, making it more difficult for them to rejoin their peers, and causing further overrepresentation in SPED programs. More broadly, racism throughout our society denies resources to students of color, tells them they can’t succeed, and glorifies the Eurocentricity of the education system, making it seem like conforming to a culture of “whiteness” is the ultimate goal. The intense array of effects of systemic and societal racism throughout the history and present of the U.S., contribute to a lack of self-confidence and self-efficacy in students of color, and prejudice by teachers that causes them to expect students of color to fail. Additionally, the historic denial of education resources to individuals of color, particularly black individuals, has had effects still making an impact today. Children of color today growing up with less access to education and educational materials causes them as a group to be behind their white peers in terms of content knowledge when entering kindergarten. 

A third large issue contributing to this overrepresentation, is continuous failure to acknowledge the ways our society, school systems, and teachers are falling short. All too often, even when it is recognized that a student may have been wrongly placed in a SPED program, that student is blamed for their “lack of motivation”, “lack of content knowledge” or other excuses that are “causing” them to fail. Harper and Fergus encourage readers to ask the critical question of: “Is the child in need of intervention because of her income status, or is the school system in need?” Ultimately, while there are a number of factors contributing to the overrepresentation of students of color in special education programs, there will always be more that schools and school systems can do, and the first step toward making those changes, is accepting responsibility for the ways they have been falling short. 

The issue of overrepresentation, while it may just seem to affect schools and the students they are educating, actually has very negative effects on the surrounding society, as well as the children being wrongly placed in SPED programs. This issue reinforces racist stereotypes and beliefs, reinforces stigma around disabilities, treating them as negative labels, rather than as a category of learning needs, and raises up another generation of individuals who believe that “black students can’t succeed”. For the students being directly affected by misidentification and overrepresentation, these effects can be life-long. IDEA states that the goal of special education programs should be to give students who need it, extra support that allows them to “catch up”, with the ultimate goal of returning to the general education classroom, the least restrictive environment. Hilary Shelton emphasizes that many schools fail to do this, causing students to be stuck in SPED programs for the rest of their education careers, after being improperly diagnosed, holding them back from succeeding academically, and maybe even from eventually getting a job after high school. Additionally, there is a lot of stigma associated with disabilities and receiving special education services. This stigma can negatively affect students’ self-esteem, belief in their abilities, and motivation to work toward succeed, effects which can last their whole lives.